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The best friends make each other better
Old friendships offer comfort, worn jokes, forgiveness, crankiness and yet also demand the best of us.
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Friendship is a pact and a hideaway, says the writer.
ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO
Darkness falls softly and the rebuke arrives gently. It’s early November and I am on holiday in Bengaluru. My friend and I are on an evening walk, dodging karate classes and wandering dogs on an irregular footpath as car horns and voices jostle in the air.
We’d had an argument some days ago and I’d walked away in a storm of petulance. Now I apologise and she accepts and tenderly tells me that this volcanic impatience of mine, almost a type of conceit, needs fixing. I listen. The admonishment is short, the tone kind, the love apparent, the forgiveness given. This is friendship isn’t it? Tough truth delivered in cotton wool.
