Friendship is perhaps one of the most underrated relationships. We hail family bonds, and romantic relationships take a fair share of our attention. But friendships are different. It’s really not easy to define, and yet friends have a huge impact on our lives. Let’s Be Best Friends Forever- Beautiful Stories of Friendship (Talking Cub) is a collection of short stories on friendship, with an insightful and heartwarming introduction by Jerry Pinto.
The book is meant for middle grade readers, aged 9 and above. The diversity of the stories is reflected in the diversity of writers. Glance at the index and you’ll see the most unusual groupings. We have short stories from Nobel Prize winners like Rabindranath Tagore, tales from modern writers such as Shabnam Minwalla and Jerry Pinto, classic authors such as Louisa May Alcott and Oscar Wilde, stalwarts such as Munshi Premchand and even timeless authors such as Ruskin Bond. With this rich a mix, one is sure of a literary treat!
Friendship does not only mean friendship with other humans. In Harold, Our Hornbill, Ruskin Bond lovingly depicts the friendship of a bird and a human as does Mahadevi Verma in Gillu the Squirrel. Some of the short stories are extracts from novels, though they stand strong as stories in themselves. The tender depiction of the friendship between Mowgli and Bagheera from The Jungle Book is a beautiful example of how friendship crosses all barriers.
There were some other tales that stood out for me. For instance, Oscar Wilde’s tongue-in-cheek take on manipulations in friendships quite resonated! In My Greatest Olympic Prize, Jesse Owens shows the readers what true friendship actually is! In Friends Forever, Bulbul Sharma shows how friendships can even stay put during a brief period of shared trauma. The story is about a little girl whose father works under an English Sahib. But when riots run smock on the town, for a brief time the social barriers dissolve and humanity takes centre stage. Another tale tells us of a lesser known story about Rani Of Jhansi- Rani Laxmibai. While she is lauded, and rightly so for her immense bravery there was another woman, Jhalkari bai, who became her dear friend and a soldier, who was no less brave.
These enthralling short stories on the theme of friendship are a mix of classical works, novel extracts and modern writing. Above all these tales of friendship will delight you, make you laugh, wonder and tug at the strings of your heart. Let’s Be Best Friends Forever- Beautiful Stories of Friendship is a worthy addition to your book collection!
