Stop rolling your eyes, okay. Kisi din upar hi reh jayengi. There’s no mistake in the headline. There are hundreds of columns that’ll tell you how to win them, but I’m indeed giving tips on losing friends. Because some of us need those, too. The ones who hear parents or a spouse crib all the time about how they don’t think beyond friends who exist by the dozens in their lives. Of course, those who, in this Facebook age, are looking for tips on how to make friends could also benefit if they draw the reverse insight. Ab thoda dimaag khud bhi laga lo.

So, here’s what you do to see friends drop out of your life:

1 Get hitched: 

Yeah, you heard me right. Marriage is a certified friendship killer that works in all countries, all cultures, with equal effectiveness. You’re the life of your friends’ circle one day. All your free time goes chatting with them, your weekends have no end when it comes to partying or just chilling out. And then suddenly you get engaged or get into a relationship. Chilling turns to chills. Your other half, who seems to be trained by the CIA, starts to track your movements and interrogate you on every minute spent with the friends. Special devices like the nose are deployed to check the levels of alcohol consumption after every innocent beer- outing. The friends, of course, notice the change, realise that the legal rights to your time have been sold elsewhere and start to withdraw. To counter the grief, you start making statements like ‘my wife/husband is my best friend’, which, of course, remain as useless as Rakhi Sawant’s library card in school. In a nutshell, one masterstroke of getting engaged or married is enough to shoo friends — classmates or glassmates — away forever.

2 Become a whiner:

 Wanna lose friends? Start complaining about everything – the food at the restaurant, the pollution in your city, the state of corruption, the ugly carpet at the airport (I do!), and your miserable, good-for-nothing life, in general. Normal people can’t stand cry-babies who are always cribbing about something. Unless your friends are abnormal, which is also quite possible, considering they hang around with someone like you who’s actually spending time reading a column on how to lose them. Anyway, so here’s an idiotic rhyme – ‘whine while you dine, whine even when you’re fine, and very soon your friends will be mine’, because they’ll start making excuses to not be around you. And, by the way, if they try to argue with you and start to put their viewpoint, stop them right away and tell them you are not open to even thinking that you could be wrong. Because you are always right, and you know it. Arrogance is like cement on the wall that this attitude erects between friends. Ekdum in the style of Amitabh Bachchan from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham…say, ‘Maine keh diya, toh keh diya’. That’s it. He/she would not want to look at your pig-headed self again. Mission accomplished.

3 Bring in the Father: 

Of the nation, I mean. In other words, bring currency or money into your friendship and see it fizzle out faster than an open cola bottle loses the bubbles. This is my firm belief in life, and I know a lot of you would disagree. But somehow I feel bringing money into friendship – whether by borrowing/lending or getting into a financial partnership, slowly kills it. We start by declaring that friendship is way more important than money, when most of the time, it’s money or the lack of it, that dictates our thoughts and behaviour. Sad isn’t it? But true. If you wish to spoil a good friendship for whatever reason, involve money matters into it. The deed will be done.

4 Gossip:

 Not with them, but about them. Now gossiping with friends, I know, is a great recreational activity. But a sure way to lose friends is to talk about them behind their back. Rest assured they’ll quickly move out of your life. Some of them would do so after beating you into a pulp but then any sacrifice is good for fulfilling your mission. And guess what, this ouster would, in all likelihood, be permanent because no one wants to get back with a ‘friend’ who breaks their trust and mocks them in their absence. They only want to get back at them. Pakka kaam ho jayega.

5 Hit on their partner:

 The most effective and permanent cure, if friendship seems like an ailment to you, is to flirt with the friend’s girlfriend. I would have said wife but then who wants to woo someone else’s wife. Apni toh sambhaali jaati nahi. Anyway, jokes apart, hitting on the partner (and this includes boyfriends and husbands too) of a friend is the ultimate way to kill and bury friendship. Forever. The seed of suspicion and jealousy is the toughest to weed out of a human mind… and this could effectively get you rid of unwanted friends. And your conscience. Idiot. Sonal Kalra has personally tried and tested all these tips. She is left with no friends in life.

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