Seven Shades of Grey (5 page)

Delta2000
: see that is what I am so comfortable with

VikSin
: what?

Delta2000
: I can see that u are clear in yr mind about what u want from the Net n that friendship should remain just that

VikSin
: exactly

Delta2000
: I was telling my hubby the same thing when I spoke about u.

VikSin
: what did he say?

Delta2000
: he just said that I should be careful n not get carried away

VikSin
: I understand that very well reshma, I will never hurt u

Delta2000
: I believe that

VikSin
: I am really glad u do

Delta2000
: I do

VikSin
: now let me get u out of this depressed mood … lol

Delta2000
: ok … good luck

VikSin
: let me see … am calling my private jet pilot right now

Delta2000
: private jet? … lol

VikSin
: yup, n will tell him that he has to take me to u … lol

Delta2000
: sounds good

VikSin
: calling him on the other phone right now … lol

Delta2000
: so is he ready? … lol

VikSin
: can’t reach him, will call him later … lol but tell me what would u do if I was actually there?

Delta2000
: hmm … probably invite u to sit down n serve u hot pakoras and coffee

VikSin
: I love pakoras but would rather have hot chocolate … lol

Delta2000
: hot chocolate is good too … lol

VikSin
: yes n then what?

Delta2000
: vik don’t start this with me … because I am so depressed I could cry on your shoulder

VikSin
: no way, I am not going to let u cry … I would sit n look into your eyes all day long, without saying a word.

Delta2000
: I am crying right now

VikSin
: please stop … I will wipe yr tears

Delta2000
: I can’t stop crying … .

VikSin
: what happened reshma?

Delta2000
: I sometimes get depressed for no reason

VikSin
: is it something to do with yr monthly cycles?

Delta2000
: ha ha NO … u know a lot about women … lol

VikSin
: I have got u laughing for a change … lol

Delta2000
: yes but still wondering about u … lol

VikSin
: wondering what?

Delta2000
: just that you could so easily talk about a woman’s problems … lol

VikSin
: hey I told u … I have been with a lot of women … lol so I guess I can make a good guess

Delta2000
: a lot of women? … hmm so am I going to be just one of them too?

VikSin
: now wait just one moment. What I meant was that when I was younger I had a lot of girlfriends and in the States one even lived with me … I don’t mean that I want to make u or anyone else a statistic in my life.

Delta2000
: I am JUST KIDDING … don’t get upset … lol

VikSin
: just as long as u understand me … I have never treated any woman as a plaything nor will I ever do it … is that understood?

Delta2000
: yes sir, it is understood

VikSin
: n stop ‘siring’ me … lol

The chat ended but the thoughts remain with me to this day. I cannot comprehend why it felt so nice to be trusted, especially by a stranger. And yet it did. To me making friends on the Internet was akin to an explorer let loose in untamed, uncharted, unknown Africa. I would have loved to ask one of them why they were there, braving all. They probably would have told me that it was the sheer excitement of adventure, of discovering new species of life form, of unearthing hidden treasure even if it meant risking their life. There was fame, there was fortune and there was glory awaiting them when they returned with stories of their finds, with proof of their adventures. To me there was nothing even remotely similar waiting out there. And yet I felt touched, felt wanted and felt warm all over whenever I got to the heart of a stranger who merely read words hammered from my keyboard.

The only perceptible difference it made to my life was that my wife and I had something new to discuss every time I told her about a chat session or a new friend that I made in cyberspace. The dark shadow of unhappiness that threatened to engulf my marriage was in some strange way receding. It brought back the warmth of intimacy that my marriage possessed in its early days, the one that had disappeared in visiting clinics, pathology labs and programmed sex.

And so I went on like the explorers, into unknown territory, uncharted areas and misunderstood confines of stranger’s minds. Or was it all that I was doing?

3. The Great North
/
South Divide!

A Madrasi normally refers to a resident of Madras, a major port city of South India. A Punjabi refers to a resident of the State of Punjab in North India. But ask a Madrasi and he would tell you that everyone north of the Vindhya Mountains, thousands of kilometers south of the border of Punjab, was a Punjabi. Similarly, ask any North Indian and to him anyone residing in one of the four southern states
is a Madrasi. It had become a generic brand, all northern Indians classified as Punjabis and all southern Indians deemed (or doomed) to be Madrasis. It was comfortable, like well-worn underwear. And thus began the great divide.

