বসন্তের জন্য অপেক্ষা

Friend, really?

I sometimes feel that I have too many friends but too few 'true' friends.
Facebook has given me more 'friends' than I will ever need in a lifetime.
The word 'friend' has always carried a very special meaning for me. So growing up, when people asked me to name my friends, I could never name more than five or six. A look at my friends list will therefore take people by surprise -- some 380 plus names already grace the list!
380 is not too large a number if compared to those who have a couple of thousand friends on their lists. Their list could as well be called a fan page because my human mind cannot grasp the idea of one person having 2,000 'friends.'
As said earlier, the word 'friend' has always carried a very special meaning for me. But today, anyone and everyone can be a friend. Your boss, a former colleague, a guy who you took just one class with in college, a girl to whom you hardly spoke in class, a friend's friend, a former classmate's ex-boyfriend... the list goes on.
The unbridled use of the word 'friend' worries me, not as much for myself as for the new generation. While we grew up with a handful of friends, today's children are growing up with hundreds of friends -- not physical but virtual friends. Many of them probably will never know that a friend is a very special person, a person you can confide in, on whose shoulders you can rest and pour your heart out, who will listen to your jibber-jabber but won't make a face and who will go out of his or her way to help you out.
How many 'friends' on my Facebook account will ever be that kind of a friend? Not more than five or six of them, which makes me go back to square one.
Any Facebook friend reading this might feel offended enough to 'unfriend' me. But is this the norm of today to define the words friend and friendship? I have more than a hundred 'friends' with whom I have not exchanged a “Hello” in more than a year, who do not know what I am up to (not that I know what they are doing these days), who do not remember my birthday, who do not send me happy messages on my achievements or notes of consolation at my times of distress.
There are also people on my list whom I have never met face-to-face. But is such a person still a friend? Really? How? He or she can be an acquaintance but a friend? Oh no! But oh yes, if you frequent the labyrinth of the largest social networking site; Facebook is a most amazing invention, I have not the guts to deny that. It is how we are using Facebook and how it is changing the way we once used certain words and treated certain relationships that have me tensed.
How can I possibly call a person a friend when I have not even talked with him or her in eons, and I probably will not in the near future?
My friends list is increasing monthly. I now have more friends than I had a month ago. I get friend requests from people no one in my family and friends circle has ever heard of. Random people want to befriend me. Making friends is becoming that easy.
Becoming a new friend is now only a click away.
Where have the days gone when friends would fight and still remain friends; exchange not just a superficial hello but everything that is taking place in one's world; cry a river of tears upon hearing that a friend is leaving for abroad and that you will not meet in a couple of years?
Becoming friends is not that easy. No matter how hard the social networking sites try to change the use of the word 'friend,' some stubborn people like me will probably never buy it.

By Wara Karim