A man with an offer to listen — with a fee

Boomers and millennials of a certain vintage would recognise the wistful promise in Mary Hopkin’s 1968 hit that imagined time as abundant and companionship as inevitable: “Those were the days, my friend/ We thought they’d never end/ We’d sing and dance forever and a day/ We’d live the life we choose/ We’d fight and never lose/ For we were young and sure to have our way.” Yet, the years have a way of tightening their grip. The rituals that once sustained intimacy — aimless lingering, easy laughter, and the luxury of listening — are steadily replaced by the frenetic pace of modern life, by the relentless pressure to optimise every waking hour. In that narrowing, friendships stretch thin across distance and distraction, leaving behind only a polite, hurried sociability.

On one of Mumbai’s busiest beaches, amid a sea of joggers, hawkers and tourists, a man has stepped into this lack with an offer to listen — but for a fee. In an economy that has rendered attention scarce, he is willing to sit with another’s grief, quibbles or fears, absorbing its weight without interruption. Half a world away in Japan, where atomised living and an ageing population have long made loneliness into a crisis, rent-a-stranger is a thriving enterprise — young men make a living from accompanying strangers to meals or seeing them off at airports, in simulations of companionship. Both illuminate a scarcity of presence.

And yet, even in this commercialisation of connection, there remains a stubborn, luminous counterpoint: Friendships, old and new, IRL. Unpriced, unhurried, gloriously inefficient, but with the rambunctious assurance of someone who will stay, whether for a moment or for a lifetime, as a necessary, sustaining grace. The catch? To reach out before the moment passes.