"Hello Sameer, how are you pal?"
"Oh hi Ninad, I am fine, how about you?"
"Me too doin good. Hows workload these days?"
"Same story. Fluctuates from 8 to 12 hours, hows yours?"
"Consistent at eight hours."
"Lucky you are!"
(Two minutes of silence)
"So what else in life?"
"Nothing much. Just the same. Chalo milte hain kabhi.."
A typical conversation. Anywhere you can hear it. Anything missing in the above exchange? The "exchange" itself is missing. It just has inquiries hows-ur-workload, how-do-you-do.
This is where the relevance of irrelevance pitches in.
I love calling one of my friends. She speaks everything from the latest book read to latest
movie watched.Also about the workload and everything else inbetween. In the reply I babble on latest olympics or tennis tournaments or irritate her with technical PJs. Another friend of mine, once there is a call,the chat between him and mine will range from girls to ethics. He will overwhelm me with the details of his latest crush bearing all the while my sarcastic comments.
We think that telling about the funny misunderstanding you had with your boss may not be relevant to your friends. We think that its not relevant to say how you ate almost all the sweet dish prepared by your mother yesterday. We think that its not relevant to speak about how a girl at the ice-cream parlour held you spellbound (or eye-bound). We think that it doesn't matter to the next person how silly you danced at the birthday party of some other friend of yours. Nor does it matter how much you liked the T-shirt you bought yesterday.
Then whats relevant? As the lives go on separating due to inevitable circumstances what we have got to tell our friends? Nothing except hows-the-workload and how-do-you-do and what-else-in-life! I believe that all "irrelevant" things are in fact most important to make a friendship survive the barriers of distance. I do not proclaim that I am a master in these things. But some experiences have taught me to ask a lot of questions to the other person and to open the "exchange". Many times these efforts go in vain and the friendship goes on weakening. At least I used to call
some of them before few years/months. Nowadays I dont even scroll over their names in the contact list in my phone. They have become just a memory location in my cellphone. Nothing more that that!
Finally I thought I'd write it up. Lets become somewhat irrelevant. Lets care less about the business point of view of does-it-matter-to-him-or-her. Lets not sacrifice the friendship at the expense of "relevance". Friendship is beautiful.
