He was relieved. Glad, even. They were finally going to
leave. His mom was finally ready to attend the party, and dad had already been
honking for the past five minutes. He’d now have the house to himself, for at
least five hours. He had always loved being alone, away from the crowd, and
sometimes far, far away from his parents too. He was never too much of a
sportsperson; he preferred activities that stimulated the intellect. While other
sixteen year olds would’ve spent such home-alone nights partying with their
friends, probably even drinking, Rustom would read, or play his viola (if only
he had a penny each time people called it the violin!). He was mature beyond
his years (or so, everyone said, but that was possibly because they had never
considered the possibility of other sixteen year olds not being as mature as
they should be!), and a loner. Not surprisingly, he had plenty of friends
online. Lonely people make the best chat room friends. He was especially
excited tonight. He couldn’t wait to check out the newest site he had read
about in a journal. It asked you for your hobbies, your likes and dislikes; and
connected you to someone with the same interests, and let you both chat. The
only condition was that you weren’t allowed to upload your images. And you’d
never be connected to the same person again. The site ensured that.
The element of mystery appealed to him, and he felt
particularly excited as he put his headphones on. It was a gamble, he thought to himself, and he
loved taking chances. He typed in the url, and was very soon filling in his
name, and his hobbies- surfing the net, reading, art. That was about it. Oh,
and yes, watching movies. He waited with bated breath as the site found him a
suitable ‘friend’. He secretly hoped it
would be a boy, so that he could have an interesting conversation about fighter
planes and Star Wars. What did girls know about such stuff anyways?
Too bad when within two minutes (thank God it didn’t take
longer- he was getting rather impatient!), he heard a slight rustle on his
headsets, it was a rather mature sounding female voice (the internet sometimes
did that to your voice).
“Hi!” the girl said softly, almost whispering.
“Hello, Rustom here”, he replied quickly.
“Hi Rustom, I’m Alisha.”
“Alisha? That’s a rather pretty name! So tell me Alisha,
what do you like doing?”
“Oh, plenty of things! But I’m not allowed to do most of
them! You know, I recently fractured my hip! So I’m confined to the bed, doing nothing
much, except surf the net, watch television, and paint a little. Even that has
gotten so difficult these days. So I’ve started reading- a lot. I’ve always
been a big reader, but now that love has strengthened! And I have my blog. I
write in it, a lot”
“Oh, that could get kind of sad, I understand! But if you
look at the brighter side, you’d realize that you have plenty of time to spend
with your family! How cool is that?” Ha-ha, look who’s talking about family
time, thought Rustom! He barely knew his parents. As in, the kind of people
they were. He did not know.
Alisha chuckled. But he sensed a tinge of sadness in her
laughter and her voice, as she said, “Barely anyone at home has time for me.
Nobody like spending quality time with an invalid, you know! The conversations
are mainly limited to them ordering me around, telling me what to do and what
not to do. Sometimes, to be honest with you, Rustom, I feel like running away from
home... to just break free!”
“Wow!” remarked Rustom to himself. He did feel bad for
Alisha, but he was relieved, glad even, that there was at least one more lonely
person in the world. He tried to recollect the number of times he himself had
contemplated running away from home. “Forget them’, he continued chatting with
Alisha, “and tell me what kind of movies do you like to watch? Romcoms?”
“Haha no! I’m sorry, Rustom, I’m more into the “Star Wars”
series!”
“Really? It is rather unusual to find a girl who likes “Star
Wars”. And what kind of books do you like to read?”
The conversation went on for more than an hour. The spoke
about many things- Billy Joel, their painting styles (both of them pursued
painting as a hobby, but they both admitted they kind of sucked at it! In fact,
his mother had called his latest masterpiece ‘Squiggles’), their mutual dislike
of Harry Potter, and their fascination for Frank Sinatra. They had a little
quiz in which they asked each other the toughest questions about Sinatra.
Alisha won (‘but very narrowly’, Rustom consoled himself). “The most brilliant
hour of my life”, Rustom thought to himself later on.
They then recited dialogues from Star Wars, and they laughed
themselves silly as the discussed the antics of Tom and Jerry (you can never be
too old for cartoons). He expressed his
disappointment in finding out that her favourite cartoon was the Powerpuff
Girls simply because it was a display of flower power! They had a very
philosophical interaction about the hidden meanings in Lewis Carol’s humorous
writings. And they finished off with a debate about whether Macbeth was
Shakespeare’s best work, or was it Julius Caesar.
When they had both gone offline, Rustom was a happy young
man. He wished the world had more sensible people like Alisha. He also wished
that he could talk to her again. But he did not have her phone number. He did
not know why he did not ask for it. Neither of them had brought it up, and so
neither of them had asked for the other’s contact details. Perhaps this is how
it was meant to be. Perhaps if their friendship had gone beyond that day,
they’d realize they did not really like each other as much as they thought they
did on the first day. Alisha was an extremely wonderful girl, and it was
probably best to remember this evening in the sweetest possible way, without
further conversation to spoil it. Rustom switched off the lights and went to
sleep, hoping to have a memorable dream about his encounter with Alisha.
Miles away, in another continent altogether, Alisha nursed
her broken hip. A fracture at the age of fifty three was very difficult to
handle. Especially since she had lost her husband, her pillar of strength of
thirty years, in the same accident six months back. The mishap had completely
broken her, and she thought she’d never be happy again. So she had decided to
completely drown her grief in caring for her infant granddaughter- the only
beacon of light in her otherwise dark world. She had forgotten how to smile;
her tears did not stop flowing.
Until tonight, that is. It seemed like aeons ago that she
had seen on her face the creases that accompanied a smile. This ‘www.electronicencounters.com’
was an amazing site, and this man Rustom was an absolute sweetheart. How old
was he? Forty, forty five? Younger than her for sure, but he had managed to
bring back that spark back into her life that had been consumed in the flames
that had engulfed her husband’s pyre. Silly, it may sound, but in this one hour
she had connected with him in a way she had not connected to in a very long
time.
She felt rejuvenated. She thought she’d write about this man
in her blog. And title it, ‘www.electronicencounters.com’!
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