Unedited version of interview on female friendship for HT's Brunch supplement (3rd July 2011) 1. What is female friendship all about?
Most women tend to think in terms of sharing and giving when they talk about friendships whereas men think in terms of having fun.
2. What is it built on?
Mutual trust and generosity.
3. What do women provide to each other in a friendship?
Comfort, advice, sometimes practical help.
4. Are they mood boosters for each other? How?
Absolutely. Women often confess to feeling much better after a good old chin-wag with a friend if they’re worrying about something.
5. Is the bonding based on shared experiences or them being better listeners?
Both, depending. Sharing an experience inevitably brings comfort, even though no two situations are exactly alike.
6. With age, how does the friendship grow?
I found it really interesting to observe the growing importance of female friendship when my own group of friends and contemporaries were approaching their forties. Probably because most of us spend our twenties and thirties consolidating careers and relationships and, of course, bringing up children, it’s in our forties that we start getting more time for friends. Besides, the very nature of life is such that, by and large, we have all faced some crisis or the other by that age. It’s quite natural to be turning to friends for support as parents are getting on a bit by then and partners ... well, partners are the problem in some cases!
7. It is claimed women are bitchy. Is it true?
Of course, women are capable of being bitchy and untrustworthy but I find that most never let their friends down. There is a kind of sisterhood at work and it gets better with age!
8. What are the things that girls or women enjoy doing together?
Good old ‘jawing’ must come very high on the list. And going out to movies, cafes, restaurants. I would have said shopping too but this is something I prefer to do on my own as I’m less prone to indecisiveness that way.
9. Vis a vis men, how different are women friends?
My men friends offer a different kind of friendship, usually occupying a more intellectual rather than emotional plane. It’s nice to have a bit of both.
9. Do you have a gang of friends you often meet and why?
While living in London, I once organized a girlie ‘brunch’, inviting about a dozen women I knew, all of whom were doing interesting things and few of whom knew each other. It was really exciting observing the interactions and interest that each was showing in the other. Brunch segued into lunch and tea but the most gratifying bit was when a few projects emerged (a BBC radio programme on the Indian elections, for example) that had come together as an outcome of that meeting. I felt like quite an efficient midwife.
10. How long have you been friends?
Well, this group naturally went on to meet up about once a month in each other’s houses (my husband used to call us ‘the babes that brunch’) but, in keeping with the nature of these things, the energy gradually dissipated away. The friendships that formed have been maintained but on a more one-to-one basis.
11. What is your friendship like with each them?
I’ve never been a huge fan of gangs, even though they can be quite good fun. But, as I’ve always preferred my friendships to be with individuals, I have a whole collection of disparate friendships scattered across the world. Much of that communication has to be by email, of course, so it’s a good thing I’m a writer.
13. What were the conversations about with them when you were in school, then young and working, married and with kids?
That varies enormously depending on which friend I’m talking to but, if you’re looking for patterns, then I suppose schoolgirls tend to be gossipy, young married women use their friends to sound off worries about husbands and in-laws, later on children become the concern. Rites of passage, I suppose. That’s what I mean when I say that genuine friendships actually emerge from all that and stabilize into something deeper and more meaningful when women are in their forties.
14. How are the conversations different with men friends?
More factual, I think. Current affairs and politics and books play a bigger part.
15. Define friendship among women. What is it like?
It’s like those safety nets used by trapeze artistes. You can go off and execute all kinds of adventurous high-flying loops safe in the knowledge that you will be rescued if you fall.
16. Does a friendship between women formed in school and college last a lifetime? Is it based on shared experiences?
I have what I hope are life-long bonds with a few school and college friends but the old shared experiences fade in importance somewhere along the way. Having said that, I find it quite curious that I’m able to stay friends with some friends who are now completely unlike me in so many ways, seemingly simply because we’ve known each other since the year dot.
17. Your portrayal of three friends in Secrets and Sins. What was it based on?
To some extent on my own friends but not the same ones throughout the book. You see, the school bits (especially the conversations) came from my schooldays but the grown up experiences came from the women I came to befriend later in life.
18. What is their friendship like?
I value my friends and would go to great lengths if any of them were in trouble of some sort. Hopefully they would do the same for me.
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