Have you dropped by a Friend’s window today?

When is the last time you ever talked to that contact in your list whom you randomly added once upon a time, via some suggestion or someone else’s profile and the like. Or let’s just talk about your close school friend, or others whom you personally know in the real world.

Life on the Internet is gradually turning saturated, as we keep adding more and more contacts and followers across Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, etc. or on Instant Messengers.  It’s one moment we add them, the next moment we forget them altogether and shove them away to the depths of our crammed up contact lists, never to say yet another ‘Hi’. It happens with me, having 500+ contacts is tough!

But, that’s not my main focus. I’m here writing to talk about our personal contacts: old friends, new friends, distant friends, close friends, family, relatives, colleagues, etc. People whom we have interacted with at some part of life in the real world. I would focus more on old school friends, because that’s what I’m going to use here as an example, who is the main inspiration to this blog post.

We should in fact be thankful to the web, for we can instantly communicate with people whom you can’t devote enough time offline. But even then, we tend to forget them as we get indulged into other activities online. Let us, for once, open up our contact lists, and simply drop a.. Hi! 🙂

An iChat with my Best school friend

An iChat with my Best school friend

Making someone feel special

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Just done watching today’s episode of Kya Mast Hai Life (yeah I haven’t yet blogged about that current addiction yet), and was quite pleased with the episode’s theme. It revolved around giving gifts to friends occasionally, but highlighting the barriers and flaws within the process.

As in the episode, 1 of the 5 friends in the gang, Ragini (Rags) is the daughter of big shot parents, her mom being a famous actress and dad a business tycoon. In the first season of the show, she tried to hide her identity from her friends due to this reason, so that her friends accept and interact with her as one of themselves, instead of treating her as someone high. This secret came out after the season ended.

Back to the topic, 2 of the other friends had bought gifts for each one of their friends, possibly from a shopping spree or something. But when it came to Rags’ turn, they felt their gifts were far too inferior to Ragini’s class of presents, and they tried to keep her out of this spree. At the end of the episode finally, they presented her a nice song played by Vir, as well a handwritten card that made Ragini feel all touchy and special to be a part of their group.

Concluding from that excerpt of the show, and on to my share of thoughts, I think it all does aware us of the fact again, that making someone feel loved isn’t always done through an array of expensive gifts, but through that one special manner that is way beyond reaches of anything money could buy.

I think it’s a nice habit to occasionally or well, atleast on a birthday, remind your closest of buddies how special they stand for you. The easiest and one of the best ‘gifts’ that you could go in for is simply an ordinary plain greeting card. That’s from my personal experience I can say something that will be cherished forever. What I prefer are greeting cards with less of pre-written content, and more of blank space for you to fill up with all your love and affection – which practically I mean something in your own style of decorations and handwritten messages. You could look up for some readymade friendship birthday poems on the web, short ones that are less than a dozen lines long, that supplement your own wishes and message on the card. It is also beneficial to attach a separate ‘letter’ and write up something you would usually chat up on the phone, something to supplement the rest of the greeting, but separated from the main card and wishes. This is because these few lines from the letter are always going to be cherished, especially times when you’re away from your friends due to some reason, they will just pop out your card and read the letter over and over again, imagining you as the one speaking it out to them =)

So all it takes to make someone feel even more special is just a few colour pens and a plain ol’ greeting, occasionally on events like friendship day, christmas, valentines day apart from birthdays. A small supplementary present like keychains, straps, small holy idols (if your friend is way spiritual) and ofcourse, chocolates, is what goes well alongwith. I wouldn’t recommend flowers really, since they fade away sooner and mostly go ignored after the first smell.

I guess this post has exceeded limits of decency again, so I’ll stop right here. Just remember that it doesn’t always take a credit card to convey your feelings, try out something different and out-of-the-blue for once, you’ll see how that turns out for the better in your close relations =)

Good luck!

P.S.: I have my own collection of self-made greetings to share, but I’ll avoid that so as to ensure there are no hard feelings amongst anyone who views them, as well as to keep a part of my ideas to myself =)