Across the Miles: Connected Forever

As I was reading “Your anniversary with Anshul Seth on 4th December 2010”, flashing since a week on Facebook Event update, my thoughts kept traveling back to the year 2006. The year that my husband came back into my life – well after some odd 13 years since childhood.

What began as an arbitrary e-mail/chat conversation connecting us via the inter-tubes halfway across the globe, transformed into a “virtual” courtship that led to an online love and a lifetime relationship of love and bonding.

Little did we imagine that in those Skype-less years, when digi cams were a new-fangled stuff and Web cams were quite a luxurious stuff, that we would have managed to build such a sturdy bond through emoticons embedded intermittently in every day e-mail/chat threads?

Strange as it might sound, but I feel there is something elegantly intimate about these virtual conversations — communicating via e-mails/chats permitted us to be candid, share our inmost feelings and thoughts, communicate strong viewpoints and just invest the time to get to know each other better.

We shared photos regularly ( everyday infact!). There was no Facebook or Twitter then to keep each other updated about every second moves of each other. Even though we bridged the physical space and distance between us via two, sometimes three, e-mails a day – not to forget the long telephonic conversations which sometimes lasted through the whole night and saw the new dawn. (Yes, overseas telephonic conversations which lasted for more than 4 hours at times, devoid of any guilt of expense) We savored the liberty that this zillion miles’ online relationship gave us. For almost a year we lived on contradictory ends of the day-night cycle, Yet were absolutely in sync with each other’s worlds — his in Bristol, UK.; mine in Lucknow, India.

Today, after 3 years’ of wedded bliss, nothing has really changed (or maybe everything has). But one thing that remains the same is that we are still connected – at heart and virtually. “Dinner is ready,” I send him an IM from the living room and he appears from the bedroom minute(s) later.

Our lives, even though divided for the eight-to-nine hours –his at the workplace, and mine at home- we still seem connected always. Many a time our brawls are sorted through e-mails/chats more effectively than face to face confrontations. The way we know about each others’ minute to minute update , our friends don’t understand how we function. Sometimes we don’t either.

But, I do believe that technology has endowed us with the prospect to be with each other, to understand each other and to love each other in ways that couldn’t have happened otherwise. At times, communication technology can strengthen intimacy in a way a talk on the sofa would not have. We found solace in words that emerged on the computer screen, in photos that froze an instant in time, in tidbits of our everyday lives concluded by exclamation marks, smiley faces and sometimes just silent dots.

We’ve chuckled, we’ve sobbed, we’ve fought, and we’ve loved.

What began as a hit and miss e-mail conversation, has transformed out to be a virtual, albeit real, connection of life, forever.

Happy 3rd Year of connectivity, bonding and love Dear Husband, from across the miles.

Much Love.

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