the friend at the gate

Some honest arithmetic, on Friendship Day, about the adults: many parents have not made a new friend since their child was born.

Nobody decided this. The evenings filled, the old friends scattered to other cities and time zones, and friend-making — a skill, like any other — went quietly out of practice. Meanwhile, twice a day, you stand at one of India's great unused commons: the school gate. The same adults, an arm's length apart, for years, each waiting for a different child, all studying their phones with the concentration of scholars.

Here is why it belongs on this page and not in a lifestyle column: children learn friend-making by watching whether the adults still do it. The parent who knows the watchman's name, who has one gate-friend to stand with, is issuing a licence — the same one the wonder card spoke of on Friday. Friendliness, visibly practiced by a grown-up, tells the child the skill does not expire.

And notice what the bands on your child's wrist cost them today: nothing. Children give friendship away like prasad. Adults means-test it — too busy, too late, too awkward, what would we even talk about. On this one subject, copy the child.

One name is a reasonable ambition for one week. Learn one name at the gate, and use it the next morning. That is the entire syllabus, and there is no hurry in it.