Band of Brothers - The Spirit of Friendship

What you see on the left is a picture from the flag raising at Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima is a strategically located island in the Pacific Ocean which witnessed one of the bloodiest infantry fights of World War II. The US Army & the USMC fought a bloody battle to wrest Iwo Jima away from the Japanese.

Whenever I look at this picture, it evokes a strong nostalgic feeling in me. It brings back all the good memories of being with people whom you could trust with your life. It brings back the memories of those long lost days and nights wherein we would patiently sit out for the enemy and then go in for the kill. Band of Brothers, thats what we used to call ourselves before HBO made the term a household name through its syndicated series with the same name.

That was then. Now, in the swish civy streets, Band of Brothers feels more like an alien concept. People talk about things like group dynamics, cooperation & esprit de corps. These all sound so very jazzy but I hardly ever see any such thing happening. People are more interested in scoring points over one another, criss crossing each other & trying their level best to pull down others around them.

The war cry & the blood curdling screams are not present here but the competition is so intense that people dont hesitate even once to draw out their swords & attack others with razor sharp accuracy. The trust, the faith & all the friendliness is gone.

I'd been warned about the pit falls of the civy street but I never knew that it is so difficult for people here to live upto the spirit of friendship. It never crossed my mind that over here, people whom you consider close can actually react negatively one day and fall out permanently by the way side.

I've always been confused by the ways of the so called civilized world. People whom you consider good friends & who are close to you, you never expect them to act in an irrational manner. I fail to understand as to how after having put in a lot of time & effort to make the friendship work, it crumbles down and breaks apart because of a freak incident.

If the friendship is so weak that it cant endure even a slight change in weather, then its better that there be no friendship! I know I am making a very strong statement here but I have always hated the cold shoulder attitude. Someone might accuse you of not making enough efforts to sustain the tempo of friendship but then, what can you do when somebody is blind and oblivious to reality. What do you do when your friend refuses to see reason & ends up believing a rank outsider? If an outsider can influence your friend so much that she goes at loggerheads with you & becomes opposed to you, then I guess there is no reason to continue with the friendship anymore.

It takes a lot to build, maintain & sustain any relationship. It must be so strong that even the fiercest of tempests cant knock it down. However, if the very will to survive against all odds is absent & one ends up believing people who wish nothing but the worst for your friendship, one cant help but feel disappointed.

I always keep humming to myself, its not for us to reason why, its just for us to do or die. God knows I tried my best, I did all that I could to save the situation from going bust. But inspite of my 100% efforts, the lifelong friendship that was supposed to last an eternity came to an end.

I'm still the same, nothing much has happened to me. But I miss having the good pal whose company I enjoyed so much all these days. Its easy to forget a broken heart when ones relationship goes through the doldrums but its difficult or rather impossible to come to terms with having lost a good friend. It becomes all the more difficult not to miss her when she is not around & to act as if shes not there even though she is sitting somewhere else in the same room where you're sitting. I dont care much about the curious stares that people give & neither do I give a damn about the people who were instrumental in breaking up our friendship. What I am concerned about is to figure out if I can get back to my friend just like the good old days.

Nothing beats the feeling of walking down a long winding road with a close pal. Nothing can substitute the joy of sharing things with your friend. Nothing can ever come close to the happiness one derives when one knows that a friend is always there to stand by you.

Reality has jaded me so much that I ended up becoming an optimist. I know that nothing is permanent except change & one day I would love to be back with my friend. When that happens, only time will tell. I've left the option wide open to her & for a change, I'm really hoping that she can dispel the cloud of mistrust separating us.

The spirit of friendship has never failed me. Eternity is a long way to go.

She will always be a friend to me.