August 5, 2012
(Friendship Day)
'Roses are red, violets are blue, friends like you, are very few… happy friendship day!'
Does this sound familiar guys? Haven’t we all, at least once, done this in our childhood days? Where we either designed a card of our own or bought one and wrote those sweet little words in it for our ‘best friend’ (as we term them) on the auspicious occasion of ‘friendship day’?
“Happy friendship day!” We hear our friends shouting this out on one particular day of the year. In fact, sometimes, even we, voluntarily or not, shout that back. The greetings are followed by hugs and finally by the age old tradition of exchanging flowers, gifts, cards and the much coveted ‘friendship band’ with our friends. Sometimes we even hold competitions as to who receives the maximum number of friendship bands by the end of the day. But in reality, we actually ‘know’ that our depth of friendship is not governed by these bands.
Even though friendship day is observed on different days all around the world, in some countries that include India, we celebrate friendship day on the first Sunday of August every year and this year it falls on August 5.
Today, things have mellowed down as compared to the past, and even though the hugs haven’t reduced to a considerable number, the gifts have, as nowadays many are of the opinion that it is not only on ‘one’ particular day that we actually remember our dear friends.
Many term it as a ‘gimmick’ as well, where this day is used as a trump card to increase the sales of gift items and fancy stuff.
No matter how much we agree with this notion, still, there will be one or two special friends that we ‘actually’ wish and greet on this particular day. Call it old fashioned or being childish, this actually gives most of us some sort of a joy that cannot be expressed or explained to our elders. When our friends wish us on this particular day, it makes us feel special and gives us a sense of pride and belongingness to them and surely this calls for a celebration!
Many youngsters of today are of the opinion that no matter how much people try to shun this concept by instigating in our minds that this is just another day plus the show off of having friends, or wastage of money, we will remain friends and will leave no special day without celebration, especially “friendship day” duh!!
With the progress of technology, nowadays people celebrate friendship day online, through e cards, social networking sites and the like.
Even thought the trend of friendship bands and gifts have reduced, we still keep it in mind and make it a point to wish our friends or to at least remind them that “hey! Today is friendship day!!”, and expect that sweet little brief wish from them.
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