PUPPY LOVE: THE SUMMER OF 1972

Sunny was just a playful twelve year old studying in the sixth grade of a reputed school in Madras. Even as a young boy Sunny was passionate about arts and spent more time with books and music while neglecting his textbooks.

His interest in music had made his parents put Sunny in a classical choir at their neighbourhood church which the entire family attended and Sunny would go there regularly for practice and also to the actual Church Services on Sundays. Practice sessions were between six to eight in the evenings on Tuesdays and Fridays while actual Church services were from seven thirty to ten in the mornings and six to seven thirty in the evenings on Sundays.

Sunny was very diligent and would attend practice sessions without fail. Whenever he left for practice and returned Sunny could feel the gaze of hidden eyes from the window of the corner house at the end of his street. Though he could not find out who was watching him he knew for sure that someone was gazing upon him. Soon his neighbour's children informed him that there lived a girl of his age named Sunanda in that house.

One day while playing with his neighbour's kids, Sunanda dropped by since his neighbour's daughter was Sunanda’s classmate and Sunny set his eyes on her for the first time when they were formally introduced to each other by his neighbour’s daughter. Sunny was too young to understand the significance of love at first sight but he found himself strangely attracted to Sunanda. I can tell you that certainly sparks did fly and Sunny could not avert his eyes from her.

Sunanda too seemed to find a kindred spirit in Sunny and soon they  became the best of friends and whenever Sunny went past her house on his way to choir practice or Church service, Sunanda would look out the window and wave to him. On his return from practice he would find Sunanda waiting near the gate of her house and he would stop and talk for awhile before going home. This became a regular ritual and on days when Sunny did not have practice or did not have to go to church Sunanda would drop by at Sunny’s neighbour's house and they would meet up there as they played the games that kids of their age used to play in those days.

Sunny and Sunanda remained best of friends for over two years and hid nothing from each other. Sometimes Sunny’s choir would sing at weddings and would be gifted money by the bridal family. Sunny would use the money to buy Sunanda gifts but the best gift that Sunanda always treasured was the few flowers that Sunny would pick up from those used for the marriage decorations and bring for her.

That summer Sunny appeared for his eighth grade exams in April of 1972 and Sunny’s Mom forced Sunny to study hard. She did not allow him to even go to his choir practice. This frustrated Sunanda and unable to be without seeing Sunny she picked up a few hard boiled candies and went upto Sunny’s door and rang the bell. Sunny’s Mom who opened the door was surprised by the young girl who wanted to meet Sunny.

You must remember that this happened in the early nineteen seventies and in those days a boy and girl being friendly was frowned upon by the elders. Sunanda glibly said, “Aunty, it is my Birthday and I want to give Sunny some sweets”. Sunny’s Mom called Sunny. Sunny knowing that Sunanda was lying for her Birthday was only in July went to meet her and in the pretext of wishing her spent a few minutes with her.

That summer of 1972 was the best that Sunny ever spent and he and Sunanda were together for most of the time. She began to visit Sunny’s house regularly on some pretext or the other and Sunny’s Mom didn’t know what to do. Whenever, Sunny crossed Sunanda’s house they would stand near the gate and talk for long hours. It was during one such meeting that Sunanda told Sunny that she wanted to tell him something but hesitated and told him that she would tell him the next evening.

Sunny was excited for he felt that Sunanda was about to proclaim her love for him. The next evening Sunny rushed to Sunanda’s house but found the gate locked. His neighbours later told him that Sunanda’s father had incurred a loss in his business and had declared insolvency in a court of law for non-repayment of loans. His father had fled the town leaving behind his wife and daughter. Nobody knew where poor Sunanda and her mother went.

Sunny searched and searched far and wide but could never find Sunanda ever again.

ONLINE ENCOUNTERS WITH A BLACK WIDOW

It was during circa 2007 that it all began. I was then living in Delhi where I was employed and had left my home and family behind in an attempt to eke out a better life. Being an erstwhile communication & development professional, I had all along been employed in either community development or the development of media and mass communication. My experience in these two diverse sectors also gave me insights into the socio economic fabric of our country which were valued by a few employers.

