Do you orkut ? No was my answer.Three years back in August 2005 when I had joined orkut being invited by the same friend who asked me this question,I had lesser idea about the influence it was about to have on my otherwise conventional life. Networking sites were not really a new phenomenon to me, however a community so vibrant and spirited was indeed a jitter to the already established and popular ideas like instant messaging or mailing.
Scraps, communities, friends and the famous "bad bad server,no donuts for you"...the days passed like never before. The whole world of mine seemed entrapped behind that login page. Getting online was never so fascinating and nothing was so frustrating as being away from the net. The rising number of scraps,the increasing number of fans,every upward tick of those figures boosted my virtual ego. My brain was "orkutised" truly.Then I met this girl. So many times in life you meet people, have a chit chat and then just forget. And meeting a pretty face over orkut was such a common phenomenon, may be we could have ended with a future more common.I had once scraped her a simple hi, obviously being appealed by her profile picture, to which she had replied with a similar gesture, added each other and then vanished from existence.But then one day her eyes caught hold of a guy in her friend list whom she had almost never talked. She scraped him asking how come he was in her friend list but they never interacted. I wish she knew the question she had asked would return her an answer for which she would end up interacting with that guy...for her entire life.
The guy incidently is me, no donuts for guessing that. I replied her with a fresh and smart introduction of myself. And then we never looked back,in regret.
We never rushed in. The relation just developed like forests grow without any conscious nurture. We just clicked and kept on clicking with each passing days and exchanged scraps. Our brainwaves harmonized on their own. And what else could we depend on except those so called wavelengths.We never had seen each other and we still had not heard each other. The relation at first seemed a little improbable. First of all, we still have a negative sympathy towards relation developed over digital media be it telephone or internet. We trust our sense of sight more than anything else.Secondly,the distance. She was almost 2000 kms away from me.Long distance relationships too have very less takers. And as an icing on the cake we did not belong to the same community. She was a Kashmiri Pandit and me a pure fish eating Bengali. Inspite of all these our relation flourished on our intuition...this will work. Love has an uncanny tendency of making things look easy.
I first called her on her birthday.We had been so used to hearing each others word in our mind that the thought of a real conversation made me a little nervous. It was the first time she heard me say those famous three words.And I heard her giggle.May be in our subconscious mind we got an assurance of the existence of our yet tender relation.
It was not before another six months from our first talk that we actually met. I was still in my last few months of my Post Graduation degree and had to take my parents into confidence. They reacted too cool to be true and my father announced his willingness to sponsor my journey.After my exams in May 2006, came the D-Day. Going miles to meet my soul mate sounded fairytale and I was anxiously in cloud nine. Meeting in person would be the final nail to fortify this relation and every mile closer to my destiny, made me restless. Then we met and as they say sparks flew. I could see rainbows. I could smell the first rain against the earth. It was a hit, more than any Shahrukh movie.
Everything went well since then.We are proud to belong to the small percentage who make online relations successful. Added to that we also overcame the afflicts of distant relationships and the troubles of an intercommunal association.Her parents were little reluctant but supporting enough. 2005 to 2008, like orkut our relation has also matured and had many facelifts. Today we are happily married and it has been a month. It is a new story which has just began and will see many turnings.
In the meantime everyone is happy and intrigueed by our story while we are please to set an inspiring example.
We retired together from orkut quite some time ago. But with so much memories and each one so good, the orkut story seems fresh as yesterday.The small witty oneliners put to public display but meant only for her,scraping in codes sometimes, getting jealous with others hitting on her, it was unrestricted fun.
"Bad,Bad Server. No donuts for you"...Thanks orkut for the sweetest donut.
