Sunday, March 7, 2010

Is there more to chats than meets the eye?



I was trying to be persistent, inspite of kicks on the butt and pokes to my sides, I was seriously trying to be persistent with my routine. Infact had slowly started getting comfortable with my work-studies-walk-studies-dinner-sleep-work routine!!



But the itch does take over in the end. The nag that simmers and is shoved behind the daily chores, finally reaches the boiling point and overflows with all its gusto at the moment when you are most susceptible.



Something similar happened to my blogging. I have been away from my page for a long time now, have not even replied to comments and thanked my readers, I plead guilty. But with just a pair of hind and fore limbs and with kids who are gleefully riding the wave of independence, I am at a serious loss of me-time and that is the only reason I can offer as justification.



But what drove me to this page then? What strain of thought boiled and over flew while I was preoccupied? What made me rush to my lap top early today morning to key in this post? Well, all in a minute guys..



'She sent him kites'.. thats how the story starts. The story of Miyage and Snehomoy. A mathematics teacher from a village in Bengal, India and a girl from Japan. The story traverses twenty years of their life through their letters to each other. It is surreal in it's innocence, tragic on a materialistic level, fulfilling in a soulful way. The Japanese wife, I read it a few days back, and could not let go of its fragrance. Through my daily chores the characters lingered, played, wrote letters to each other, fell in love, married, lived an almost normal life apart from the solitary fact that they never met.



It happened over borders, transcending swollen rivers and mighty forests, time and age, sickness and solitude, images of a smile that remained as enchanting since the first photograph carried by a postman, inspite of accumulated laugh lines and numerous crows feet over the years.



The days of pen friends are gone. The changing times have given us access to chat rooms, gtalk and texting. We no longer put pen on paper, no longer do we have time to play with words, to delve into their beauty and lyricism. The restless wait for the local postman on his creaky bicycle is over. What we have instead is a green light against a name on gtalk and a ping!!



A lot of men I know chat with strangers. While their wives sleep, they test waters as well as try their limits. What are they looking for? Are they just killing time? Stimulating their brains(above or below the belt) from the sanctity of their homes? Or is there a Snehomoy lurking behind every man? Wandering through meandering courses in search of a companion, whose omnipresence is so comforting that the actual meeting becomes unnecessary.



This is not a book review..this is a culmination of a book that I loved and an incident that occured.