ChinmayC Blog

We more or less understand the meaning of self-respect which is to keep or show respect to one’s own self. A self-respecting person is one who tends to justify his/her deeds or actions or reactions in the intrinsic belief that s/he cannot possibly do or say wrong things, and if s/he gets insulted by others in the process or is asked to do or comply with ridiculous tasks s/he gets mortally offended. Losing one’s self-respect is often the end of the world for a truly self-respecting individual. This, of course, differs from individual to individual depending on the individual’s perception about it and whether his/her sense of self-respect is genuine or cultivated or vain. To this point we will come at a later context. First, we must try our best to explain the syndrome of self-respect or self-esteem further.   How does self-respect come about? We have to be clear about one thing that we cannot possibly create self-respect on our own; supposing we can the questions are at which stag...

What is friendship? Well, friendship is too vast a concept or a relationship for a clear-cut definition. In fact, it always remains better-off undefined, and even unfathomable. For practical purposes though, friendships are based on mutual likes, mutual respect, mutual love and a whole limitless world of mutuality. Some friends are made instantly, on the first exchange of mutual likes or in line with that saying ‘love at first sight’ being replaced with ‘friendship at first sight’, while some others take time to bloom into a perfect relationship. It is not necessary to have everything in common to be friends: friends can have diametrically opposite interests or even ideologies or passions or professions and yet be the best of friends. Mind you, like marriages friends are not made in heaven, they are technically ‘made in planet earth’ only. Although friendships mostly develop and bloom amid school/college/university classmates, children in a neighborhood, friends’ friends, peers and of...

No doubt, we’ve entered into a highly digital, automated and a rather virtual world where the inhabitants are increasingly interacting with each other without actually knowing each other in the physical sense. Transparency, the avowed goal of digitization, will indeed be achieved in a whole lot of interactions though the electronic slips generated thereof.  However, the desired transparency in terms of human relations is getting more and more shrouded in ambiguity, suspicion and blatant paranoia. Basic definitions of a ‘friend’ are available on various dictionaries online. One says, ‘a friend is a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations’. Another says, ‘a friend is a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard’. The common factors among various definitions are ‘affection’, ‘attachment’, ‘lack of hostility’, ‘esteem or regard’, ‘patron or promoter’ and ‘belonging to a group or nation’. Even...