Seven Shades of Grey (3 page)

But not everyone was Marilyn.

It was but natural that I encounter at least one individual who would make me think and re-think the role of the Internet. It was also natural that I meet this individual when I myself was a newborn in cyberspace.

The days that had followed my revelation to my wife were happier. The changed and merrier mood at home was infectious enough to percolate to my work place. I spent quality time working on my formulation, coaxing Miss Universe to make love to me; and every day I seemed to get closer at cracking it, the Miss shedding, slowly undoing, her string bikini. My usage of the Net increased, not because I needed more research but because my excitement at chatting was growing. My wife too had given her silent consent to this, which must have spurred me on to explore this world even more. Ever so often I would meet my faceless friend Marilyn in cyberspace and seriously flirt with her. She responded and gradually we seemed to build trust. I steered clear of the topic of photographs being exchanged, finding out her last name and about the city she lived in. There were times when she would not be online and I would resume my excursions into chat rooms.

I cannot remember the room I was in that particular afternoon nor can I remember what else happened that day. All I can remember is that I encountered an ID that made me think. And think. And think some more.

An id called
beautiful_eyes
entered the chat room. As was a practice with me, I checked her profile. It merely said she was a female. A nameless, ageless, location-less, female! I opened a private message window and greeted her. Within the blink of an eye, she responded.

She asked me the same mundane questions that normally were asked by people in chat rooms: what was my sex, my location, my age, etc. I kept the answers neutral and did not hide the fact that I was chatting from India. She startled me by telling me that she too was from India and chatting from Delhi. It was the first time I met someone who lived in the same country, the same time zone and in a city that I had visited a few times. I told her I was from Bombay.

beautiful
_
eyes
: your profile says you are married and lookin?

The question was innocent enough considering the fact that this was clearly stated in my online profile. I sent her a reply.

VikSin
: yeah looking for friends on the Net … lol

beautiful
_
eyes
: hmm what kind of friends?

VikSin
: a friend to talk to … why?

beautiful
_
eyes
: oh just to talk to?

VikSin
: why do u ask?

beautiful
_
eyes
: hmm just curious… do u come to Delhi a lot?

VikSin
: ok … I do visit Delhi but have not done that in awhile.

beautiful
_
eyes
: sounds good to me, come to Delhi and meet me.

I was startled at her statement but I certainly did not let that creep into my words that I typed to her.

VikSin
: aren’t u a bit forward here … lol

beautiful
_
eyes
: why … r u scared of meeting me?

VikSin
: scared and me? lady u don’t even know me yet … lol one look at my size and I think u will be scared, I used to do weights once upon a time … lol

By this time my curiosity and anger were both aroused.

beautiful
_
eyes
: hmm I like guys that are big built … lol and especially if they are married.

VikSin
: why married guys?

beautiful
_
eyes
: want to see them cheat on their wives … lol

VikSin
: now that is something I have not heard before … lol why do u want them to cheat?

beautiful
_
eyes
: cause guys are hypocrites and would love to take another woman to bed even though they have a wife.

VikSin
: that is not true about all guys.

beautiful
_
eyes
: tell me Vik, u think u would not want a beautiful woman in bed with u even though u are married?

VikSin
: honestly beautiful_eyes, I am way past that now … have had my fair share of women.

beautiful
_
eyes
: so what are u doing here making friends with women? U don’t want to really make it with them?

VikSin
: like I said before beau ... I am way past that … now give me a good mind to talk to not a good body to take to bed.

beautiful
_
eyes
: LIAR!!!

VikSin
: hey, lady u don’t even know me yet and there is nothing that u can base this statement on.

beautiful
_
eyes
: yr a liar vik … if u are not here to take a woman to bed … u are lying about it …

VikSin
: hey listen how can u say that?

beautiful
_
eyes
: cause I know a few married men and they can’t keep their pants on long enough and u are just another one of them

VikSin
: you know I pity u … u do have a warped sense of reality here.

beautiful
_
eyes
: u think so vik? People say I am very good looking … tell u what come to Delhi and tell me that once u see me, u don’t want to roll in the hay with me?

VikSin
: I can tell u that right now, I can get enough flesh in Bombay, don’t need to come to Delhi to try that out.

beautiful
_
eyes
: scared of me vik? Tell u what, if u honestly tell me that u want to take me to bed, I will let you …

VikSin
: forget it beau ... guess u still living in a warped world … I have heard some weirdos from Delhi log on and I guess u are one of them.

beautiful
_
eyes
: u scared of saying yes vik?

VikSin
: I am not scared of anything

beautiful
_
eyes
: do I scare u? I have really beautiful eyes, lovely hair, and a lovely face classical aryan looks, am sure u would like that vik… am told I am really great in bed too

VikSin
: I really am not interested beau. Guess I will go now, thanks for chatting

beautiful
_
eyes
: running away already? Don’t worry I am in Delhi so wont come and bite u.

