Wanna be my friend ?!

Imagine a simple question posed to people in different age groups - how did you first meet/know your best friend? These are the responses (am articulating them for the benefit of the reader)

a LKG student: We are both in LKG 'D' and she sits next to me. We both like Cadbury!

a IV std girl: She lives in my street and we go to the same dance class. We will do our Arangetram together !

a VI std boy: He lives next door and we play cricket everyday. Proudly adds: We are the sachin-sehwag pair!

a XII std girl: She lives in my colony and we go to the same tuitions. Rendu perum tuitionla thoongi pesi neraya thittu vangirkom!

an undergrad student: We shared a room in the hostel. Our hostel warden called us the ''bandit queens.''

a grad student: We lived in the same apartment. We are like family!

a fresher at work: We had interviews on the same day and attended the same training.

an office-goer: I have some good friends at work but my best friend is my college mate.

a housewife: I wish my best friend from school was in the neighbourhood.

why is that as you grow up, you need more and more things in common with someone to be best friends with them ? why isn't just liking the same toffee not enough anymore ? When does common tastes in music, sports and movies stop being the basic criteria? It is a sad fact that as the innocence in us decreases, we become more and more judgmental and it becomes harder and harder to make new 'best' friends.

Its true that friends that you make in a certain phase of your life (mostly student life) become more or less like siblings to you (and sometimes even more). And at one point, you are either content with your really good circle of friends and/or you just lose your inclination to make new friends because it costs you a lot of time and effort.

I am trying to remember when was the last time I made a really good friend...am not talking about those with whom one exchanges hi/bye, an occasional phone call but am talking about those people who you can call at an odd hr and start a 'hey, its me' conversation....my memory tells me sometime in 2004, when I was a grad student.

This is not getting any easier even with all the social networking tools available today. Why? Because there are only a handful of people that I can chat with – people with whom I can carry on a good conversation with; ergo my good friends. Talking with anyone else is simply small talk and am losing interest/lacking patience for that.

I moved to Munich 3 years ago and although I have made a couple of hi/bye friends, there is noone that I would willingly spend a day with ! Maybe it is also a personality thing – am just not the kind to chat with strangers in chat rooms or in skype or ‘wherever’. I make exceptions now and then when I really ''hit it off'' but these people are ''real''', they are friend's friends and they are who they say they are, atleast there is no identity theft (which is fairly common in online forums).

I am glad I have some friends I cannot really go on without, some friends I am really proud of and some friends I like to spend time with.....so what more do I ask for ?!