I was therefore employed by a Public Relations agency to execute online and secondary research so as to provide ‘Business Intelligence’ for their clients. While I was initially happy with my work, I soon got to have a taste of the condition to which corporate India had degenerated. I have never got along well with female bosses since they tend to put up a shrill, strident and arrogant attitude of hot air with added bluster; which they normally use to mask their inadequacies in my presence.

Unfortunately, I found myself stuck with a female boss this time around who was more engrossed in cutting down to size all her colleagues rather than utilizing their potential and drawing out the best in them. After having gleaned twenty five years of experience, I did not wish to be treated as a junior by a woman who was herself junior to me in age and experience. I therefore put in my papers some time in October 2007 and decided to strike out on my own as a communication and development consultant. I then obtained a PC for myself since I had left behind my old PC in Chennai. Armed with a computer, I set about attempting to gather some new biz.

While the routine of going to office had kept me occupied from seven in the morning to nine at night, my new found freedom left me lot of free time which made me begin to experience the throes of loneliness. Though living in a vast metropolis I knew very few and had no friends to keep me company. I would invariably spend my day in front of the television while a maid who came over for a couple of hours would cook, sweep and clean for me. With my three meals taken care of  I had nothing much to do and soon realised that idle hands are devils tools since I began to take to smoking and drinking; two habits that I had quit a few years ago.

Nursing a drink or puffing away on a stick while surfing the net soon became my favourite past time. It was during this period that I happened to chance upon a few social networking sites and enrolled therein. Unfortunately my encounters with a couple of such sites were not positive and soon my password would be changed without my knowledge or I would be blocked from accessing the network. It was then that I stumbled upon fritolo. Somehow, fritolo seemed a better option though the characters who inhabited all the sites were a same diverse cross section of people with diverse character and mentality.

There have been many interesting encounters on fritolo since then. I would like to share one such incident that was as interesting as revealing of human nature. Initially I was a bit hesitant about interacting with people on fritolo and would restrict myself to posting the odd blog or two. The responses to my blog were very interesting leading to mutual dialogue.

It was then that I chanced upon the heroine of my story here. Her name was Daphne (name changed to protect the identity of the subject; lol……….) and the picture on her profile suggested that she was a Greek Goddess. She started frequenting my posts and commenting upon them to which I would occasionally give my responses.

My initial impression of Daphne was that of a black widow though I don’t know why I used to connect her to a black widow. She then started sending me messages to which I politely replied. She would comment upon similarities in our respective natures and suggest that she had similar vibes as myself. She then started suggesting that she would prefer to interact outside fritolo. I therefore provided her with my email ID and then we started communicating via Yahoo. One thing led to another and we were soon chatting on Yahoo messenger whenever we found the other online.

She told me that she was a divorcee and that she had been subject to great turmoil during her marriage. She also told me of her children as well as her interest in serving the cause of differently abled children and their integration into the main stream of society. Being a NGO professional myself, I used to discuss the problems that we faced in the implementation of development programmes and the answers to the same. She appeared to be single, footloose and fancy free while appearing to be enjoying herself thoroughly. On the face of it she appeared to be a mere popularity seeker attempting as it were to win a popularity contest.

Daphne had many friends within fritolo but notable among them were two ladies whom I used to call Chief Justice and Tweety Bird. They had a special bonding amongst themselves and used to address themselves with a synonym used for siblings. While Chief Justice was a big yap who considered herself to be a senior amongst fritoloites – a rather childish notion – the other lady, named Tweety Bird was a decent type and a good friend of mine. She was a bit naïve in a girlish sort of way though she was the mother of two children and was charmed by the attention of so many people for she did not realize how cheap and vicious people could be on the internet.

Chief Justice was merely an agony aunt who would reach out to people as if she were concerned but was more of a gossip monger than a strong dependable shoulder to cry upon. She enjoyed probing into the lives of others on fritolo and tried to extract dark secrets from them even when there were none. I suspect she got an orgasmic kick out of washing other people’s dirty linen in the webosphere. Together the three made a veritable team and they kept mocking or playing the fool with the men on fritolo who went running behind these women like cattle that had not tasted fodder for weeks on end.

