I remember the days when I eagerly devoured series after series on my laptop and hoarded more movies than I could watch in a good decade. It had reached a point where even the boot screen would take an agonizing fifteen minutes to load – forget the home page. One could take a brisk walk, come back home and, off-key sing four whole songs behind the safety of the shower curtain, wolf down an entire pack of chips (some people do this and deserve not to be judged) and lick clean all their fingers one-by-one (again, one should not be judged for what they do when they think no one is watching them) and then come to find my laptop's home page huff, puff, pant, and wheeze into the last bit of loading.
“Game of Thrones” was all the rage in those days, and so were
“How I Met Your Mother” and “Flash” and “Supernatural” and “Arrow” and “Sherlock”
and a whole lot of other shows that we had to painfully scour a compatible subtitle
file for. Every file was deleted promptly after a single viewing to make room
for the next torrent download that was also destined to vanish into the vast
digital abyss.
Amidst this digital chaos, there remained one folder in my laptop that
stood untouched. No matter how many times the OS threw the Low Disk
Space window in my face, begging me and sometimes even threatening me to “Manage”
my space. (I was a true Engineer and was not cut out to “manage” things. Pffft.)
That sacred folder bore the name 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S,' for it was, in fact my
own collection of every single episode of the sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I wanted my
unwavering devotion to the show to be evident, even in matters as trivial as
the folder name. Even if it meant typing out 6 extra little dots and having the
CAPS lock on and all that.
Many times, I had to make difficult choices between a series
and a movie, as my laptop would let me have only either. While I honed the art of
deliberation and careful consideration in making important entertainment
choices (which subsequently felt like life choices), I continued to let my
cherished F.R.I.E.N.D.S take up all the space it desired. If memory allocation
had been within my control, I would have gladly granted a few extra bytes to
that folder, just for the heck of it.
But was I being an evil stepmother to the rest of the movies
and series? No! I regarded this dear little folder as my ultimate source of
solace and stress relief. It acted as my personal sanctuary, my
sanity-restorer. My own hip flask of Endorphin. I could play just about any
episode of any season at any point in the day (or night) and still find it
relevant and soothing like the consoling shoulder of a best friend.
The best part is that even though every one of those 6
characters could have been very successful in their lives, they fumbled and floundered
their way through life like very real people. At the end of an exhausting day,
we didn’t have to begrudgingly watch the extravagant life of a multi-star Michelin
chef or a millionaire Hollywood actor or an impeccably dressed fashion icon. We
could instead laugh, sigh, cringe, cry and live life in the company of a
struggling actor who smelled fart, a boring professor who was very particular
about his sandwiches or even a singing masseuse who carried the children of her own
brother.
For more than one reason, this show invoked powerful emotions in me and it continues to do so. Because I know that if those 6 could get around to being happy for ten whole years on the screen, I can too, off the screen. If they could get over heartbreaks and failed marriages and childlessness and career struggles and so much more just because they had amazing people with and for them, then so can I. Because even though it hasn’t been my day or my week or my month or even my year and I’ve had a million struggles of my own in my life, I have a million and one reasons to live through them. I have my husband, my son, my brother, my sisters(in-law), my parents, my family, my extended family, and my own F.R.I.E.N.D.S (like the Australian Mahima and Hyderabadi Nireekshana who bully me into mentioning their names in my blogs) who have been and will be “there for me”.
Thank you, Marta Kauffman and David Crane for redefining
sitcom. For redefining happiness. For redefining 'break'. And for defining Friends.
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