Bhubaneswar: Aristotle has said, “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human.”
Most animals have acquaintances but only the human beings can be thick as thieves. There has never been a standard definition of friendship; however, we can call it a bonding which gives social groups a very different structure.
It was July 20, 1958, that the idea of a World Friendship Day was first proposed. Dr. Ramon Artemio Bracho during a dinner with friends in Puerto Pinasco, a town on the River Paraguay about 200 miles north of Asuncion, Paraguay, thought of such a day.
Forty years later, Nane Annan, wife of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, named Winnie the Pooh as the world’s Ambassador of Friendship at the United Nations.
With the advent of commercialisation coupled with technological advancement the day of human bonding became a commercial gimmick.
For instance not a day passes when multiple applications on our smartphones try hammer and tongs to lure us into falling into their booby traps of so-called discount offers and this badgering reaches its maximum on this day.
Orissa POST interacted with some of the city students to know their views about Friendship Day.
Anushka Nayak, a class twelve student of Loyola School, was surprised on how the celebration of friendship can be limited to a day only. “First Sunday of August comes and everybody loses their minds!” she exclaimed. For her, friendship needs not be celebrated but is to be lived with all its ups and downs. “Bonding are complicated and so is friendship, I can’t sum up my celebrations in one day,” she added.
For some, friendship day is ‘Archies Day’. Preeti Mohanty, a student of University Law College, said, “Its business sans feelings. They bank on your emotions. Companies even provide you with options such as EMI.” She lamented on how human relations have become a way to “bilk” many.
There are many who went on to say that the day is a “social media day” and one of them was Ipsita Mohapatra, a student of Rama Devi Women’s College. Ipsita said, “Friendship has no value today but for millions the first Sunday of August is a way to earn likes people on their pictures, be it in Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.”
For some like Satyabhan Parida, a student of a private engineering college, technology has “taken a toll on the very nature of human beings.” “Even when you are in restaurants with your friends, some of them would never fail to disappoint you by surreptitiously peeping at their phones every 15 seconds,” he said. Parida felt that it is not about bands or fancy cards or WhatsApp messages rather it is celebration of the connection that we share with our friends and nothing else.
RAKESH MOHANTA, OP
