Every week, three of my closest friends and I put ₹300 each on whether we can walk 10,000 steps every day. The people who make it through the week get the money from those who don’t; if all four of us manage it, everyone gets their ₹300 back. There’s very little money to be made and a disproportionate amount of satisfaction in being one of the people who makes it.
This is new territory for us. My friends and I have spent most of our friendship eating. There was always a café we hadn’t visited, a dish somebody wanted to try or beer to drink while we caught up. We would order a little too much, share everything and continue eating long after our hunger had been satisfied. Sanchita Dey, 22, who is pursuing her postgraduate degree in psychology, recently called it “regulating our emotions through eating”. She is probably right, although I would also argue that ordering one more thing is a very effective way to extend an evening you aren’t ready to end.
Ruchi Sharma, my 27-year-old interior stylist friend, was the first to interfere with this arrangement. She had started taking fitness seriously and our late-night drinking plans kept colliding with her morning gym classes. For a while, she struggled to do both. Eventually, she started leaving earlier. I remember finding this mildly annoying. I also remember getting used to it.
I’ve been thinking about that since I started eating clean earlier this year. I quit sugar, started drinking far less and began trying to lose weight. I have since lost over 20 kilos. I expected some parts to be difficult: cravings, exercise, the very boring fact that deciding to do something once does not exempt you from having to decide it again tomorrow.
There were still cafés and dinners, but I could order differently. There were nights when I didn’t drink and nobody tried to push me. Over time, they began changing things, too. Ruchi, whose gym routine had preceded mine, later reduced her own sugar intake after watching me quit it. Hussain, my 26-year-old architect friend, says ordering now takes twice as long because everybody wants “a protein-rich option for chakna that still tastes great”. The emphasis on still is important. None of us was prepared to spend our twenties chewing things we hated in the name of eating clean.
It made me think about how every friendship eventually develops its own definition of having fun. You rarely sit down and decide it. Certain friends become people you eat with; others become people you call for a walk. Somebody is always willing to stay out late. Somebody orders dessert. Somebody says they should leave and remains seated for another forty minutes. After enough repetition, these details begin to feel strangely attached to the people themselves, which can make changing even one of them feel selfish.
Your body participates in friendship in wonderfully inconvenient ways. It stays awake because the conversation is good. It drinks on a Tuesday because somebody is visiting. It eats the thing everyone wanted to share. Then it wakes up the following morning and attends the gym class (or doesn’t). Health and fitness coach Chitrika Bhansali tells me that an environment like this can make a habit surprisingly expensive in willpower. Around people making similar choices, she says, “You’re simply exposed to fewer situations where you have to constantly exercise willpower.” There is another reason this works, according to Mumbai-based psychotherapist and founder of Raha Psychotherapy, Simran Brijwani. Eating and drinking often satisfy a need that has very little to do with either. She points to these activities as rituals for connecting. That need for connection is also what makes doing this together slightly complicated. A group can make a behaviour feel ordinary very quickly, including behaviours that may not work for everyone in it. Four friends talking about steps and workouts can be motivating; add enough conversation about weight, calories or who has been “good” that week and somebody may begin making choices because they are conscious of being watched. Brijwani says one of the signs to look out for is guilt or shame around falling out of step with everybody else. “When judgement replaces curiosity, even support can start to feel like pressure.”