The division existed everywhere. The food was different; the language spoken was too. The scripts had nothing in common, physical appearances as contrasting as day and night. Punjabis were mostly meat eating, beer-guzzling, barrel-chested, boisterous, tall and fair humans. Madrasis were mostly vegetarian, coffee guzzling, thin, soft spoken, short and dark humans. They believed they were different for they chose to ignore their similarities.

They shared similar religious beliefs, had similar ceremonies and even shared similar festivals. Man was a strange animal, possessing an even stranger mind, one that chose to believe that which made it comfortable; like comfortable well-worn underwear.

For all their diversities and similarities, they were Indians, true blooded and patriotic. They fought hunger, they fought wars, and they stood by each other whenever calamity struck. Shoulder to shoulder. The differences were forgotten the similarities were too. All that remained were Indians, people of one nation who believed in each other… well most of the time they did.

For a Punjabi girl to marry a Madrasi boy was blasphemy. The vice versa was true too. It was a call to arms of sorts. The Punjabis with tandoori chicken in hand, the Madrasis a cup of hot coffee in theirs, would be locked in contest to secure their right not to marry the other. Neither side heard the groom-to-be for he was always branded the seducer, no matter which community he was born in. Normally the bride was too busy playing referee, unclenching a pair of boxers, to be heard. Tempers would fray, abuses would shower, and all in all a sight only an audience of non-Punjabis and non-Madrasis would applaud from the bleachers. I should know, I was born a Punjabi. And one day I met another on the Internet.

*

In real life I have just one sister. She is a proud mother of one even though she married six years after I did. She was on her way to see her soon to arrive nephew or niece. Siblings share a strange love between them. They fight with passion and love each other with some more passion. As I shy away from taking the challenge thrown by the barbers’ refuse, my mind wanders to another one who calls me brother. She was not born of the same mother, nor did we share the same father. I had yet to see her in the flesh and yet she was my sister. I remember the first time I met her on the net, it was just one of those days when neither Marilyn nor Reshma was online. The net junkie that I had almost become, I found myself in an Indian chat room, trying to satisfy my craving.

*

The new room I entered that day had fewer people but they all seemed to be chatting in the main chat room. The conversation was surprisingly lively and everyone seemed to be in a good mood there. I joined them. In a lively chat-room, there is usually a lot of activity because there are quite a few people who seem to respond to you. That day there were three responding to my messages and it was getting difficult to keep pace with all of them. One of them got my attention. The person behind the ID told me that she was a single woman, 26-years-old, and living in New Delhi. We moved from the main chat room to Private Messages.

The city she mentioned got me curious. I had not forgotten the encounter with beautiful_eyes. Could this be another of the same species? I could not have been more wrong.

I came to know that the ID called
Axes26
that went into private chat with me had a name in real life, Aviva. Our first chat restricted itself to general information about each other and our respective professional lives. Marilyn’s new rules had been broken once; I did not want to test them again. Aviva told me she was a medical research student, part of a team at one of India’s premiere medical facilities in Delhi. All through our first chat and then the second and third I looked for signs to tell me that she was similar in character to beautiful_eyes and I could not find any. A few times together on the net and my mind slowly put beautiful_eyes and all her idiosyncrasies on the back burner. And then Aviva told me something that I had only heard about in stories.

She told me that she had met a software programmer on the net some months back. He was single and so was she. He was lonely and so was she. He believed he could find his mate on the Internet and surprisingly so did she. The first time I heard this, I chuckled silently. I remember a grin was plastered to my face and disbelief was the only emotion consorting with me.

My other ‘girlfriend’ Confusion just did not have it in her to flirt with me.

Finding a mate on the net?
Sounded ridiculous.

And yet here was a woman telling me that she actually found someone who was as ridiculous a thinker as she was. I prodded, probed, and to my surprise found out that she was dead serious about this. The guy regularly logged on to chat with her and the relationship had reached a decisive point. It was so far-gone that the two had decided to get married even though they had
not
seen each other in the flesh.

Talk about love being blind, here it had taken two brains for a long walk around the garden path.

