A friend of mine just recently got engaged…….About 6 months back……….. the girl he got engaged to used to keep his cellphone engaged and then I guess she decided it was time to engage him too. This friend of mine is a Chartered Accountant by profession……and he’s barely 24-25 right now. So anyways, the girl he got engaged to, I learnt was ‘captured’ by him on the internet. (That is the exact word he used, not me.!!) (‘net per pakdi)

     Lemme tell you something about this bloke first and then I’ll take my stand on this topic. He’s the sort of guy who’d look a girl’s body up and down brazenly……but while wearing dark shades. The sort of guy who after talking to an interesting girl for a minute can while sleeping at night, think of a thousand smart things he could have said……but which he did not. A guy who’ll be screaming out loud to all of his friends (me included) “Lets go to XYZ hangout place to get a look at all the chicks there”. But once there, he wont make a move except with his eyes………never ever having the confidence to approach a babe…..even once during the 2 years I’ve known him.

      He bought a bike….A TVS Victor GLX, while buying it we checked out 2 dealerships……one gave him a price of 42000 bucks (that’s the one where the gorgeous receptionist treated us to some free coffee)……..the other one he checked……gave him a 41200 bucks tag on the bike… …so he decided on the latter…..When the first dealership receptionist called him back, he politely declined and said he was going to buy it from elsewhere…..So the receptionist tells him in jest “Sir, you had our coffee and now you want to buy it from elsewhere”. This guy says…..possibly for the first time in his life…..”Why don’t you come out with me & I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee”.

     Well anyways….when I met him later on….he narrated the incident and said with the pride of someone who had just scaled the Everest “Man….she must be thinking……what kind of a charmer this guy is……asking a girl out on coffee over a phone”. I thought I had missed something, but he said exactly what he said. (The above is obviously……what we all do in everyday life….Hell!! if you don’t ask a girl out to coffee over the phone….how the hell else do you do it?? Unless ofcourse she’s standing in front of you, and then obviously you don’t have to use a phone……..and so I understood……if asking a girl out for coffee is a big achievement for this guy…..he’s got a lot to see and do in this wide wide world).

    Whenever he had time to spare, sometimes even when he didn’t……he would frequent a cybercafé…….and log on to yahoo chat and rediff chat simulataniously. Now if you’ve got about 15 min in an hour to spare or something in your time limit, that’s ok…..but this buddy of mine went there specifically and only to chat up girls. Anyhow….he got so addicted to this chatting, he would stay out in a cybercafé 2 or 3 hours at a time……

     Well…..he finally got this girl he’s getting engaged to…..met her on yahoo chat…….and she’s still in her Third Year B.Com……studying…..still not a graduate….and this guy is a Chartered Accountant!!! They’re planning to get married in January, which is before her Third Year university exams in March, so he would be technically marrying an undergraduate at that time.

    Going by his outward nature towards the opposite sex (or rather the lack of it), I’m not much surprised to see he found a girl on the ‘net. I mean….going by his internet usage…..there was no way….he could avoid finding a girl on the ‘net. The ‘net is not big enough for the girl to be hidden if you consider the amount of time he’s spent sitting before a computer monitor typing “a/s/l” and “you are really cute” and the other brainwash.

     I’ve tried this a couple of times and I find it completely boring……and lacking challenge. I still say, if you’re specifically looking to find a girl on the internet for a long-term relationship (read that as non-timepass chatting), you are past your prime……you’re taking the easy way out. (At this point I would like to mention……matrimonial sites are completely a different thing……I fully support them and applaud its members…..But chatting on the internet……is different altogether where you try to “pataofy” ever single chick you IM and who IM’s you back…..thinking….”can she be the one for me??”) The real thing is to try to pick up a girl with just what you have at that very moment. No keyboard, no 2 min’s to think of a cute reply, no smiley lovey-dovey faces and no e-flowers or e-hugs to send to the girl to make her feel special. The real thing is to talk to the girl with whatever you can come up with on the spot and try to penetrate her eyes with yours and working just hard enough at whatever you’re saying to try to bring that pinkish glow on her cheeks which tells you, you’ve just loaded fourth base.

       No electronic appliances, No email addresses to send carefully-thought-out-emails which take you an hour to compose, no professional flirting with pickup lines you may have got from pickuplines.com. Just plain old….Charm…..and a real-time evaluation of your creditworthiness on the basis what you say and how you say it…..coupled in with the X you have…..which can be say, your sense of humour, genuine warmth or even the same interests.

    Yahoo Chat is just what its name suggest…..Chat!!! Talk man , talk…..who cares…….If you find a girl by fluke who happens to share the same interests as you, and you guys get further along and get married……hey that’s very cool…..But if you’re logged onto chat.yahoo.com with a couple of screen names just to get a chick with whom you can pursue a real-time relationship……sadly according to me…..you are not a real man…..Not because you’re chatting online to find a girl…..but because you’ve given up on what you are…..compromised on what you have, your skills, your confidence……everything…..and now are instead banking on a stupid machine and a virtual profile page to get you a girl!!!

     I’m really happy for my friend……….but I’ve unfortunately lost quite a bit of respect he used to get from me……just for the simple reason……that he lost his own respect first when he resorted to the use of an internet site with an aim to find a girl with whom he could enter into a real-virtual relationship………But here’s wishing him all the best…..and I hope someday when he looks back and happens to watch Will Smith in the movie “Hitch”, he doesn’t regret that he never ever even tried to use his latent skills to atleast try and chat up a girl………..who knows…..he might have ended up not only with a different girl......but with loads of inherent confidence as well

      Congrats on your engagement man!!!!