Kolkata Friends (Fridge Magnet)

Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an “acquaintance” or an “association”, such as a classmate, neighbor, coworker, or colleague. Although there are many forms of friendship, certain features are common to many such bonds, such as choosing to be with one another, enjoying time spent together, and being able to engage in a positive and supportive role to one another. Sometimes friends are distinguished from family, as in the saying “friends and family”, and sometimes from lovers (e.g., “lovers and friends”), although the line is blurred with friends with benefits. Similarly, being in the friend zone describes someone who is restricted from rising from the status of friend to that of lover (see also unrequited love). Friendship has been studied in academic fields, such as communication, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles.

The formal ritual of friendship was common among mostly upper- and middle-class Hindu Bengali women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They gave each other gifts, christened each other with pet names, and became each other’s most trusted confidantes.