A Real Life Adventure Through Facebook.

          I met a young man five years ago on Facebook. It took me that long to hear his voice and see him in flesh. This is the unusual story of a friendship that didn’t concern him, of which he was a conduit at one stage. Complicated? Let me start at the beginning.

          About fifty years ago, I had a penfriend, Asha. We wrote each other letters that travelled across the sub-continent, sharing girlie secrets. As a teenager, she did para-jumping through the NCC and I did mountaineering/rock-climbing and we shared legible, cursive hand-written notes on ‘inlands’, via the Indian Posts and Telegraphs. Each letter took about ten days to reach its destination. We wrote each other at least two letters per month through our school and college years. Other penfriends petered out of my life, but this one remained steady and close for decades.

I grew up in Mumbai, Asha in Orissa. Both of us had a female and a male sibling.

          In all these years, we’d met just once, for a couple of minutes, in Delhi, where our husbands’ transferable jobs had taken us. We raised our children and ran our homes in several corners of India. And we continued, when time permitted, to write to each other, updating what was happening where, when, in our lives. The frequency of our letters had reduced, but the bond remained.

          Came the mobile phone and the internet, and instead of communication getting better, we got disconnected. Our husbands retired, our children flew the coop, we took up jobs and we didn’t know where the other was.

          Five years ago, whilst recovering from a bout of illness, I tried to track her on Facebook by typing in her post-marriage name. No luck. I then typed in her brother’s name. I knew he’d joined the Army. The search threw up one identical name. The person I tracked was also in the Defence Forces, but much, much younger. That young man belonged to the same small community as hers. He didn’t know her, but he and I became friends in the virtual world.

          “Tell me her family name and my parents will track her down immediately,” he promised. The one thing I didn’t know about her was her family name. For she had used her father’s name before marriage and her husband’s after, never a surname suffixed to her own.

          So the young man and I got ‘involved’ on Facebook, reading posts, liking them, seeing photos, sharing them, exchanging greetings and congratulations on special days, chatting through messages when we wanted to keep the conversation un-public (unless you’re on Facebook, you won’t understand this word).

From time to time I’d nudge him to ask his parents whether they’d come across Asha. His response was always in the negative. He was busy in his profession, taking exams, doing courses, working hard. I was enjoying a retired life, travelling, gossiping online, doing ‘time-pass’. In the process, I even made friends with the fellow’s mother on Facebook, making me a virtual aunt of sorts to him.

          The aforementioned five years flew by and one day he told me he was getting married, traditionally, in his ‘native place’ (we don’t use this phrase any longer now, do we?

Shri Husband and I decided to attend his wedding. We drove to a hilly district in South India to witness a most unusual ceremony. The small community my Facebook friend belonged to – Asha’s community—doesn’t have a priest conducting the marriage ceremony. Elders of the community bless the couple, garlands/rings are exchanged and that’s that. The feast and dancing continued for three days.

I’d always seen him in photographs, in jeans and t-shirts. It was a treat to see him for the first time in flesh and blood, dressed as a groom. Recognition was instant.

Like us, there were others who had travelled long distances to attend. I mingled with the guests, asking randomly if anyone knew Asha. Nyet, nope, nil.

Then, on the last day, almost in filmi style, one stranger asked me some questions: Was Asha’s father working at such-and-such job? An old memory stirred in my head. Yes! Was her brother’s pet-name so-and-so? Another cell churned in my brain. Yes, yes. Did her sister marry a coffee-plantation manager? My cerebral neurons did a creaky tandav-nritya: yes, yes, yes. He told me a likely way of tracking Asha’s brother. He had known of his whereabouts till 2014.

Back home in Goa, Shri Husband and I did a quick search, sought and found the brother’s email, sent off a message to him through the internet and within hours located Asha.

We talked like excited school-girls over the phone, filling up gaps of what had happened in our lives now, then, in between. Laughter and giggles travelled through wireless channels. We saved numbers, id’s, addresses again.

When I sent a message to my Facebook friend, now on his honeymoon, his response was immediate and smacked of astonishment: “You found her! This is destiny.”

Nope, I thought, not destiny, the wonders of modern technology, in this case Facebook, that linked so many lives.

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in

         

Online Groups

(22 Apr ’07)

            I was/am already a member of two literary groups that are so active that per day I delete some forty mails from my inbox. The group’s members read books of/about south Asian authors/writers and discuss them. The members live in different parts of the world, are mainly of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan origin, and united in their interest in reading. Many of them write, and put their work up for objective criticism from the others. This is the best way of getting people to say what they truly feel without your feeling hurt. They’re strangers, don’t know you, and you can trust their feedback. I recently read Complications by Atul Gawande, who’s of Indian origin, but has never lived here because his parents, doctors both, had migrated before his birth to the land of opportunities, the US of A. This book, “notes from the life of a young surgeon” made very interesting reading for a lay person and I strongly recommend it to anyone who prefers non-fiction. One of the things I find curious is that, in the English language, which many in India have adopted as their mother tongue, philosophical writing is best written in the western countries. Our writers borrow too heavily from ancient texts. Original thinking is scarce. Pity, because the Upanishads encouraged the questioning attitude and personal thought, the search for Truth.

