ASL!!!

Remember the movie you ve got mail of 1998 in which how Tom Hanks (Joe Fox)and Meg Ryan (Kathleen Kelly) fall in love over the internet. It is one of my top 10 list of  romantic movies. When I saw it for the first time ages ago all I wanted  to do at that time was to go log in and search for the love of my life. However that didn't happen so quickly . Cause having PC at home was a luxury those days ..   

When I ended up in chennai after my studies. I was struck in a land of unknown tongue. In between the podum (enough) and venda (don't want) . I didn't have any friends to talk. So I used to chat with my friends from university. I was too illiterate in the world of chatting. Yahoo was a wonderland. I tried exploring , however was scared . What if I press the wrong key and the computer may blow ( that was one of my weird doubts.. Now u know why I call myself illiterate :P )

One day as I was waiting for my friend online all of a sudden a window popped up , Saying hello ! would you like to be my friend? I was not sure who was that person , neither I had any one with that name on my friends list. As a matter of fact I had hardly 4 or 5 contacts on my friends list. A stranger ! ( How come he knows my id ? May be this is what they called chat what people say) With little hesitation I said Hi! only for one reason the name of the user was Dairy Milk. We chatted for sometime and finally I informed him that I was going to leave as my friend who was supposed to come couldn't make it that day. He sent me a friend's request. With a few seconds of hesitation and doubt I quickly accepted his friend's request and logged out.

Later I came to know that the guy named dairy milk was sitting in the same cafe saw me and with the help of network neighbor, he found my email address. His struggle did pay of cause that's how I made found my first chat friend who is my Rakhi brother till date. He introduced me to chat rooms .I chatted for another 6 months. I soon got over the addiction cause by then I ended up with real friends .The outcome of my 6 months chatting is not so bad I found 2 very intelligent and intellectual friends who always used to guide me in my career decisions and 2 caring and loving brothers :) Unfortunately I didn't find the love of my life in this process as I was determined to do like how kathleen did. 

After 7 years I watched You ve got mail on WB and one of katleen's dialouge inspired  me ("Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave?") Its just was my heart's condition. Off late I haven't done anything interesting in my life just because I was scared. So I thought let me be brave and let's try my luck another time, may be who knows, this time I may find the love of my life or I might just increase my friend's list. I downloaded yahoo messenger on my pc, tried recollecting my user name which I 've almost forgot ages ago. Remember how we used to have those fancy and tacky catchy user names.

 I know the world has moved on from yahoo to skype , Orkut to facebook and twitter. I was certain that not many people will use yahoo. With slight ambiguity I entered the chat room. I had to verify a word before getting into a chat room. With uncertain thoughts  I keyed in the word and finally with in a second I was bombarded with several windows almost all the windows with different names asking a similar question ASL! I was taken a back , but then I thought I ve come so far let me try talking to one person..  I ignored all the windows and kept only one open with a user name woke up sid. I found the user name little amusing and interesting.And only decent name among the innumerable windows which popped. ;)

Woke up sid: ASL

Me : lets first say Hi ( ASL??? May be its a new lingo)

Woke up sid: Hi

Me: how are u today? (cant get over my training habits )

Woke up sid : Fine ASL ( What the hell is ASL? Let me ask)

Me: What is ASL????

Woke up sid: Age Sex location (Oh Shucks!!)

Me : Oh But before I reveal my information why don't we talk

Woke up said : how old are you?

Me: LOL! guess you will not give up

Woke up sid: So where are you from?

Me: Chennai

Woke up sid : what is ur name??

Me : Did we not decide we will first talk

Woke up sid : M/F

me : female

Woke up Sid: Are u a virgin?? ( WTF pardon my language but really???)

Shocked and in a sec I was logged out actually it would sound better in my language (Parugo parugu) :P

I was flabbergasted and was abashed. The guy was so determined to know the age sex and locality as if its the only thing that mattered.I felt  I was Old for a moment because the world had moved on from Hi ! would you like to be my friend to ASL . Astonished to find that this generation is not bothered about people and feelings all they care about is ASL!!!

I swore to God and to myself that even if I watch you've got mail 100 times and even if I remain single for the rest of my life, I would never ever enter in the world of ASL!!