I was in first year of college. She was in the third year. As you all know, I am a super deep person and so, the detailed reasons for seeking an older woman at that point of time in my life are too complicated for even me to grasp completely, let alone the average reader of this blog. However, a simplistic Freudian explanation would be the surfacing of the Oedipus Complex as a result of being away from home for the first time in 18 years that made me reach for a more mature caress than the girls in my class could provide. Anyway, I had been seeking Her, staving off competition from men, some mustached, some not but all of them elder to me. One of my closest (read only) friends at the time was this super nerd, someone who actually made me look like an illiterate male model. Let's call him Sam. So, Sam found this e-card somewhere on the World Wide Web (or maybe his imaginary online girlfriend sent it to him). It was supposed to make women's hearts and knees go cookie doe since it had this obese little champ in pink diapers holding some sort of equally obese, bloody red obscene orb that looked like Hidimbi's heart with some sonnet that would have made Shakespeare blush. Incidentally, these have now evolved to become the display pictures of anti-feminists on Orkut. I thought it was decidedly Gothic, but apparently women couldn't seem to see beyond the pink diapers.
Not having the time to train the messenger pigeons, unlike Bhagyashree, I emailed it to Her, thus playing hard to get and not actually meeting up, unlike mustached and otherwise seniors. Then there was the waiting period, like a nervous expectant father when his wife goes into labor, or the more relatable scenario of waiting for your classmate to email you the individual project in the nerve-wracking few minutes before the submission deadline. Checking my email had become way more draining than checking my board exam results online just the previous year. My roommate was disbarred from using our land line to order a late night pizza, but much like in Antonioni's films, nothing happened.
Three days had passed. I was beginning to seriously consider gifting a razor to one of the girls in my class for her upper lip as a backup option when it arrived. Naked, unflinching, and composed in the harsh Plain Text format was Her email. It started off ominously - she said she absolutely ADORED the card. Damn, now I would have to buy Sam lunch, which was just Skittles and Coke really. Focus on the email, Clint (that's what my imaginary friend likes to call me sometimes, as in Eastwood). Experience had taught me to search for that dastardly conjunction in such mails - but. We are very impressed with your application BUT we have already filled our first year seats here at Berkley. Focus, focus! Wait what! You have got to be kiddin' me. Serves me right for listening to that technophile Sam. Incidentally, the email had been too big for our university mail server. So, the server had conveniently broken it down into 13, yes 13, attachments and sent it to Her, and then sent her the original mail anyway. Needless to say, She wasn't very happy with the spam. After than, I got student government orders to never email Her again, not even G rated Sardar jokes in plain text format.
I learned my lesson and stopped hanging out with Sam. The letter V, in my life, has now come to stand for Vendetta against all cherubic little humans holding anatomically misshaped organs. Also, I am very proud of the fact that since then, I have stopped using technology of any kind to show my love for the fairer sex and have thus gotten rejected only in person each year on February 14, sometimes even by different people on the same day.
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