VikSin
: nope lady not running away from anything but don’t want to talk to a person as warped as you, bye

I was angry. There was no other emotion that possessed me; anger was it. I switched off the modem severing my umbilical cord with cyberspace. I sat back and stared at the chat module still sitting on my computer screen, dead as a doornail now, the root of my anger when it was alive. It still had a menacing tentacle reaching out to me by its mere presence on the screen. In disgust I switched off my computer and leaned back in my high back chair, seeking comfort in its soft and familiar contour, not like this creature that had hit on me venomously on the Net. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

*

The clock in the waiting room seems to be lost to me. It just seems to move like a pregnant ox, torturously slowly. The barbers‘ refuse still adorns the table in front of me, my ample buttocks having made a comfortable contour in the hospital-smelling, antiseptic-reeking, artificial-leather chair. The air conditioning is the only thing playing to par making my life in the room a little more bearable. My eyes continue to will the door to open and me to be initiated into the unfamiliar lodge of ‘daddyhood’. Nothing happens and I am not angry today, as I was angry that day. I remember I had closed my eyes to understand why I was angry just as I shut my eyes now, to relearn what had fired my emotions that day.

*

A couple of minutes of shuteye in the cool walls of my office and my rage started to abate. Rationality tried to edge anger out of my mind.

Why was I angry?

Was it because I was accused of being a cheat? I had been accused of many things in my life and yet never was I this angry. Then what was it?

Was it because I was appalled at an Indian woman accusing me or was it an Indian woman hitting on me? It could play some part in the anger but could not be the root cause of it.

In the past, there had been just Marilyn that I had chatted with. Before her only guys seem to chat and that too only those who were as ignorant as I was about the Internet. The few women that I did get to chat with went scurrying for cover as soon as I mentioned India. All of them had been from the West, mostly the States. I guess it made sense that they look for people closer to home to chat with. Whatever their reasons, I just did not get to chat with women for very long before they politely or impolitely left the chat with me, Marilyn being the honorable exception. And now here was this creature I merely knew as beautiful_eyes. That was the difference! I felt my pet emotion getting ready to flirt with me.

Confusion!

This time I was in no mood to flirt. I dismissed all thoughts about the chat and plunged headlong into my work and stayed there for the rest of the day. That evening I got home and discussed it with my confidant and advisor, Dolly.

When I told her about beautiful_eyes, she laughed it off saying that someone was merely using the Net to mess my mind. I just did not buy the explanation but I did keep my mouth shut about it.

Later that night, while smoking my post-dinner cigarette, my mind wandered back to the chat with beautiful_eyes. I forgot about the actual incident and focused on the issues that had raised their ugly heads earlier today. A woman who believes that all married men cheat on their wives cannot be an isolated instance. It made me think.

Do all married men do that?

I had never cheated on Dolly although a few opportunities had crossed my path. What is this desire that possesses a man to have sex with a woman, with every sari or skirt that happens to swish by? All women are basically the same when their clothes are off, barring the change in their breast size, I guess. And yet men cannot seem to get enough of them. At just 34 was I getting old and senile or was something else happening to me?

I turned to the book I was currently reading, written by a Western doctor who, while living in India, had been exposed to a few mystics.

‘Sex is the gift of God and its basic function is procreation. On a higher plane, for humans it is a tool to connect to the Supreme Maker’, he wrote.

On the Internet the first thing one comes across is the literally thousands of sites devoted to sex
,
some more explicit than others. A quick look at the visitor’s counter, located at the bottom of the page, usually gives a five-digit – and in some cases even six-digit – figure reading. This means that a lot of people visit these sites. It is true that, as a teenager and one who spent his late teens in the States, I was fascinated with pornography. The twenty-odd women who had crossed my path taught me a lot about understanding the mind within the sexy body.

I remembered that the first few articles written about the Net in its early days focused on its sexual content. Pornography was the first subject that got people hooked on to the Net. For the first time a human being could sit in front of a machine and play out his or her fantasy. There were interactive sites, which only got more explicit with time. From free access as a subscription was added the sites became money-spinners for the popular ones. The evolution of sex on the Net was fast-paced and furious.

The women who came in and then went out of my life – long before I logged on the Internet – had broken a lot of conventional barriers in my mind. The biggest barrier that came crashing down was the one about a woman’s virginity. A woman that I almost married while still finishing my Masters Degree in the States had lost her virginity almost six years before she met me. She had lived with her boyfriend for a few spring breaks and had definitely had sex with him. It was hard for me, coming from an orthodox Indian background, to accept this fact. But then the love I had for those green eyes (yes she had green eyes) was so overwhelming that everything else did not matter. It is another story that she left me after a relationship of two years. She is still single and I wonder why! I guess it is her life and she knows best.

So why this obsession with sex?

Was I breaking another barrier here?

In my quest to find out who I was, I had been reading some revolutionary writers and had been trying to understand what their words meant to me. As I read, the cobwebs in my mind started disappearing. Sex is like any other desire. Hunger, greed and envy are close relatives of sex, in the fact that they are all nothing but types of desire. This woman who was only known to me as beautiful_eyes was a completely new phenomenon to me. Convention dictated that men were aggressive and always tried to lead. But here was a woman, using technology at its best, and aggressively hitting on me. Women were starting a new revolution whose effect would be more than the liberation movement of the Seventies. A woman could now sit in the security of her home and still scramble someone’s brain thousands of miles away, across geographical locations, cultural boundaries and political demarcations. Technology was coming of age and there was no way that I would remain a passive bystander.