Best buddies but have never met in person? Yes, thanks to technology
Iwill never forget the time when he sent me that text message asking me how I was feeling,” says 28-year-old Ashish Nair, as he talks about his “best friend” Raghav Shekhar, a 24-year-old, who lives about 2,000 km away from Nair and has never even met him in person. Yet they feel their bond is similar to that of Jai and Veeru from Sholay (1975). “We met on a forum on Facebook. I think it was about books, and he replied to one of my posts with a very witty comment from Hunter S Thompson,” recalls Nair.
That was about “10 years ago”, and since then it follows all the cliches of sharing a friendship that lasts forever. “He has been with me through thick and thin. We have helped each other get over each other’s break-ups. A few years back, he was in a really low phase and stopped talking to people. For some reason he replied to my texts and answered my calls,” says Shekhar. “That’s because he never judged me. He never had questions, ‘What happened’ or ‘Why did it happen’. He’d just take your mind off things,” adds Nair.
Thanks to technology, being friends, and very good friends,
Samarth Goyal
without even meeting physically is quite possible. Marvin Dent, 33, a native of Margate, Kent, England, found many good friends on a chat group dedicated to supporters of the Chelsea Football Club. “But no one is cooler than Vartevar,” he says as he describes his best friend, Vartevar Sarkisian, a 37-yearold Canadian, who supports the same football club as him.
“We did not get to the best start. I remember we were arguing about a player from the team he didn’t like and I really did. So we really had a very nasty argument. But then, you know a few posts and a few comments later, we realised we used to think similar a lot, in terms of tactics and how a club should go about,” says Sarkisian. Since then, these two, despite being on different continents, have been best friends, who “chat almost every day”, and not just about football.
It’s not just books and football that have led people to forge some of the most memorable friendships. For the 24-year-old Siddhant Sarkar, an amateur singersongwriter, music was what led him to meet his best friend, Nick Romano, a 34-year-old bassist and a music producer in Los Angeles, US, around three years ago.
“I had just uploaded a cover of a Pearl Jam song on my Facebook profile. And I saw a comment from him, which said my vocals could have been better. I wrote back to him asking how he could have done that. And he gave me the very simple advice of being very close to the mic and that’s something that I still do. And, ever since that advice, I used to just ask him about recording music and general things. We had a lot in common, and we have worked and recorded some songs together. He is a really good friend. Probably even my best friend for over three years now,” Sarkar adds.