How I Met Your Mother and Made Some F.R.I.E.N.D.S

How I met your mother...

....and made some F.R.I.E.N.D.S

We live life at a frenetic pace. We got no excuses for slowing down in life. We drive fast, we think fast, we are on a race to achieve money, status and respect from our peers and the community we live in. Yet, there comes a certain point of time in our day when we feel complete whenever we are amidst a certain bunch of people. We learn to let our hair down, we wish time would slow down, and all the worries on targets to achieve or exams to prepare for take a back seat. We are in a college canteen, or we are in our office pantry chatting over the new movie that got released, or a new gizmo that someone has bought, or the good looking members of both the sexes who walk the halls of our colleges/workplace, or the Facebook status update of the last evening. We laugh out loud like no one is watching, we poke fun at each other at the drop of a hat, we argue over which one of our friends will pay for aloo-chat with their money. 

The Indian television palate consists of washed up, one-time, failed celebrities backbiting over each other, scheming in-laws, uncles and aunts, planning to make life hell for the Miss Goody-Two-Shoes of a bahu who seems like she could never hurt a mouse , and attention seeking school/college dropout teenagers who act crazy on music channels (which ironically show less of music and more of retarded "reality shows") just to be labeled as "so cool" by the MTV generation. In this age of reality television where "being real" just means to act like a snob, wear garish outfits, have a cool "wazzap" accent, and be pally with your contestants to their face and bitch about them behind their back, you end up wondering "Is this how all people are? are we like them too?". But thankfully, normalcy is restored when we are with our friends who do not act like the attention grabbing "Yo Generation" people from MTV and Channel V. We are real people with real problems and real goals to achieve.

Shakespeare may have said "All the world is a stage.....", but had he been living in this era he may have added "... and all our lives are based on sitcoms". 

While sitting around the coffee table with my friends I cannot help but wonder that somewhere deep within, we are the inspiration for the characters that are from the sitcoms. All our lives somewhere down the line are based on the experiences of these characters. There are a few Ted Mosbys and Ross Gellers we all know, there are a few of us who are on the search for "The One" just like Ted Mosby. For all I know, even I could be a Ted Mosby! I could relate with the insecure feeling that Ted Mosby gets when he sees his two best friends get married. A feeling of dying all alone, that feeling of loneliness when you dine out with friends who are now married and you being the only single guy left (a privilege, yet a curse). A feeling that we may have to trust a matrimonial site to hook us up with a man/woman we might end up spending the rest of our lives with, yet we have a hopeless romantic within us who dreams of meeting "The One" through a chance encounter at a bookstore or through a cosmic intervention. We all know friends who are ladies' men like Joey and Barney Stinson. We know some of our best friends who met as friends and are now bonded in matrimony like Chandler & Monica/Marshall & Lily.

We may not have the Hollywood looks, well not all of us. We may not have the clean shaven acne-free face like the guys on TV. We may not have friends who wear suits all the time. We may not have a theme music that goes "I'll be there for you..". We may not know gorgeous looking women who have hourglass figures, and we may not have LEGEN... wait for it... DARY punch lines like the funnymen. We are the everyday Average Joes and the Average Janes. We do not live in the glorious city of New York, we live in the not-so-glorious yet Singara Chennai (or the not-so-glorious yet the endearing city where you live). We do not order beers at a McLaren's Pub nor can we afford to order muffins and a latte at a Central Perk. We order samosa and vada and chai and wait for someone in the gang to pay the bill. 

Yet, for that half hour that we spend with our friends, our canteens turn into a Central Perk and our friends turn into the people we see on sitcoms. The Joeys and the Barneys promise the socially awkward ones like Ted and Ross to hook them up with the pretty girls they know, the Rachels and Robins indulge in girl talk and mockery of men and the discussion on the designer wear that they are planning to buy. The geeky Ted Mosbys and Ross Gellers would try to correct the grammar or enlighten the gang with a fact which would not be of anybody's interest. The sarcastic Chandler would poke fun at the rest of the gang on every opportunity that he gets. For that brief moment we get to be as cool as the guys we see on sitcoms, and the best part is that we do not even realize it! More than playing the guys we see on TV, we realize it is THEY who play US. Like every season that has a memorable episode or a memorable incident that we fanboys fondly reminisce, so does every group of friends that have their own shenanigans thinking of which would bring a smile to the face. 

All the world's a stage, 

And all men and women merely players,

Unbeknownst to ourselves we all play a role that we are so good at, that of a F.R.I.E.N.D.

Image Source:
http://janeheller.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/04/
http://watch-howimetyourmother.net/