I mentioned this to my alternative brain, Dolly. Strangely though she was not amused or cynical about it. She argued that if people could get married using marriage bureaus or placing ads in matrimonial columns of newspapers then they surely could get married just by chatting on the net. Try as I may, I could not change this opinion. A day would come when I would be proved wrong.

But that was still far away. I certainly did not believe it would ever arrive. In chat, I probed Aviva further, asking her what the problem was. She told me that the biggest stumbling block was the fact that she was a Punjabi and he was a Madrasi.

The Great North
/
South divide had surfaced on the Internet!

To me it was downright ridiculous. I restrained my thoughts and never let them stray into the words I pounded on the keyboard to Aviva. She trusted me and there was nothing that I would ever do to betray that trust. I guess it was a case of ‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’.

Who was I to be the judge here?

The only reason I even got into the chat room was to kill time, my other friends having deserted me that day.

Over the next few times we logged into chat, Aviva gave me more details. She told me all about the pressures of being the first
-
born. I certainly could empathize with that because
I was one too. As soon as she
had reached
her
twenty-first birthday her grandmother, grandfather and all the other ‘grandees’ that could gather around, did, to coerce Aviva to get married.

This breed of Indian ‘grandees’ is another unique specie, well into their sixties or seventies and sometimes eighties, free time is all they possess. And what better way to spend this free time than to indulge in matchmaking.

A wedding in India is a very big occasion, as it is in most parts of the world. The pomp, the gaiety, the celebrations are like nectar from the gods for the ‘grandees’
- an elixir that rejuvenates their mundane lives. Well, sometimes it is.

When a match has been ‘arranged’ with the elders of the house going into a huddle, deciding mundane issues of caste, creed and lineage of the two
prospective life partners
then
the pomp, the gaiety and the celebrations always achieve fever pitch.

However, should either introduce the concepts of marrying for love or of choosing a spouse from a different community, religion, or caste, then the pomp is gone, the gaiety discarded and celebrations forgotten.
The ‘grandees’ would
still huddle, this time to determine ways to sabotage the marriage or to brainwash the prospective partners to choose from an acceptable lineage -
in short, to be royal pains in the ass. And that is exactly what transpired at the respective North /
South houses.

Aviva gave me graphic details of how eyebrows were raised when she first mentioned that she was in love with Vinod, how foreheads frowned when she revealed that she had met him on the Internet and how all hell broke loose when she disclosed that he was a South Indian. The scene at Vinod’s house had not been any different.

Each family asserted their right to purity of lineage without being ‘polluted’ by the other. Fathers were furious, mothers dejected, ‘grandees’ disbelieving that they actually had to ‘see this in their old age.’ At first each family tried to dissuade their ward from the marriage. When that failed they went to the extended family gathering support from aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and every Tom, Dick and Harry’s uncle, trying desperately to drill some sense into their ward. And nothing worked because it was destined not to work.

India for all its traditional values and beliefs was awakening to realities of the twentieth century. The right to choose a mate was fundamental. The new generation was not going to listen. The Internet was merely accelerating the change. For all the forward thinking and wisdom I possessed, this sort of liaison just did not make sense to me.

How could one get married to another when they had not seen each other in the flesh? To me the satisfaction of my primary senses was of utmost importance. I had this need to see, to touch, to smell (maybe) and to hear before I firmly believed. On the Internet there was nothing more than an exchange of words and pictures. And yet here were two individuals defying all my beliefs. Their commitment gave me insight and for the first time demonstrated the power of words. It made me understand that we humans as a race need to believe more than we need to satisfy our primary senses. It authenticated that there is a force, more powerful than the one that we see in daily life, that could sweep people off their feet, touch the core of their hearts and make them act without conforming to age-old forms of rationality.

*

Today, I salute the spirit of these two adventurers, for they are married now. Their determination and commitment was stronger than that of early African explorers. The only glory they brought was to the love that each possessed. I have informed them too about the impending miracle in my life. Unfortunately both of them are out of the city and will not be able to share this blessing in person. Their wishes are with us, however, and today will be the day The Miracle would be brought to life. This reminds me that my pregnant ox
-
like companion has made some progress, so I must find out how much my wife has made.