            The other group is an Indian Air Force one, where retired oldees, mainly, are busy cut-and-pasting interesting items about military affairs the world over. I’m amongst those that believe military might is necessary for a country to get respect and keep peace even within itself. This is highly debatable, I know, but that’s my belief. And since we’re a democratic country, I have right to that opinion and to give voice to that expression. This group also tells about who’s where, settled how, and other little human interest knick-knacks. This group keeps my feet on the ground. Everyone, almost, knows everyone as the Air Force is a small community, and no one hesitates to call a spade a spade. They’re too professional to take things personally, have no fear of fighting back if they disagree.

And still at the end of it all, everybody ‘belongs’.

            Yet another and the newest one, is of my old chums from school who’ve begun a group on Yahoo. Every day a new email is added and I can imagine the squeals from across the world as a photograph is (barely) recognized, with spouse and children in the frame. My husband is treated to stories, long-forgotten, of benches with love-notes scratched in them, and shared tiffins. This group has warmth, albeit distant. If we all lived together we’d probably be involved in politics, but distance does make the heart grow fonder.

            I’m a member of smaller, not so interesting groups also, which keep sending me forwards. I used to delete forwards unread, mercilessly, because I believed that they sent viruses to my dear old computer. Then someone who’s an expert in these things told me it won’t happen, so I began to open them and really enjoyed many. Whether the soppy “god loves everybody’ types or the whacko ‘laugh a second’ variety or the sob-story-that-quite-possibly-is-invented, I began to spend many of my waking, internet hours reading and then re-forwarding them. Until some people complained that their mailboxes were getting jammed. Darn. Now am more selective. About whom I send to.

            The biggest advantage of my groups is that I get worldwide, instant readership and feedback. It’s such a pleasure to know a stranger has appreciated a thought, a word, a story. What’s fun is that sometimes I even get paid for the stuff. Vive la internet.

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groups on the internet

(18 Nov ’06)
            I’m a member of several groups on the Internet. One is the old school network, where most of the guys are recognizable by their names, but the girls have had to identify themselves by their maiden surnames. It’s interesting to note that the brilliant ones aren’t necessarily the most successful or happy ones. As one put it: “the marks didn’t take me anywhere, the quality that did was put down in red by my teachers…talks too much.” There are duds who’ve ended up as principals of schools, looked up to as intelligent academicians, who have the audacity to pull up young ones for bad marks. There should be a law that all principals’ school report cards should be put up on notice boards.

            Another group that actively sends me forwards (what, I wonder, in computer vocabulary, would backwards mean??) is of my husbands’ ex-colleagues. Mostly retired, these young-at-hearts send us articles from newspapers, news about the present state of their erstwhile institutions, news about who’s dying, dead, ill, still living it up. The young retirees are now in hugely different professions, and when they send their inputs and comments, it’s interesting to note how their perspectives have changed. Those who drove recklessly on rickety motorbikes on unbelievably rugged terrain, who didn’t blink at running cross-country marathons for measly bet, now can’t cross a road without driver and Honda. Others who lived on flesh, blood and liquor, have turned strict teetotalling-vegetarians. The good part of this active group is that long-forgotten names suddenly crop up and someone or other traces them out in a matter of hours, no matter which part of the planet they’re on. Amazing.
            I have a habit of reading all the names in the forwards or groups. Through one I traced an old college mate, now a rich somebody in…where else, the US of A…. who wants to do business in India. Whilst tracking the path of a particular mail, I found that it had originated in the Netherlands, went all over the world…to Australia via India, thence to Poland, Japan, the middle east, then back to India, from where I sent it again to two different continents. Through the writers’ groups I have managed to hone my skills. The persons who give the criticism and feedback are terribly objective, for they don’t know me. That ruthless honesty comes from anonymity. Those appraisals are totally fair. Friends have networked with common-interest folk through geographical and social zones. No one cares whether you are disabled, an aristrocrat, a neurosurgeon, lazy, male or female, old or young….if you can respond to a mail, that’s good enough. I know of a couple who raised a couple of lakhs in a couple of days, for their child’s medical treatment. It made me aware that everywhere there are innocents ready to part with their money if the story they’re told can jerk tears.
            I’m a member of an animal-lovers’ group, an aeroplane-amigos group, a book-lovers’ club, a how-to-invest-the-peanuts-that-you-earn group and one of housework challenged ladies to boost my morale when there’s dusting/tidying to be done. None requires me to pay anything. I get free tips in tick care (if you’ve ever owned a dog in Goa, you know how helpful that is), which book never to buy, how to change (my) job, and when to draw the curtains so the dust doesn’t show.
            Although I delete much of what’s in the inbox, I don’t have the heart to discontinue membership of any. In fact, I plan to start a group of like-minded persons who have a common interest in being members of different online groups. Anyone interested?
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