As I sip my tea, I find myself circling back to some questions a friend recently nudged me to think about. They came from an article I wrote a few months ago on friendship. Who is a friend? Is your lover your true friend? Can a lover also be a friend, or does friendship belong somewhere outside of romance? And just as importantly—can someone who is not a lover turn out to be the truest kind of friend? 

My previous article, which I never posted here, was about the idea of whether love is friendship. A fellow philosophizing – quantum loving – companion of mine read it and disagreed. He said it isn’t the same; that friendship; especially with a non-lover, goes beyond romance. For him, love is the real currency that makes everything burn and thrive. And because of that, he believes love and friendship cannot be confined to romance alone. Yet, even as I listened to him, I found myself not fully agreeing.

The muse for the earlier article was the word 'Mitra'. In India, Mitra describes both the Sun and a friend. That alone made me pause—why would the same word be used for two such different entities? One describes a relationship, the other the giver of light, the sustainer of life itself. I tried tracing its roots, but to my surprise, I couldn’t find a clear answer. Etymologically, Mitra doesn’t seem to have a definite origin. Some say words without roots in Sanskrit were often borrowed, and my reading led me to pre-Islamic Iran, where there was a deity of friendship and light also called Mitra—or something very close to it. Who borrowed from whom, whether they did at all, is a debate for another time. But for me, the real insight was in the correlation itself. The same word for friendship and for the Sun. It brought me to one conclusion: a true friend should be like the Sun. My greatest nourisher, the light in my life. That alone is friendship.

And so, with this thought, I turned to my own life. I began to look closely at the people around me, asking myself who among all of my so-called friends truly shines as Mitra in my world. 

In his book Kama: The Riddle of Desire, Gurcharan Das, in the chapter ‘The Enigma of Marriage’, shares a dialogue between the protagonist and his wife. Through it, we see the protagonist reflecting on the very idea of friendship. He questions how people so casually call one another “friends,” when in truth, the word carries such depth. I wish I had the book with me right now, I would have quoted his words on how he arranges the people in his life to understand where they truly belong. (Take this as an incentive to read the book and find the passage yourself, perhaps?) 

The writer then goes on to show us that Amar uses a model borrowed from the Stoics to arrange the people in his life. The Stoics did not originally design their model of concentric circles to sort out relationships. Their purpose was something else entirely. Yet, in Das’s book, Amar adapts that image for his own life. He begins to describe the model to us by labelling individuals into circles that grow smaller and more intimate as they move toward the center. In the outermost ring are the casual presences of everyday life—colleagues, classmates, acquaintances. The next circles hold those who are closer, kindred spirits who share a deeper connection. And finally, at the heart of it all, lies the innermost circle, reserved for the rarest presence: the true friend. 

This true friend, the one who resides in the innermost circle, is described as someone with whom you can be completely yourself—your full, wonderful, vulnerable self—without the fear of judgment. This, Das suggests through Amar, is what friendship truly means. Interestingly, this kind of acceptance is also what we often seek in love. And for such a description to appear in a chapter that deals with marriage is what makes it even more striking.

My fellow thinker-mate, who I mentioned earlier, offers a different image altogether. For him, it is never about concentric circles. Instead, he imagines it as a spiral. A person slowly spirals inward over time, moving closer and closer until they become that true friend, the one before whom you can be your most wonderful self. He goes on to suggest that this person need not be a romantic lover at all. It could very well be a non-romantic companion, someone with whom you can be your most vulnerable self, a friend. That, for him, is why the spiral makes more sense than the circles. He seems to understand this love in a more Platonic sense—an all-encompassing love that flows toward everything and everyone. Anyone in his life; whether a lover or not; can spiral down to become that friend, like me (I mean, I am his friend, which is great for him). 

But this raises an important question: can he truly be his most vulnerable self in front of me—without the slightest fear of judgment? I highly doubt it. Moreover, the problem with the spiral is that it is open-ended. Anyone can keep spiraling, which means anyone can have access to him (and perhaps that also explains why people so easily walk all over him).

The concentric circle model, on the other hand, makes everything clear. It tells you exactly who is where—who is merely a companion, who is close, who is closer, who is the  closest, and who has slipped outside the outermost ring. It shows you who is welcome in your home, who you bake with in your kitchen, who you share your bed with, all the limits clearly arrayed.

My kindred spirit; the one I share a room with, embodies this model almost unknowingly but in a different flavour as compared to mine. With full awareness of the performative nature of people, she plays along with their roles, becoming a slightly different, truer version of herself with those she feels closer to. Yet none of them, of course, reach her core. Not even near it. For the one who will be welcomed into the bedroom has not yet arrived.

In my life, both these individuals reside in the concentric circles which are closer to my core. One is someone with whom I enjoy lunches filled with tummy-ache laughters, while the other is someone with whose mind I seemed to have shared a womb. My close ones who are far away from my core, although I am my almost honest self with them. I am also my almost  honest self with my mother, who again I (and neither anyone else) could be my true self. Most parts of me are perhaps suppressed by my parents, with whom I cannot shed the layers, they aren't supposed to be my friends.  

But; if there is someone who makes it to the bedroom of my psyche, someone with whom I can shamelessly be my most vulnerable self, someone with whom I can be my naked self without the fear of judgement, someone who touches me only to love and nourish me, someone to whom my core opens up to — my M. The one who taught me that love is fundamentally friendship, even if we were to be on a planet with multiple Suns, you would be my lone Mitra, my friend. 

Somewhere toward the end of the chapter, Avanti exclaims whilst she is on the bed with her husband — if I remember it right — “If only men and women were friends in marriage.” 

Love is the fundamental fuel of this universe, be it in concentric circles or spirals. Infinite possibilities to experience and interpret it. This is mine, what's yours?