By Sunila Dixit:
Two decades ago, a sitcom arrived into everyone’s lives. Little did anyone know that it would take a permanent place in everyone’s hearts then and in generations to come. The sitcom was an instant hit, particularly among the youth. The sitcom was about a group of six friends who live close to one another and consider themselves as one family. They were there for each other, through thick and thin. As everyone would have guessed by now, the sitcom I am talking about is none other than F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
The day Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey came into my life struck a chord. I revelled in their joys and felt their sorrows. Those moments where Ross and Rachel kissed for the first time, Chandler proposed to Monica and exchanged vows at their wedding brought an ear-to-ear smile on my face. The times Ross and Rachel broke up, Monica came to know she could not conceive were so real that my face instantly dropped. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was my first window to how life is in the West and it helped me broaden my vision. It taught me what it would be like to live on your own. There will be times when you have money and it will be all good and there will be times when you can barely scrape out a living. However, if you have your friends by your side everything will be fine. The show acted as a mood lifter on my bad days. To cheer myself up, all I had to do was put on a F.R.I.E.N.D.S. episode and that was more than enough.
I am so glad that I started watching the show after it officially ended. I do not understand how people had the patience to wait for the next season to begin. I have watched each and every episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. for more than ten times and I can say that I have memorised most of the dialogue now. I am sure there will be many others who can claim this! Watching the last episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was heart breaking. Seeing the scene where it closes in on the photo frame on the door, knowing those six friends will not be visiting us with new stories anymore was difficult to sink in. Nevertheless, it is an evergreen show and watching it even for the 100th time makes you laugh hard as much as you did when you watched it for the first time. It will never be too old to watch for the coming generations!
