Ode to Friends

After my first few posts on this blog, my friends used to ask me (sarcastically) 'How come there is no post on on your blog..a topic so close to your heart!' I actually used to respond with 'it is just too huge to blog about. I wouldn't be doing justice if I just did a review kind of thing for Friends'. For almost every situation in life and relationships, I have an anecdote/quote from Friends (much to the irk of the other conversationalists). People seem to have trouble understanding how I could have learnt so much from a serial that was supposed to be a light hearted casual comedy. But the reality is that I have. And with people who can relate to it just as much as I can, even in the middle of a crisis (or a not-so-funny situation) we find ourselves saying 'this is just like what happened to Rachel/Monica...'!

I am not a regular fan who would say 'this is the best serial ever made'. If I had followed a Seinfeld or a Sex and the City or even India Calling as religiously as I had followed Friends I guess I would still draw parallels with those characters and the people in my life. But ofcourse, credit is due to the creators of Friends for sustaining viewer's interest for over ten years. This thing has become so much a part of me, that to me the characters are almost 'people-I-know'. I know this will sound weird when I translate this thought to words - often, when I go down memory lane, just as I reminisce about incidents from my life, I think about incidents from the serial. If it is something stupid Joey did or some wise crack from Chandler, it brings a smile to my face...and if it is something bad Rachel or Phoebe went through I feel sad about it. I can talk only for myself; but assuming this kind of involvement with a serial, a book or a movie is fairly commonplace the reach the creators have is mind boggling. I wonder what I would convey/say to the world (or to a significant portion of it) , if I was given one hearing. I would be so full of thoughts, so full of intent to make a difference with that one statement, that I would stupidly just forego the chance and end up not saying anything at all!

Anyway, as melodramatic as it might sound, all I wanted to say here is that Friends has made a difference to my life. I have learnt a whole lot from it and have benefited from it in some ways. Besides being good for laughs it helped me wade through some difficult situations in life. If something that happened to a Friends character, happened to me, it just becomes easier to accept (as opposed to being bothered by the 'Why me' question). At the end of all this eulogy for Friends, I feel guilty that this post is just about a serial and not my true life friends... ;o) those people who chose to make a difference in my life (unlike the creators of Friends who just wanted to make pockets full of money or satisfy some other selfish needs of their own!). But then again, that's just too huge to blog about!