July 30 is celebrated as the International Day of Friendship, officially sanctioned by none other than the United Nations. The UN, naturally, has friendship between nations and countries as its goal, defying the quote attributed to various statesmen that nations do not have ‘friends’, they only have ‘interests’.

We at TNS jumped at the opportunity to see what friends and friendship mean in an ordinary person’s -- modern, urban, fast-paced, competitive -- life: to see if the passionate friendships cultivated in childhood have led to those driven by ‘interests’ and if age alone is the culprit.

With life turning into one big PR exercise, it is not so easy to draw a distinction between friends and friends. Some people blame it on technology but that too is not so easily explained -- whether technology came to fill the void that had already been created or helped create a void amid genuine relationships. The fact remains that the fewer and wholesome friendships of earlier times have given way to virtual interactions with hundreds of them on the social media. Result: humans are lonelier than before.

Having said that, friendship does mean different things to different people; it is something to be valued for all the joy it can possibly bring into people’s lives. The "friendship fatigue" that Sanaa Ahmed warns us of is palpable no doubt. Yet, it is important to keep the cynicism that modern life breeds aside for a moment and think about what friendship holds in store for us.

Friendship it is that ties us in newer voluntary bonds. It carries immense possibilities -- of defying barriers, of shared dreams, of joyous abandon -- and must be celebrated as such.