SHABIHA NUR KHATOON
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Who can forget the famous dialogue ‘ek ladka aur ek ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte’ from the movie Maine Pyar Kiya. There is little doubt that all of us have heard the dialogue and engaged in debate whether a boy and a girl can just be friends without getting involved in some kind of relationship. When people see a boy and a girl enjoying ice-cream together in a corner of the road they invariably jump to the conclusion that the couple must be sharing a romantic chemistry.
People think — we can be pretty sure nobody would refute this — that if a guy and a girl are best friends, they must be in a secret relationship, too scared to reveal their feelings. While this is the typical feeling it is essential to go beyond stereotypes and acknowledge that the wide canvas of friendship holds disparate souls together. Why can’t a ‘couple’ just be friends? This is a question few third-parties and onlookers care to ask themselves. Youth POST asks youths whether friendship can exist between two people of the opposite gender.
Shreejaya Satpathy says, “Gender should not be a deciding factor in friendship. If I meet somebody and like him as a person I never let something as small as gender decide the quality of my feelings for that person. Good friends are very hard to find. When it comes to the question of whether guys and girls can be just friends, I can merely say that there is no universal truth. In some cases guys and girls can be the best of friends, that depends on how the friendship started and the personalities in question. You can be anybody’s friend and maintain a perfectly healthy relationship. A guy and a girl can be best friends without any feelings of attachment. It’s all about personality and how well they cope with each other.”
“While Bollywood has been a romantic heaven thus far for teenagers who eat, sleep and are ready to die for romance, it has been very unkind to friends of the opposite sex. Dialogues like, ‘ek ladka aur ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte,’ and ‘pyar dosti hai’ have always been a roadblock for people who have friends of the opposite sex. Despite the fact that I am a very filmy person and Bollywood is my Bible, I beg to differ with Bollywoood in this case. I have a lot of female friends who are always there for me. In fact my best friend who is my lifeline and my strength is a girl. Our friendship has sailed through all odds and it has been misunderstood by many, but still all is well by God’s grace. There are a few things which I don’t want to change if I take birth as a human being again, and she is definitely one,” said Nishant Majithia.
Subarna Mitra says today youths are debunking the age-old myth that a guy and a girl can’t be friends.
She says, “I surely believe that friendship can exist between a boy and a girl. In the 21st century the youth are sensible and know their limits. There is a thin line between friendship and love; we can have a number of friends but we can’t have a number of lovers. Love is a rare affair. Friends are ones whom we rely on when we are happy or sad or going through a bad situation. So the first thought that comes to our mind is the sharing of feelings. If a girl finds a guy friendlier and he is the one on whom she can rely and the vice-versa then I think there is no problem in being just great friends.”
