why can not two people from the opposite sex be friends

I could never have imagined a movie with a female friend of mine to be so simple. It was exactly two friends hanging out together like I have done millions of times now. This raised a very pertinent question in my mind, why cant two people of the opposite sex hang out like normal friends. For a few minutes I was conscious of the glaring glances of the people who presume something irrelevant. But then I realized they had nothing better to do.

When a guy walks up to a girl to talk it doesn’t mean that he is hitting on her. OK may be in most cases it is like that but you can not generalize and pass a judgment on him. People say great relationships are based on friendship. But we do forget that friends were also strangers at some point of time. Unless we intermingle more freely we will never be able to shatter such barriers that the society has built around us, which actually chokes us. Imagine a guy who has never talked to a girl in his life after marriage. He has no clue about how members of the opposite sex think, talk and react. And you throw him to an alien world and wish for a happy married life. Do you seriously think it will work? It may have worked when women were subdued and had no voice but in today’s age of women liberisation this isn’t the case. They have a voice and they are heard. People often complain that certain people do not know how to treat women but excuse me did they ever get a chance to get to know to how to treat them. For them all strangers are alike so a behavior shown towards a male and a female are exactly the same. But for us they are perfectly normal for males but extremely derogatory for females.

We have to rethink the why we handle our society. Unless we create an environment in which the two sexes can freely interact and be friends I am afraid the future seems darker. Such an atmosphere is prevalent to certain degree in the metros but in the suburbs let alone the rural India situation is still bleak. But even n metros we can not say that it is a fully tolerant society. We can not tell our parents about a new friend that we have made for some obvious reasons. To hide one truth we create a mountain of lies and finally the parent loses faith on their children. But we never hide a male friend from our parents. Why can not we be just ourselves like we are with our other friends? If somebody wishes to make a difference he is termed a playboy. Something for us to ponder……………