Friendship, we value them, we even encourage them but when it comes to a friendship with a girl and a boy, we tend to be skeptical about it. Honestly, I don’t see what’s wrong with being friends with the opposite gender, can’t we all co-exist together? However, our culture does play a major part in choosing friends. Even in those areas or families that practice gender separation.

Do you know that your kids can find friends of the other gender online? Or if not that, they do end up talking to the opposite gender but because you didn’t educate them beforehand so for them it’s something of a new concept. Life is not a Bollywood movie where a man and a woman who spend enough time together will inevitably, magically fall in love with each other.

Before anything, this article is not about promoting any false hope or any vulgarity or even encouragement. It’s just about analyzing the basics of what’s happening around us. People end up doing a lot of things in the boundary of  ”It’s not considered wrong unless your intentions are clean.

Gender relations in Pakistan. Some conservative Muslim societies, it’s said that women are responsible for maintaining the ”family honor”. To ensure that they do not dishonor their families, society limits women to do a lot of things, like on their behavior and activities and permit them only limited contact with the opposite sex. On a serious note, most conservative family’s women spend the major part of their lives at home and go out only for serious and approved reasons and if a woman does go out regardless of anything, she is considered shameless in most parts o the country. You can’t deny all these facts although I would love to be like naah, we are the liberals that we say we are.

That being said, although it was a very small part of whats what, religion and culture is a big pillar, however, we often put our own assumptions on things as well and extend things. Another part is when you are sitting alone with an opposite gender friend and you are asked if it’s ”scene on?’ with curious expressions exchanged. There’s undoubtedly an unmistakable brand of immaturity among Pakistani youngsters of the opposite sex. And this ignorance can only disappear through open interaction. Like let them be friends with the opposite gender and get to know how harsh the world is and you yourself will stand and smile when they give up on the harsh world…lol

Although what I find funny is that even popular television dramas raise controversial issues, and it’s not something big, its something such as women working, being independent, having a say in family politics, wanting a divorce and all being followed with  ‘log Kia kahen ge?’. The programs often suggest that the woman who strays away from traditional norms faces a lot of problems and gets bashed from the family sometimes as well. It is time we let go of our immature beliefs and learn to get along with each other.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below.