The point is, even if we haven’t seen one another’s mugs for a decade, or heard their voices, if I am in some sort of trouble, I can always turn to these guys, and they would help me in whatever way they can, without asking a question.

Without asking a question. True friendship, I really believe, is based on a total refusal to judge the other person. A friend of mine’s only extra-curricular interest lies in paid-for sex, but he is a true friend, and I would never judge him on that. I wouldn’t lecture him, criticise him, avoid him. As he wouldn’t me, for my bad habits.

Even stronger friendships are forged in undergraduate hostels (I keep harping about hostels because most of my friends are from the hostels I stayed in. This is not to imply that you can’t develop deep friendships if you lived with your parents). There, you are even younger, and you are making the transition from boys to men, or girls to women. Your characters are being shaped, and unconsciously you imbibe a lot of traits and values from others around you, just as your quirks or beliefs infect them. A Singapore-based friend of mine, who I hadn’t met for a decade, called me up once after seeing the cover of a magazine that I was working for. “This cover picture is your idea,” he said. It was. He knew me.

Two friends of mine, Susant and Bubun, have been meeting every Sunday at 7 p.m. at Bubun’s home for the last 20 years. If I am in Kolkata on a Sunday evening, no one has to be forewarned, I just ring the bell, and they are there, and there’s Old Monk. No one asks any personal questions, but there is no bar on anyone speaking about deeply personal things. No one judges anyone. An unspoken covenant guides and rules.

... contd.