Hijacked
These days are the days of virtual reality. We meet people on the Internet unlike before. Earlier we met strangers in public places who later graduated to becoming good friends and sometimes these friendships blossomed into love.
Today this situation remains the same. Only the place we meet potential friends in these busy days has changed. I too met one such person on the Internet. On Orkut to be precise. It was nothing gradual in our case. We hit it off instantly. Maybe because of his flamboyant style of communicating. He was all at once endearing, charming, warm, sensitive, caring, humorous, naughty, shy and quick tempered. And romantic too!
I responded equally well. He was like my extension and I his.
We mailed each other every day. Chatted online frequently. Scrapped regularly on Orkut. Yet we missed each other the time we were off the Internet! The mails were expansive and the chatting intense.
The emoticons provided on yahoo network were of a great help. All his online kisses and hugs got the blushing icon from me. And it was not just the icon that was blushing each time he sent the kissing emoticon. I found myself blushing in real, heart thumping!
Yet it was hard for me to decide whether we were in love or were simply friends. Or just flirting!
We never stopped calling each other ‘honey’, ‘darling’, ‘sweetheart’ and so on. We met every single day. Not on exotic romantic locations but on the virtual world. Yet we yearned for each other.
And sometimes I had to travel for days together, I still managed to keep in touch and that distance was all the more sweet! And we missed each other all the more! He even told me ‘We should both wear engagement rings to ward off prospective admirers!’
I liked this possessiveness!
There was a yawning gap of ten years of age difference between us. He was younger to me! I don’t know if it was a hitch or not. Though neither he nor I forgot this age difference. But still I was hopelessly in ecstasy all the time I spent with him. I forgot the fact that he was so young! Maybe he is just infatuated? But what was wrong with me??
I reminded myself that one day this magic would wear off. And he would drift away from me leaving a void. The thought was always at the back of my mind that one day he would find someone ‘real’ and I would once more be by myself. And, I felt insecure when I thought of the inevitable
He never spoke of a particular day or time we would meet but always spoke of our future meetings like ‘when we meet we will go there’ or ‘do that’ and so on. I somehow did into like to really meet him in person. Why spoil it all by meeting in person and be disillusioned?
Like all friends and couples, we had a disagreement and argued though e-mails. And I realized that we could not even agree even to disagree because he made personal attacks and was harsh in calling me names. I knew he could not argue/disagree like a mature adult. But I was deeply hurt. And he was fuming in anger too because he could not come to terms with the fact that I had the right to a different view even if it was not wrong according to him.
The two days he did not respond hung heavy on my being. Hurt though I was, I forgave him. I could not bear his indifference. It was killing me. So I mailed him myself. He responded. But things had changed.
We still chatted online, were jovial and friendly like before. There were still traces of our earlier bonding. But not quite.
I could sense we were still on the same wavelength of endearment though he was holding himself back. Now I began to want to meet him in person. But he no longer talked of our possible future meetings. And ignored my subtle hints to meet up.
My heart ached with longing for his real company but all I got was his virtual company, which he now sparingly gave.
He claimed he had no girl friend and I believed him, judging by the intensity of his mails, online chats and the jealousy he expressed when there were new friends on my Orkut list.
And gradually the mails lessened after our fight. And then I hopped on to a new job with new timings and even the frequency of online chatting decreased. But he did chat if he was online at the time I was online.
I found myself thinking of logging in to the internet all the time to see if he was online, to check if he had sent any scrap. But I had no access to the Internet at my workplace. My thoughts kept wandering, steering themselves to him. He had hijacked my mind. Or had I allowed him to hijack my thoughts? What did it matter? I was hijacked. But knowing this did not change the situation.
I still found myself thinking about him all the time.
And once when I read his scrapbook on Orkut, I found a scrap of a girl whose scrap was familiar and intimate and she addressed him ‘honey’. He probably addressed her by those intimate terms, hence the reciprocation.
I was not jealous. Only hurt. I knew that the time had come and the magic was fading. It had been in the process of fading long back. After our first fight. And I had failed to notice it. It had been fading. And this process was killing me in inches. I remained hijacked for a long time. By his thoughts. Does this type of hijack have any ransom? Does this feeling have any name? Obsession? Infatuation? Love? Compatibility? Friendship? I don’t know.
Was it mere flirting? Or was there love at some point that could not surface fully?
What is this relationship called?
A part of me will always belong to this virtual stranger. And his memories will always be in my possession. In proximity he is just a click away on the Internet, in reality he is a million light years away though still somewhere on this planet.
