Guest Article: Ashish Mishra : Friendship 2.0

There was a time when friendships ruled. People lived and died for friends. We celebrated notions of 'jigri dost', 'jodidaar', even the not-so-hygienic 'langotiya yaar'.

Almost everyone had a best friend. Friendships were given a status higher than relatives. Friends were often dearer than siblings. Friends often lived together and shared the responsibilities and the burdens of each other, cried in their grief and danced harder in their joys.

In post-independent India, that was friendship 1.0. It reigned through the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s.

But, somewhere in the late 80s, and early 90s, society started to open up. Economic reforms set in. Foreign influence became pronounced. Growth was on everyone's agenda. With a billion plus population running towards newly-opened opportunities, winning became the sole aim and competition, its means. That's when cracks started to appear in fabled friendships. Friends became rivals. Selfishness set in. The self became more important. Ambition swallowed all else. The race to win meant running alone.

The 90s, and perhaps a large part of the first decade of the 21st century, saw the reign of insularity. People lived to work. Twelve hours of work a day was fairly customary. Everyone was growing, and wanted to grow even faster. To become a CEO by 30 was the intent. And, the smartest of the crop had their life worked out -just like the stereotype of the era characterised in the 2011 Bollywood hit movie ZNMD (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara) had -- "slog and earn enough until 35, and then retire to enjoy it!"

Concepts of mid-Life crises were advanced to quarter life crises. Kids in their 20s, began to get paranoid about the lack of achievement of their lives thus far. At the turn of the century, there were signs of change galore. Driven by the growth frenzy in a 24x7 work culture, marked by migrant societies and the anxiety to achieve, there was an increasing evidence of isolation all around. The online space attempted to become a refuge for people to find friends. And the pent up needs for connecting saw proliferation of networking sites.

People fought to manage their schizophrenic online existences on various networking interfaces, and social networking sites dislodged porn as the unchallenged numero uno of the online world. Facebook (FB) became a world parallel to online itself. Why, the last party we went to saw the first half-hour spent in clicking pics solely for the purpose of uploads. Guess the genesis of the site when it was used by the very young Mr Zuckerberg to compare girls in college, was playing up to its degenerative worst.

However, as the friend lists grew from 100s to 1,000s, people went from searching old friends, showing off possessions and vacations, to posting banal inanities, the elasticity of online socialisation became suspect.

My wife, who unlike me, is a popular and friendly soul, on her birthday was inundated with birthday greetings throughout the day, this year. Messages, mails, FB posts, et all. Dozens of them. But hey, can you guess the number of people who turned up to wish her? Well, just three, including me!

People, given the funnily strange dichotomy of lonely lives in a crowding world, ached to connect back with people in the real way. And, that barometer of the socio-cultural swings, the world of cinema, began to reflect it, too. From 'Dil Chahta Hai' to 'Rock On' to 'ZNMD', and Rang De Basanti, 3 Idiots, and even Hangover, the message is clear -- people were beginning to want to bond in the real world, with real people, through real issues and interests.

The Diwali TVC of the culture brand Coke talked about adding two more lights to celebrate different fun places important to college friendships. A fair number of Diwali messages themselves were about how lights, like love and happiness, grow upon sharing. The omnipresent FB in its new avatar, has friends lists modified into different types of friends -- close friends, office friends, acquaintances, college friends, school friends, etc. And the TVC from the leading Indian telecom brand that marked it all has already got the nation musically appreciating -- 'Har ek friend zaroori hota hai'.

The social networking sites could surely take a cue from here. Their future indeed lies in moving from a linear, all encompassing entity, to segmented and finely targeted interest groups.

Does this new social cultural phenomena have something to do with the saturation of coaster's angst? Perhaps those who drifted alone for long were eager to find ways to anchor themselves -- acquiring self-fashioned friends through work, hobbies, sporting affiliations, getting involved in charities, even spirituality. They will continue to seek opportunities that nurse togetherness and companionship.

In the future, people will neither want it all, nor get there first. What will truly define the next generation is its ache to belong -- in someplace, to something, for someone.

(Ashish Mishra, is chief strategist and head, Water.)