Respected Teachers and my dear friends,

Good Morning to you all.

Today, I would like to speak a few words about Friends and Friendship. As it is rightly said by Bill Watterson, ‘Things are never quite scary when you’ve got a best friend’. Many of us have felt alone and scared on our first day of school but once we make new friends we settle down and will want to spend more time with them. Basically, what are friends? They are someone who stand by you in your sorrow, birthday, parties, likes, dislikes, etc.

The six best qualities you can see in your best friend are trustworthiness, loyalty, honesty, listenable, empathy and non-judgmental. As we all know 2019 was the gateway to Corona/Covid-19, and we all have been stuck at home helpless. At least we had friends to chat with, but what about the children who started schooling in 2020? They were attending their online classes but still didn’t socially get involved and make friends. Schools are trying their best to engage them in different creative and knowledgeful activities and not let them feel that one loneliness till the classes start physically.

 Honestly, even I enjoy those days when I was studying in a class of 40-45 students and I had a little batch of friends with whom I used to talk, run, play, share our lunches, helping each other in learning something or solving problems, etc. But there was something amidst all these, in the lockdown, I got a lot of time to spend with my family, usually we were all so busy that we hardly had time to tell each other ‘hi, how was you day? All ok?’ but in the lockdown things were totally different! Yes, we all as a family did play in the lockdown together but that feeling a friend of my age would give was altogether else…

Though I am connected with my friends through internet, and we are talking, still that feeling of being together wasn’t up to the mark. I don’t want internet to connect me to my friends, instead I want our friendship to connect ‘us’.

Finally, I would like to conclude by telling this to all my friends, ‘‘Because of you, I laugh little harder, cry a little less and smile a lot lot more!’’