Pondering over a Movie Lyric

 

10th day of #Blogchatter daily write challenge  

" Chirikkumbol, koode chirikkan, aayiram per varum.

Karayumbol, koode karayan, nin nizhal maathram varum" 

Translated in to English, this Malayalam lyric from the movie "Kadal" (Sea) reads like this:  

" When you are laughing, 1000 persons will come to laugh with you

    When you are crying, only your shadow would be there, to cry along with you.." 

There is a lot of depth and truth in the lines penned by the veteran poet, Sreekumaran Thampi. This was a time when there used to be poetry in the film lyrics (1968) . We have seen instances of persons who are rich having a lot of friends but deserted the moment they fall on difficult times. We need to also keep in mind the fact that this song was written in the sixties when most people were struggling to make both ends meet. Unemployment was a big problem .There were less number of people who were financially sound and the majority did not have much to laugh about.  

The next two lines in the same song declares thus " Happiness is a guest who visits you once in a while but sorrow is a relative who never leaves you."  Although, the song reflects the times and financial difficulties faced by the people (our tide turned in 1991 with encouragement of liberalization in the budget and the consequent emergence of a robust middle and upper middle class) during that time, the wisdom of the first two lines holds good even today. 

In the present times, seemingly hundreds of thousands of friends on social media are ever ready to "Laugh" and "celebrate" with you. How many of these friends would be ready to stand by you in a crisis is however debatable. After all, it is not as simple as clicking an emoji of "concern' or 'sad'.  I read an interesting account of a reader in Reader's Digest some time back. She said that usually when she posts something on social media, she used to get many comments and emojis. However, there was total silence when she wrote this about her brother- "My brother is very sick. Please pray for him."  She was totally puzzled as to why there was no response to this post. When she reread her post she noticed that instead of "Pray", while typing she had written "Please pay for him". 

In respect of friends there is this old saying "A friend in need, is a friend indeed!" However, it is not just in terms of financial assistance. What is sorely missed these days is a sounding board in the form of a friend with whom you can share anything and he/she would not judge you. A 'friend' who has the time to listen to you with empathy and is not in a hurry all the time, is hard to come by. There are many available though to "say cheese" for a happy group photograph  on social media. The need of the hour is to look for and cultivate authentic, genuine friendships. It doesn't matter if you have only a few genuine friends as against thousands who would disappear at the drop of a hat!