Friendship to all, how?

Faruque Ahmed :
Friendship is a divine gift. None of the human soul can think of living in the human society without friends. It is rather good time for developing friendship at the beginning of life i.e in the childhood of every individual. Each and every individual child find friends from his/her neighbourhood and continue the same till they live in the surrounding and even afterwards.
Life has different phases, such as childhood, youth, middle age, old age etc. In different phases friendship has different dimensions and meaning. Childhood is good breeding time to make friendship. In our conservative society, friendship with opposite sex is rather difficult and the guardians do not encourage these sorts of relationship to flourish. In that case friendship develops with the same sex giving easy access to mixing with each other. Society permit these relationship, rather encourages it to run as such.
At this point of discussion let me refer to the friendship I developed in my childhood and youthful days in the schools and colleges. Those were emotional and sentimental period of my boyhood. I still remember few of my school and college mates with whom I had and still have warm intimacy and closeness.
While I was a freshman in the college, I developed friendship with Abdul Motalib, a classmate of mine that lasted for the day he breathed his last few years back. His passing away was a great loss for me and for my family as well as he had deep affection for my children and other members of my family. He was widely respected successful teacher, scholar, philosopher, poet and saintly personality.
With his sad demise I always feel like losing a friend is losing a continent. Another good friend of that time is Abdus Satter, a senior member of BCS police cadre with whom I still maintain very warm and cordial relationship at our family level as well. Of all the officers of mine in the govt. service, I believe he had the highest order of honesty and integrity. In this context I also fondly recall my friend Fazlul Haque, Associate Professor (ophthalmologist). He is intellectually and literally so gifted that, apart from his professional attainment, he can go on discussing the sayings from the ‘Prophet’ by Khahlil Jibran. He can unhesitatingly converse on the poems of leading poets like Jibanandha Das, Bishno Dey, Shamsur Rahman, Al-Mahmud, Shaheed Quadri, Nirmolendo Goon etc. It is a rare feat of a professional doctor who can conveniently win the hearts of his patients thru’ his love and affection.
I had and still have friendship with the people of various professions, different ideologies and of course, of different ages. I have few old friends in my native village having cultivation and small trading as their profession. I maintain this friendship with honour and respect. It is a bit interesting that most of my friends are younger than myself and can interact in a very nice and decent way and seemingly they are sincere and honest in keeping friendship for longer period.
It is, in general, easy to make friendship with persons in your day today life but difficult to preserve the essence of friendship for longer period. Despite your best efforts and intention, it is sometime impossible to run with the relation as they decline to continue and reciprocate with you the same manner you like to go on. In this connection I can cite an example here. Few years after my marriage, I developed friendship with two young persons of my in-laws neighbourhood. They become very good friends of mine. At that time both of them were unemployed and was looking for job. Occasionally, when I would visit the in-laws house, they would remain with me all the time and sometime even used to take food with me with their pleasure. At a time, I could gather that one got job in a govt. bank and the other migrated to the USA as I was told by my relatives. Surprisingly, from then they are not keeping any contact with me. I never mind they do not maintain relationship with me, but wonder to see that having good and warm relations for years, they have managed to forget me apparently without any reasons whatsoever.
I have some young friends these days who are meritorious, talented, warm and cordial as well. I am not aware how long I can continue friendship with these enthusiastic young friends though apparently they seem honest and sincere in their relationship.
It is generally accepted norms for the individual and for the democratic countries that friendship to all, malice to none. But how? Friendship is not one-way traffic; it demands understanding and mutual respect in both ways. With your best efforts and intention you cannot continue unless you receive equal response from other side as well.
One thing I believe and try to uphold that, in order to keep friendship firmly, one should try his/her best to continue with it despite small differences on various issues. Though friendship is necessarily an outcome of emotion, an individual should try to be rational, logical and transparent in keeping the relation for long time. One should always be ready to sacrifice in order to safeguard the interest of his/her friend and in that case friendship will be everlasting. As family and personal gain does not clash with friends, it is most likely that both the individual can be closer as worldly affairs do not affect the relationship.
In fine, I like to conclude that friendship to all does not work as it is said. Honest efforts may be made to cement friendship with the maximum persons as possible so that cordial and harmonious atmosphere prevails at all level for healthy and congenial living in our society.