Virtue-based relationships are formed mostly during childhood, schooldays. Sometimes later, at college days, when we live in a state of blissful ignorance, or rather, fool’s paradise. But once one tastes the coldness of reality and learns to conduct oneself a successful professional, the circumstance demands one to have friendships on the basis of usefulness/pleasure. Be it sharing a cigarette or going for a picnic or deciding to invest in the same company shares together. Though I said earlier that it is capable of developing a virtue out of it in due course, mind you, it is not a virtue in itself. Virtue-based friendship is fantastic for this reason: it lasts till the end of this universe! Though it is disheartening to realise that most of the virtue-based relationships is formed during our young, immature (ironically because we were thinking at that time that we were the most matured of the lot!), developing stage--the mind then was remarkably uninhibited and the ears listened without prejudice and the tongues twisted smoothly to the words that flew out from the bottoms of hearts--it is gladdening to know that value- based friendships are also formed in a professional/political/materialistic milieu. Often less in number, it is formed, surprisingly, in a short span and lasts till eternity! That telepathic, intuitive Richard Bachian understanding works out here: “You know your friend in a moment, than your acquaintances in a life time.”