Is technology killing romance?
Alex Hern
Once it was lipstick on your collar that revealed a romance. Now it's your post in your facebook timeline, your chirruping mobile or twitter.
Have we forgotten how to romance?
Prof. Aloke Kumar from India who uses the Facebook timeline as a blog posted a romantic letter on Christmas eve to B from A. The letter entreating B that this is the truth goes on to describe the relation and the barrage of messages:
Your calls and messages give me many things…an aura of yourself, of a different life, of a constant friend. I love you. I know you love me. You said so. I am, to be sure, afraid if you knew me, as an incorrigible romantic, that you wouldn’t love me. But this must be faced…. Thus I am perhaps afraid to reveal facts about things…or to say too much for fear if I make my voice heard, you’ll drift away, remove me from the contact list. Block me in the mailing …and all that. Afraid I guess, that I’ll lose you… In spirit and mind.
Your communication, just like the beginning of autumn started to cavalcade, cascade , cataract.... and then started, it started, to dwindle just like spring approaching when the autumnal leaves stop to fall. Just like it going out of orbit. Your message that you are a sms away did not make sense, as you were not there.....
The readers, as this was a public post, commented wanting to know about other things, the identity of the lady love. One comment notes: I was reading your letter to B or the letter from A to B. Am not sure if it is real or fictional but whatever it is, the content is so tender and beautiful. May 2015 be a wonderful year for both A and B in many ways. especially in the matters of the heart. Love and best wishes to you...
Soon thereafter on December 27th there was another post titled, the Meeting which gave a narrative of a meeting with images and we assume that it was between A and B.
The best part of the post is that it is sheer poetry as one reader has commented. Here is a snap of it: How the miracle of our meeting shone there and sang. I didn't want to return from there to anywhere. But she was wearing the Cinderella shoe. I spoke for a long while. I do not think she was listening to all I said. Passions stifle the situation. Demanding answers. We, my dear, are only souls. At the limits of the world. Few people, when they meet they feel that meeting each other was the purpose of their life.
She is immensely beautiful. Much of it cannot be caught on paper and phone. She is one of those people who, at first sight hit you, attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact she is immensely beautiful. Not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.
These days the mis-sent (or indeed misread) text is still a relatively intimate intimation of an affair, while the notorious "reply all" email is the stuff of tired stand-up comedy. The boundary-less tweet is relatively new – and therefore still entertaining – territory, as evidenced most recently by American model Melissa Stetten, who, sitting on a plane next to a (married) soap actor called Brian Presley, tweeted as he appeared to hit on her.
A 2014 poll announced that six in 10 women would admit to regularly snooping on their partner's phone, Twitter, or Facebook. It is, of course, the paranoia gremlin that is in charge when we snoop – or are snooped upon – by partners, while "trust" is far more easily undermined than it has ever been. The randomly stumbled-across text (except they never are, are they?) is our generation's lipstick-on-the-collar. And while Foursquare may say that your partner is in the pub, is that enough to stop you checking Twitter/ Facebook/ emails/ texts?
Once, it was the lingering hint of a scent that wasn't ours which had us furtively rifling through wallets, handbags and pockets, yet now that the contents of our pockets are blogged and Instagram-ed there are, clearly, far fewer secrets and many more lies.
In this age Prof. Kumar’s open, frank whirlwind of a romance in the timeline of Facebook, with Baisakhi, as we piece in the jig saw puzzle,is a refreshing change and as one of the comments pronounced :
Would be eagerly watching this space expecting an equally literary wonderful reply from B to A, which probably would be a return gift on The New Year's Day. A befitting reply to this Christmas Day communication that probably added a new colour to this Festive Season!
In one of his previous posts Prof. Kumar had declared that: If he was not there in reality, the internet would have created him.
Checking the net we discovered that his poems are not in print or in digital.
He is a poet of the Social network.
Who says technology is killing romance?
Happy New Year