The previous chapter celebrated friendship as the highest human bond — waxing like the moon, deep as the heart's own laughter. Now Valluvar does something ruthless: he tells you to distrust it. Not friendship itself, but the impulse that rushes toward it. This chapter is a manual for suspicion placed immediately after a hymn to love, and the sequence is deliberate. Because the person who makes friends without scrutiny does not merely risk disappointment — they build a prison they cannot leave. The opening kural delivers the trap: once you have befriended someone, there is no exit. From that irreversible premise, Valluvar constructs a forensic checklist — character, lineage, defects, associations — and then pivots sharply. The chapter's second half is not about choosing the right friends. It is about cutting the wrong ones loose, even at a cost, even with a knife. By the final couplet, the logic is crystalline and cold: buy good friendship at any price; sell bad friendship at any loss.