News & views from Nepal and South Asia

When one surfs net during spring break at an abandoned library while most are basking under a Fort Lauderdale sun, he has to be an international student. That was me; and the year was 2002. It was my first spring in America and I was too pauper to even entertain an idea of driving to beaches. Let alone car, I did not even own a computer then, hence I made peace with browsing net in the library, at least the internet was fast enough, unlike where I hailed from. Fresh off the boat, I habitually browsed Nepalnews.com, a website indigenous to Nepal, to keep myself updated with affairs back home. Occasionally I was tempted to click the flashing ‘chat’ button too conspicuous not to be noticed. But having never chatted in internet before, I nervously veered away each time despite temptation. I had often struggled to get in terms of truncated cyber lingos and perhaps that was one of the primary reasons why I could not consider myself a chatter of any sorts.

Soon I could not resist myself.

It was one soggy Thursday morning when I, with rehearsed audacity, decided to log in as chatter. As a child, I had always fancied an idea of having a pen-pal across the globe and although I never had one, I somehow retained that fascination subconsciously. Chatting was perhaps one way of franchising my dormant interest of making new friends. This was quicker, in real-time and was fairly economical. As I logged in with an alias which I do not remember now, I was led into a room which, unlike the vivid homepage of the website was a gray interface which loaded at its own sluggish pace.

In between the miasma of utter profanity and sexually explicit messages, I somehow was able to locate few chatters who had genuine pseudonyms. Just when I was in between thoughts about initiating a conversation with them, a small window suddenly popped up on the screen.

“Favorite song?” she inquired abruptly. Her alias was Menaka.

“Uh! Sixth avenue heartache”, I replied hesitantly, I had been listening to The Wallflowers lately.

“Jacob Dylan? Interesting, I like it. I am glad you did not say Metallica, where are you from?”

“Illinois, and you?” I asked in return.

“Well…” she entered a smiley in between “I am a virgin from Virginia.”

“I doubt that”. I almost chuckled under my breath; she had a good sense of humor.

“Doubt if I were from Virginia?”

“No..” I paused for a moment, “…that you are a virgin”.

I did not mind flirting, it was just a cyber chat and I knew we’d never come across each other again after this was over.

“You Pig! All men are pigs aren’t they?”

I smiled. So this is how I first met Miss Virgin - between pot shots and banters, and name calling and repartees. She was refreshing, like a whiff of jasmine amidst an evening zephyr. She typed clearly, was very objective, and was smart enough to read between lines. And now that I was conferred with a nobility of being a pig, I just hoped she was pretty; very pretty.

We talked again, same time the other day and continued to talk long after the spring break was over. We exchanged our messenger IDs and chatted for an hour everyday. Our expanse of conversation was so multifarious, it ranged from making chain link fences to space colonization. I lied more as we chatted along, one after another, and it kept piling. Never had I come across someone who knew where Ouagadougou was located and had eaten an escargot. She intrigued me to the core.

“Are you single?” I asked her one day, half unsure about my purpose regarding the inquiry.

“Very; and you?”

“Me too”, I lied.

For some reason, despite the impossibility of courting her someday I somehow surmised that presenting myself as a solitary heterosexual male would add more spice to our already interesting conversation. Moreover, I just did not want to disappoint her. My wife was still in Nepal, and I did not think twice about an online escapade.

She was right. Men are indeed pigs.

We agreed on few things - among those, primarily, was retaining our anonymity and never asking details that would divulge our identities.

“Think about it, what if I am your professor’s wife”. She had warned with obvious hilarity.

Few days passed and I played along well to our agreement until the time curiosity buckled my patience. I wanted to see her picture.

“No way” she snarled, “Remember we promised each other that we were not disclosing our identities? This is just good enough; I do not want us to take it further."

I didn’t either, but the yearning to see her picture was simply irresistible.

I requested - she refused, I beseeched - she rebuffed, but even then, I never gave up. Then, before long, she gave in.

“Alright, what the heck….” she said in between sighs one day. Being tormented for a week had taken its toll.“…but, promise me you are not saving that photograph, you are deleting it as soon as you see it”.

“I promise” I tried to sound as earnest as possible, although I was not quite sure if I’d just do that.

“But how do I know you deleted that picture?”

“How do I know if the person in that picture is you?” I retorted in similar fashion.

“You need to trust me” she hissed, apparently irate at my repartee.

“I always did, sorry, I was just being a smarty pant” I said regretfully. I did not lie this time. I trusted her completely; the odds of both parties lying so effectively were not very common. I started hating myself for lying to her.

“I do not have a good picture at this moment, could you wait until tomorrow?”

“I could” I said, “and thanks”. I was beaming with pleasure as I logged off the messenger.

I spent half the night thinking about Miss Virgin. She could be someone like Joan of Arc, Jane Austen, Margaret Thatcher or Meryl Streep. She personified almost everyone who I thought could be the highest embodiment of feminism. On the flip side she could be just an impersonator, a con-woman, an internet troll or a web hooker. The latter thoughts of her supposed identity scared me for a moment. Unsettled by my thought process and intimidated by the excitement, the only straw left to regain my sanity was to somehow forcing myself to sleep.

It was a long wait to get back to the library. I had to get past the mundane three-hour morning class where everyone yawned; including the professor. I surprisingly did not yawn that morning but couldn’t wait the class to get over. As I sprinted my way to the library, the only thing on my mind was to find one of those computers with LCD monitor that display pictures with more clarity. They were very few, were recently installed and were obviously preferred more than the archaic ones.

As I logged into the messenger savoring the view of that wide LCD screen, a long offline message welcomed me. It was from no other than Miss Virgin herself.

My mouth ran dry as I read that offline message. I read it again and again and slowly sank on the chair. It took me a while to assimilate the intent of that message. One of the excerpts were –

“ ….I must disclose that I am a married woman with two children. You seem to be like a nice, honest and upbeat person and it would be an extreme unfairness on my part to beguile you like I did so far. I apologize for lying, it was just that I feared losing a person who I had begun to like a lot…”

I hauled myself with heavy feet as I walked down the isolated stairwell of the library battling my tears. We both had spent a good two months exchanging lies. I had little idea how she felt the entire episode. But for me, it was worth every second….

….it is a different story that the sixth avenue heartache would last forever.