Lose a Lover Not a Friend

(a paean to friendship)

Image courtesy - Giovanni Esposito

Let us get together again

this has been too long

we can’t let ourselves drift

into sharing social media pieces

of our lives in ways  too obvious

and too known without your gut-

tural laughter or absurd interventions

or that twinkle which pronounces 

“rhetorical”. You do know there are things

I can only be with you and I miss

those things of me. Why is friendship always

a second grade citizen to love, when it’s comforts

are less insidious? Just because its grace

is allowed to be less rule bound can’t possibly

be reason enough for us

to take each other’s histories for granted.

Much more tolerant than love

friendship can bear our little poison pills

with equanimity. Come, let’s again find our drinks

at our favorite waterhole, let me see

how much you’ve changed, with your new

unknown stories, and see how much you see me

changed. I hope I don’t cry

and we are able to hold each other

just a shade of how lovers do - I just don’t want

to lose you to love. You are too precious

for that.

Do listen to the poem, and lose yourself to the voice and the music!

Too little, I feel, is talked about heartbreak which arises from friendships which come unstuck. It’s almost as if it doesn’t require comment or commiseration if it’s not love. There’s injustice there.  When the truth is that closely wrought bonds which are non sexual often give more shelter to the soul than love can ever do. Friendship is a live-in relationship for the soul. Where everything precious holds true, but no bond paper is signed. Friendship often frees you more preciously than how love binds you. Vikram Seth wrote in his poem “A Style of Loving”-

Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground
As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive
We two

Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsumated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head
Hot buttered rum - coffee for you;
And so not to bed

And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon's
High joy or pain.

Love seeks adventure, friendship is already one; love is cautious as there is so much breakable which is at stake, but friendship thrives on risk - without it it withers, dies. There is reverse alchemy in friendship. What would life be without the wild indulgences with friends - the late nights, the drives, drinking binges, closing up to each other’s secrets, opening up to our  black holes. There is a bond of shared blood between friends which no amount of shared intimacy between lovers can ever be able to replace.

Friendships do turn to love affairs. And if expectations don’t drown its unfettered madness and outrageous  indulgences and intravenous bonding, it would be the greatest love affair possible.

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I see my dad saying “I love you” to life with every breath -

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