Can you imagine us years from today/ Sharing a park bench quietly?/ How terribly strange to be 70!” sang Simon and Garfunkel in 1968, in Old Friends. There is something to be said for the constancy of old friends, those who have seen the many versions of the person one has been and could potentially be. Held one’s hair as one threw up in the loo after a wild night out, nursed one’s broken heart, careful not to roll their eyes and say, “I told you so”.
Friends who stood one step behind like faithful shadows through marriage, childbirth, bereavements and milestones, knowing the script of each others’ lives more intimately than families ever can, even as youth slips into middle age into dotage.
As in life, so in films and literature, friendships have drifted to centre stage sparingly, the drama of fortuitous meetings and lifelong connections playing second fiddle to romantic relationships. But from Farhan Akhtar’s coming-of-age Dil Chahta Hai (2001) to Sally Rooney’s millennial Normal People (2018), if there’s anything the complicated yet liberating, solid yet amorphous world of friendships have shown, it is this: That there is something to be said for the largehearted generosity of those who have your back, for the quiet reassurance of growing old together, discovering new eccentricities and feeling secure in the knowledge of old ones.
For friendship promises one thing — the assurance that you’ll never be adrift.
