Friendship Romance and Fiction

                I was watching the tv series ‘friends’ and a thought pop up in my mind.  We have lots of movies based on romance and love but a very few on friendship. Why is it so? I consider friendship to be more universal than romance but still when it comes to fiction, it is completely dominated by the romantic stories. The influence of romance in fiction is so high that it is considered to be a genre. You will hear people saying I am going to watch a romantic movie but how many times have you heard someone saying I am going to watch a friendship movie. It is very rare.

                ‘Friends‘ can  be considered as a good work on friendship. More than the comedy part the emotions and bonds are brilliantly depicted. But I am unable to remember many movies solely based on friendship. When I googled the friendship movies I got something like lord of rings triology and all. Yes there is an element of friendship and all in those movies but you cannot consider it primarily based on friendship. 

                So why does this fiction people hate friendship and gives so much importance to romance? Almost everyone will have friends but there are people who do not have a lover. Also friendship has no age limits even a three year old can have friends. But this romance thing happens only after an age and may be after an age the strength of romantic feelings may decay. I cannot make a final judgment on the last part as I am in my twenties and I do not know what happens at a later stage but as of now I believe so. The limit of number is also there. I mean it is difficult for one to share romance with many at same time. May be there are people who can romance more than one at same time. But as the number goes on increasing I think it is difficult to handle. Friendship does not have that kind of a limit. You can have from 1 to say a thousand or many more friends.

Now you have got an emotion which does not have age limits and almost 100  percent of people share and on other hand you have a slightly more limited emotion which many are unable to share and when you look at your movies and novels they are all completely filled by second one. That’s unbelievable. What can be underlying reason?

                When I shared my thoughts with one of my friends (note: here again when I had a doubt I shared it with my friend and not lover because I do not have a romantic counter part) he shared an interesting view point. Everyone knows about friendship and we all will have friendship with some others during one time or another. But when it comes to romance it is rare. Even though many say they have a lover we can see lots of unhappy couples around us. Also even while romancing many are looking for better relationship. So there is a lack of clarity in romance. What is it? Many don’t know. So that gives room for fictionalization or dramatization. That is a good way of looking at this. Our writers are finding it easy to fictionalize it and they are giving it to us saying this is what is called true romance.  It is more like a fantasy stuff possibilities are unlimited. Only writer’s imagination is limit.

                Now do not consider me as an ‘anti love’ or ‘I hate you’ kind of person. I just want to find out why romance dominates in fiction. If there are better arguments than above they are all welcome.

                

Kerala:- It is good time to be entrepreneur

                Today when I started reading news paper, first news which struck me was Finance minister KM Mani’s announcement about the Kerala state self entrepreneur development mission. This is a great programme which aims at creating 50000 trained entrepreneurs in the state within next 5 years. Usually when I pick up news paper I will get irritated due to the amount of negative news . So this was a welcome relief for me.

For a state with plenty of untapped potentials this is really a great news. Atlast our government realized the importance of entrepreneurship . News further says that the training will be carried out with the support of Entrepreneurship development Institute [EDI] and government will give further financial support to setup the unit, up to 10 lakh for qualified individuals and up to 20 lakh for  group of five. EDI Ahemedabad is one of the leading institutes in India teaching entrepreneurship. They have plenty of experience in the field of training. So it seems like government is well prepared and have got good professional backing. Usually problem with the most of our projects is that it lacks proper planning.

Expected employment through the scheme is one lakh direct and five lakh indirect jobs. So that will be a big boost to economy and also we will not have to leave the state looking for job. If you look around Kerala you can seen in most houses there is only aged couples living alone as their children have gone out of the state. There are many social problems associated along this. So it is right time to create a project to boost entrepreneurship in kerala.

In kerala there is lots of talk about large projects. But for a high density state like kerala it will be better to have a large number of small projects which have the potential to grow into large ones eventually. This natural evolution of smaller ones will help to avoid problems associated with setting huge projects. 

The training for the first batch of budding entrepreneurs will start by February 6 and it will go on until target is achieved. I hope the projects will not be limited to IT sector we are already having too many of them. We need to concentrate on other areas like food, beverages, construction etc. we  cannot live only with information we need improvements and innovations in other fields also.

If you read the article written by minister himself , you will feel his expectation and enthusiasm. He is talks about every nook and corner of Kerala throbbing with entrepreneurship, youngsters with energy creating jobs for themselves . So we get a feeling that we are reading about something special, that could change the face of state.  If media and banks support the initiative then the project will be a sure shot success. Not that every units created will be successful. Some may take off others may not. Even if success is one in ten it will be a great achievement. We can all wait and watch whether experienced minister KM Mani will be able to achieve the target within time and without any black marks.