When Raven Met Fire

My First Blind Date: October 2000

It was sometime in June 2000, when a friend dragged me to a cyber-cafe to introduce  orient me to the computer and the internet, both of which I was reluctant to learn at the time. She opened a few pages that she knew would hook me to the net, like Lakecards.com with their beautiful java applets of the moving, rippling water; yahoo groups, google.com and some interesting travel sites. And boy, I got hooked!

One one such cyber-cafe visit, she helped create an email account for me and showed me how to chat and we entered a chat-group. My first very email ID was Raven and we entered a general chat-room and chatted with each other in the chat-room, even while we were jseated ust 2 seats away, exchanging glances, grinning at each other and laughing when guys would try to hit on us in the chat-room and ask about our real names and also when we crashed into other group chats and disturbed their rhythm. I remember finding it weird and even pointless to chat with someone who is sitting right next to you, but coming back to my story...

Sometime into the chat-room fun, I started building a rapport with a dude who called himself Fire. Since our 1 hour was up, and the waiting queue was long, we exchanged email IDs, at my friend's behest, I decided to follow up with him the next day, as he seemed interesting.

I remember visiting the cyber-cafe a couple of times more and receiving some very warm emails from Fire. I was flattered by the attention he showered on me. A month later, I got my first job as a web writer, and I got access to a computer and the net, and this way I could write to Fire more often. I must have received some 10 or 15 lovely emails from him by then, and was very eager to meet this Fire. His warm emails, fiery language, interesting analogies and bits about his experiences were very good reads. I would not say I was infactuated, but yes, I was eager and curious enough to want to mee him.  He had in the following couple of months revealed his name, his profession and his office address, so I was not worried much about the risks. I vaguely remember speaking to Fire (Sudhir S)on the phone a couple of times. I discussed meeting Fire at length with my friend, and she encouraged me to meet him in a public place.

Sometime in October that same year, we decided to meet up. I gave him my office address, which was at Churni Road at the time, and he dropped in and I still remember warmly welcoming a smart looking formally dressed chap into my office lobby. We went to a nearby fast-food joint I think, and had a burger.

During the span of that month, we met every Sunday, either at a restaurant or at Planet M, since we shared the same passion for music. With some enthusiasm, I even surprised him with a small parcel, a page- long poetry penned by me, a candle, an 'Enigma' album-cassette and some funny gimmicky stuff drawing references to some of the discussions we had had in the past. He seemed mildy happy to receive my surprise parcel. 

Steadily, the Fire in his emails subsided to some ashy remains of 'Thank You' and a dry apology by email for not calling me one Sunday. And probably for one last time, when asked about whether he was the one penning those beautiful long emails, his usual 3-word email expanded one last time to 3 whole lines, emphatically confirming that it was indeed him and sounding a tad offended, before they stopped altogether.

Yep, I had secret fantasies of marrying this Fire, lekin woh aag 2 mahine main bhuj gayi. I was level-headed enough to not push the idea on him, but I naively thought even if it didn't work out, we would "stay friends forever". I remember being very disappointed when come December, Sudhir's communication lines with me had ceased altogether and he had remained inactive or offline in my chat box; I'm assuming he had deleted me. That's the end of the Fire & Raven story. Never again did enter chat-rooms thereafter.