Do you believe in the “divide and rule” adage in making friends? Is that what makes one more likable, worthy and dependable? The ability to whisper some harmless snippets of their “other” friends, putting in that little seed of doubt, and watering it from time to time with more twisted anecdotes of why they were different from you, and pointing with subtlety towards that path, that it was you who they could relate to, bank upon and trust – and not the one they were calling ‘friend’ now. Manipulation is such a small, destitute of a word for a feat so grand and illustrious.

Lesser mortals issue ultimatums, the higher ones go for programming. And then they think they have made progress in life. “We are so lucky to have such true friends” All the while pruning away those we couldn’t properly mold (and hence, we dislike), away from us, and away from the ones we do like (and who show possibility). I wonder if the latter knows who decided, was it they themselves or their new-found friends? Decided who were the ones to keep, and the ones that were just there, may be out of consequences or old practices, or who were simply dispensable.

Does the end always justify the means? Should one never take the reins in their hands, but step back and watch from afar, letting the scenes unfold? Is that courage or cowardice? Knowing that you haven’t strayed (yet) and hoping that it will be your biggest strength, is that the worst you can do to yourself? What if there is no good and no bad, no karma, no dharma and only what you can wrangle to your gain, to your advantage out of this realm. Questions, questions! But no one seems to have anything but that one word – Patience.

Life loses it simplicity with every passing day. Or may be it is us who have forgotten to be simple. People are the “acid tests”, all the impurities melt away into nothing in the vitriol, only the genuine survive the onslaught, the heat, the pressure. There will always be foreign forces, some obvious, some not so, trying to bend you to their will, mould you to their liking – sometimes only choosing for you, sometimes just tweaking your freewill or sometimes twisting your whole self away from what you once believed in, away from who you were. And you shun the ones who stood by you once, you turn away the ones who cared without reservations, you turn your back who’d never give you up for anyone. And that I guess is in the circle of Life itself. Who survives, is however another story, probably one to be written at the deathbed.

Yeah, life was much simpler when we were young – and that maxim seems to be the recurring theme of living itself!