Let's Not Be Friends

“Let’s not be friends”. Yes. There, I said it. I said what many of us have been keeping inside for ages. Keeping inside, waiting for the right time, looking for the kindest words to weave it in, in a dictionary that doesn’t exist. It took me three days and a couple of hours to realise and accept that there could not be a better time than now and there could not be any better or kinder or more ear-pleasing words to let this secret out.

“Dear Pakistan, let’s not be friends”.

Sixty nine monsoons have passed, uncountable hearts broken, and we are still here, stuck in an undefined, perfectly uneasy and a painfully unsettling relationship. Friendship.

From being a chubby single child to monozygotic twins to cousins to complaining neighbours to finally being ‘friends’, both of us have had enough trouble for a lifetime.

I know that you wish, like I do, for a peaceful friendship, not hindered by a disturbing shared history of shattered dreams, shackled hopes and bloody deaths. But don’t you think it’s better to take off our masks for just a moment and face, temporarily yet efficaciously, the reality?

We cannot be friends. Not with the bomb blasts and Diwali wishes co-existing. Not with the sweet seviyan and deceptively sweet remarks being exchanged. Not with soldiers dying and flags hoisted at the same hour. Not with the high-spirited cricket matches and equally high-spirited controversies in stadiums. And most definitely not with the animals killed for entertainment.

We cannot. So, let’s not.

Let’s be strangers instead. Strangers who perhaps meet at a Comic Con amongst imagined realities with superheroes discussing super powers. We can shake hands and tell each other that it doesn’t feel that bad. We can compare the texture of our flesh and chuckle at its similarity. We can sing my favourite songs and dance on yours. We can paint each other’s faces; yours can be orange and mine can be green, for a change. I could tell you how strongly I’ve started to like green and may be you could show me your orange wrist watch. We can debate over Joker’s likeability and not worry about not reaching at a conclusion. We can talk about the past, present and future without any sense of horror, malcontent and doubt. We can laugh at jokes or powerful people and their decisions if you like. We can even exchange phone numbers when we part ways.

We can be the best of strangers without any stale intentions or stagnant blood to breed hatred. There would not be any well-thought hate speeches but meaningless conversations over coffee. No filthy politics or world domination plans but a blueprint of our own small superhero world.

So, let’s respect each other’s costumes and the idea that they would change. Let’s accept each other, our differences and similarities without any judgements. Let’s be strangers and not friends, for Friendship has grown to mean something we could never approve of. It has started to sound like Friction. It has started to sound like Boundaries.