These days are the days of virtual reality. We meet people on the Internet unlike before. Earlier we met strangers in public places who later graduated to becoming good friends and sometimes these friendships blossomed into love.
Today this situation remains the same. Only the place we meet potential friends in these busy days has changed. I too met one such person on the Internet. On Orkut to be precise. It was nothing gradual in our case. We hit it off instantly. Maybe because of his flamboyant style of communicating. He was all at once endearing, charming, warm, sensitive, caring, humorous, naughty, shy and quick tempered. And romantic too!
I responded equally well. He was like my extension and I his.
We mailed each other every day. Chatted online frequently. Scrapped regularly on Orkut. Yet we missed each other the time we were off the Internet! The mails were expansive and the chatting intense.
The emoticons provided on yahoo network were of a great help. All his online kisses and hugs got the blushing icon from me. And it was not just the icon that was blushing each time he sent the kissing emoticon. I found myself blushing in real, heart thumping!
Yet it was hard for me to decide whether we were in love or were simply friends. Or just flirting!
We never stopped calling each other ‘honey’, ‘darling’, ‘sweetheart’ and so on. We met every single day. Not on exotic romantic locations but on the virtual world. Yet we yearned for each other.
And sometimes I had to travel for days together, I still managed to keep in touch and that distance was all the more sweet! And we missed each other all the more! He even told me ‘We should both wear engagement rings to ward off prospective admirers!’
I liked this possessiveness!
There was a yawning gap of ten years of age difference between us. He was younger to me! I don’t know if it was a hitch or not. Though neither he nor I forgot this age difference. But still I was hopelessly in ecstasy all the time I spent with him. I forgot the fact that he was so young! Maybe he is just infatuated? But what was wrong with me??
I reminded myself that one day this magic would wear off. And he would drift away from me leaving a void. The thought was always at the back of my mind that one day he would find someone ‘real’ and I would once more be by myself. And, I felt insecure when I thought of the inevitable
He never spoke of a particular day or time we would meet but always spoke of our future meetings like ‘when we meet we will go there’ or ‘do that’ and so on. I somehow did into like to really meet him in person. Why spoil it all by meeting in person and be disillusioned?
Like all friends and couples, we had a disagreement and argued though e-mails. And I realized that we could not even agree even to disagree because he made personal attacks and was harsh in calling me names. I knew he could not argue/disagree like a mature adult. But I was deeply hurt. And he was fuming in anger too because he could not come to terms with the fact that I had the right to a different view even if it was not wrong according to him.
The two days he did not respond hung heavy on my being. Hurt though I was, I forgave him. I could not bear his indifference. It was killing me. So I mailed him myself. He responded. But things had changed.
We still chatted online, were jovial and friendly like before. There were still traces of our earlier bonding. But not quite.
I could sense we were still on the same wavelength of endearment though he was holding himself back. Now I began to want to meet him in person. But he no longer talked of our possible future meetings. And ignored my subtle hints to meet up.
My heart ached with longing for his real company but all I got was his virtual company, which he now sparingly gave.
He claimed he had no girl friend and I believed him, judging by the intensity of his mails, online chats and the jealousy he expressed when there were new friends on my Orkut list.
And gradually the mails lessened after our fight. And then I hopped on to a new job with new timings and even the frequency of online chatting decreased. But he did chat if he was online at the time I was online.
I found myself thinking of logging in to the internet all the time to see if he was online, to check if he had sent any scrap. But I had no access to the Internet at my workplace. My thoughts kept wandering, steering themselves to him. He had hijacked my mind. Or had I allowed him to hijack my thoughts? What did it matter? I was hijacked. But knowing this did not change the situation.
I still found myself thinking about him all the time.
And once when I read his scrapbook on Orkut, I found a scrap of a girl whose scrap was familiar and intimate and she addressed him ‘honey’. He probably addressed her by those intimate terms, hence the reciprocation.
I was not jealous. Only hurt. I knew that the time had come and the magic was fading. It had been in the process of fading long back. After our first fight. And I had failed to notice it. It had been fading. And this process was killing me in inches. I remained hijacked for a long time. By his thoughts. Does this type of hijack have any ransom? Does this feeling have any name? Obsession? Infatuation? Love? Compatibility? Friendship? I don’t know.
Was it mere flirting? Or was there love at some point that could not surface fully?
What is this relationship called?
A part of me will always belong to this virtual stranger. And his memories will always be in my possession. In proximity he is just a click away on the Internet, in reality he is a million light years away though still somewhere on this planet.
