Har ek friend zaroori hota hai

  Har ek friend zaroori hota hai!

Today is Friendship Day, and I found myself thinking about where the word itself comes from. *Friend* traces back to the Old English *freond* — quite literally, "one who loves." Not one who is merely liked, or tolerated, or convenient to have around. One who loves. That's a high bar, and it's the right one.

Nietzsche, typically, refused to let it be a soft word. He said that in a friend, you should have your ‘best enemy’ — that you should be closest to them in your heart precisely when you're resisting them. I think about that a lot. The friends who matter most aren't the ones who only agree with us. They're the ones who love us enough to show us what we don't want to see, who criticise because they care about who we become, not just how we feel in the moment.

Sanskrit gives us an even older, and to me more beautiful, way into this. The word for friend, *mitra*, comes from a root that originally meant oath, treaty, covenant — the bond two people make when they choose to trust each other with something. And Mitra is also a Vedic god, one of the Adityas, son of the sage Kashyapa and the goddess Aditi. In the older Vedic texts he's paired with Varuna and associated with the great sweep of the sky, but in the later texts he is described as the light of dawn itself, the first rays of the morning sun, while Varuna takes the night. And it's said kings signed their treaties in that early light, because the sun at dawn is gentle enough that you can look straight at it. It doesn't force your eyes shut. It lets you see with your eyes open, honestly, without flinching — which is exactly what real friendship asks of us. To be seen, and to see, without needing to look away.

There's a phrase that's stayed with me: 

*kuch sachche, kuch jhoothe, kuch pakke, kuch kachche* 

— some true, some false, some solid, some raw. 

I like to think of friendships this way, not as one uniform thing but as a whole spectrum of people who each teach us something different. The *sachche*, the true ones, are the steady warmth — the friendships that build love and a quiet sense of safety in you. The *jhoothe*, the ones who aren't always what they seem, still teach you something — they sharpen your instincts, make you street-smart, keep you a little alert to the world. The *pakke*, the solid ones, are where real trust lives, the kind you can lean your whole weight on. And the *kachche*, the raw or new ones, teach you how to sit with uncertainty — and remind you that even they, in their own way, are worth reaching out. I won't pretend I can map these neatly onto oxytocin or dopamine or adrenaline — the science of connection is far messier and more entangled than that — but emotionally, each of these friendships does seem to feed something different in us. And we need all of it to keep moving.

This is a kind of nourishment no gadget or algorithm can offer. Human connection doesn't just occupy our time — it shapes our hormones, our nervous system, our sense of being fully alive. A screen can hold your attention, but it can't hold your hand. It can respond to you, but it can't *know* you the way a friend does, across years, across silences, across the versions of yourself you've outgrown. That fullness — of being truly seen and truly present with another person — is something no amount of artificial company can fulfil.

Friendship, at its truest, has no boundaries of age, gender, or time. It's a spark that stays lit in us no matter how long it's been since we last spoke, no matter how far away someone lives. Like Mitra's first rays, a real friend is simply always there, ready to stand for your good, ready to spread a little light your way.

But knowing a toxic friend when you see one matters just as much. Someone who diminishes you, who takes and doesn't give, isn't a friend — they're only an acquaintance wearing the word. The *Hitopadesha*, written by Narayana Pandit, opens with exactly this — its very first section, *Mitralabha*, is devoted to how one chooses friends wisely, through fables of animals whose loyalties are tested and revealed. It's ancient advice, but it hasn't aged a day.

This Friendship Day, let's celebrate the kind of friendship that's boundless — that doesn't ask for a category. Because a friend isn't only the person you met in school or work. A friend can be your partner, your spouse, your parent, your sibling,your mentor ,for me my patients— anyone in whose presence you can simply be yourself, without being judged, without editing who you are.

Without my friends, I would be nowhere.

*Yaaron dosti badi hi hasin hai.*

Happy Friendship Day 

Sanjivani (Gauri Karandikar)

02/08/2026