Friendship- Then And Now.

Like father, mother, brother, sister are name relations, friendship is also a name of relation. As former are based on bond of love between two persons, friendship is also so based on bond of love between two persons. In the present day society, we observe that the bond love between father and son, brother and sister and even husband and wife is weakening. No effort, whatsoever is made at any level to check this trend with the result that society is degrading fast. If the bonding force between blood relations is getting weak, what to speak of bonding force between two friends. It would be exaggerated to say that these days true friendship rarely exists. In fact, the purport and meaning of friendship has undergone tremendous change. These days, " friend in need is friend indeed " has become very old concept and archaic. These days who participate in " eat, drink and be merry " falls under the ambit of friend". Such friends cannot be located when need arises.
Now what kind of friendship was then? To answer this question, I would like to narrate an incidence. I was in B.Sc. My friend and I were room partners. We resided in a rented room. I had no addiction at all. I was under impression that my friend too had no addiction when we were together. Later on, I came to know that my friend had started smoking. He, however, did not dare to smoke in my presence. I had become suspicious and began to keep watch on him. One day, he told me that he was going to see a friend and named the friend. As I was already suspicious, I stealthily followed him. Standing at a place where it was dark, I observed that standing before a betel shop, he was smoking. I came back to the room. When he came back to room, I enquired about his meeting with his friend. He told me that he could not see his friend. Then, I asked why he was telling a lie. When he found that I had seen him smoking and was raising objection to his smoking he became very angry. He challenged my authority to raise objection on him. I did not react. I simply said that I had authority of a friend. I however assured him that thence I lost my status of his friend and hence I would not raise any objection in future. I told him that thence, my informal relationship between him and him had become formal one. When he saw that my reaction was very cool and he was losing a true friend in , he became perturbed. We were residing in the Sam room but he sent a letter to me by post. His letter was a sort of confession. He was afraid that this incidence might have spoilt my result and he would be blamed for it. He requested me to treat the incident as an exception. He promised me not to repeat it in future.