It was during one of our chat sessions when we were talking about ourselves and our dreams and ambitions that Daphne suddenly popped the question, “Shall we run away to the Kumbh Mela and vanish?” I was astounded by her question for in spite of all my bluster and big talk I am basically a very old-fashioned guy who is rather formal with women. I was quite taken aback by her question and tried to cover up my embarrassment by replying that the Kumbh Mela occurred only once in twelve years and that she could not do so even if she wanted to; for it was not yet time for the Mela. Not knowing what to do and still feeling the discomfiture resulting from her making such a bold pass at me, I mumbled my excuses and wound up the chat session.

I did not chance upon her online for the next couple of days since I was a bit preoccupied with a small freelancing assignment that I was bidding for. It was on the third day that I happened to open my yahoo mail account to check the backlog of mail that I found her online. She pinged me with a Hi and we got talking again.

During the course of the chat session in response to something that I said she replied that, she and her husband were planning to do something or other. I was taken aback for just three days ago she had said she was single and had also suggested running away to the Kumbh Mela. I was unable to digest this information and immediately asked her to clarify what she meant by her husband. I could sense the hesitation on her part for she had rather unwittingly and inadvertently blurted out something that she had not intended to.

On further probing she told me that she had recently re-married someone whom she had met on fritolo and that they had been keeping the marriage under wraps for the past month since the guy she had married this time was also married and was having some problems in getting rid of his first wife. She also told me that she and her newly married second husband had been on a honeymoon to a city in South India famous for its Silicon Valley connections and had stayed there in the house of the Chief Justice.

I felt terribly let down and betrayed. I had not had even the slightest intention of flirting with her but had simply enjoyed her friendship and jokes which served to drive away my loneliness in Delhi. It did not matter to me that she was a married woman but what mattered was her lying to me after having behaved like a friend and as if she had no secrets to hide from me. Being a stickler for honesty and truth I abruptly cut the line and sat there brooding over the kind of people who existed of fritolo and the lack of even a single genuine friend whom I could interact with.

That night being rather depressed, I hit the bottle with great gusto while trying to post blogs as well as read posts of other friends and commenting upon them. That night I happened to come across a post by another friend who was a ‘male bovine’ from Chennai and had posted a piece on the nature of contemporary women. In my inebriated state I felt a rush of blood to my head as I commented on his post and asked him to check with Daphne about women who though married posed as unmarried on fritolo.

I then went to bed and completely forgot about the incident until I opened fritolo later the next day to be greeted by a stinker from Daphne about my betraying her trust and having spoken ill of her. I did not know whether to laugh or cry for here was the person who had lied to me: had betrayed the very bond of friendship and was now accusing me of betraying the very trust that she had betrayed.

I guess most people in today’s world behave this way. They do not realize their own mistakes and lies but accuse the person who has been lied to of betraying their trust. I do not know what trust these liars are talking about.

Coming back to our story Daphne became hostile to me and did not even message me for the next couple of months. It was quite some time later that she happened to comment on one of my posts and also apologized for her having misled me. In response I too apologized for my having responded to her lie with a sort of knee jerk reaction in the form of a sarky comment on ‘male bovine’s’ post.

Daphne then told me that her second marriage had been a big disappointment and her second husband had cheated her by claiming to be divorced from his first wife while in reality he had not divorced her at all. The thought that came to me at that moment was of a Black Widow weaving its dangerous web.

As I stayed longer on fritolo I developed friendships with many men and women who later brought me more gossip about the Black Widow and her flirtatious behaviour with many unsuspecting men. The Black Widow’s existence on fritolo continued for more than a year as she drew many more gullible men into her web. She was known for the games that she created and played exclusively on fritolo exclusively for the benefit of fritoloites until one fine day she went out of her depth and the very people who had claimed to be her closest friends felt victimized by her and disassociated themselves from her.

A couple of months later, I discovered a new profile on fritolo which seemed similar to Daphne’s and shortly thereafter I came to know that it was the same lady who was continuing to lure fresh victims into her web using a new profile.

I am sure the Black Widow continues to hunt for unsuspecting victims in some corner of the virtual world even today. All that I can do is ask the men to beware and not fall for the wiles of the Black Widow of fritolo.