One arbitrary feeling.

I marvel at your memory. Mine is so bad, it never forgets you even for a moment...

A phoney affair

It all happened on the phone, hence a phoney affair. Pun intended.I consider my generation to be the luckiest one. We got to live in several ages in one lifetime. Some of you may want to disagree and hence, not to attract a lot of criticism from the very first, I would like to say, at least I did. Not that I am afraid of criticism but I want to be read, like I want to be loved. I strongly feel that there would have been no Salman Rushdie, no Taslima Nasreen but for the criticism, and fatwas. Nah, I am not comparing myself with them, nor am I going to write anything very controversial, but still.Let's get back to work. I have tried to understand the life in my own ways and love has always been a tool. Being a romantic dreamer that I am, I wonder, if there can be a better tool. It was love which made me see the changes in the world. From a slow moving snail mail to email to gmail chat, from the landline to the mobile phone. All have come handy in my love exploits, rather it was love which made me familiar, rather somewhat adept, with most of the technical advancements in the world around me. Otherwise, I would have been more technically challenged.Now about this phoney affair. It didn't start with some arbitrary call and me hitting the right chord with the caller and then moving along. I knew the person and we became close with some accident of destiny, over which no one had any control. And we started talking, talking for long hours, talking on the mobile phone. I would like to call the affair phoney because it was on phone that it bloomed, and there it wilted. No one but the phone knew that something was cooking up between the two of us and it was the first to know that it was all over. It stands witness to the love that was there, the frequent and long call durations from both sides and the SMSes. Witness to the SMSes that used to be long once from both the sides, and then started gettig shorter from the other side, and my replies getting longer as if to clutch and revive her dipping interest in me, and then shrinking in size from my side too, as if yielding to the painful truth that she loved me no more. Witness to the calls which used to be frequent and long initially to my calls, that were put on waiting and were never replied to.It is not that we didn't use to meet in the physical world. We used to meet but at work places only, surrounded by people. And in those meetings, we did professional talk only. Our persoal talks were limited to the mobile phones, late in the night and through the day. We used to spend so much time together, on phone, that we didn't spend with our friends or family members in the physical world. We used to eat, drink, sleep and watch movies together, on the phone. Like we had become inseparable, on the phone.And let me tell you the sad truth of this phoney affair. My love had shifted from the person I loved to the person I talked to. Don't get confused. They were not two different persons. They were one and the same but I had the feelings only for the person I talked to on the phone. I had started talking to her because I loved her but later I felt that I used to and wanted to meet her because I talked to her. Because she was the embodiment, the personification of the person I talked to and I loved.This might sound weird and insane. I too understood this fact only when we parted. I used to miss the person I talked to more than the real person. I longed to talk to her on phone and she didn't. I could meet her even after parting with a straight face like nothing had ever existed between us and I had no complaints against her. I have complaints, but against the person I used to talk to on the phone and not against her embodiment. Because I would not wait for her at some odd place or our meeting place but would sit, holding my mobile phone in my hand waiing for her to call. Whenever it would ring, I would think she had called.Friends, I believe mine is not the only case of my kind in this world. I am sure that there are many like me who are having a phoney affair. People running short of time think they are compensating it with the help of technology. But try to see the damage and disorder it is causing.I would also like to add one more line. One of my previous woman bosses used to say that my face was very transparent and it could not keep secrets. Few days back, a previous colleague who is on my gmail chat said, "Your status message says everything about you."I would only like to say in the end, don't let technology become your face.

PS: This was written on August 20, 2008 but could not be published due to some reasons, then.