ELECTRONIC LOVE

                                                                ELECTRONIC LOVE







‘I am going to Madras this Saturday’, I punched the keyboard.

‘This Saturday?’ came the reply from Geetha.

      We had been chatting in the ‘On Lanka’ chat room that day. I met Geetha about a week back when I logged in to On Lanka.com. Since that day, I used to chat with her every evening, after office. She said she was 30 years old.

She was full of smile, entertaining and sounded intelligent.

‘So, Anil, where are you working?’ one day she asked me.

‘I am working in a private company in Colombo, what about you?

‘I am teaching in a down south school’



         We, fast became good friends. She gave me her real name as ‘Geetha’ although she had her user name as ‘Cleopatra’. I went by the name ‘Oedipus’.

         So, Oedipus and Cleopatra became online ‘lovers’.

             Saturday came; I boarded the plane at Katunayake International air port to go to Madras for my training period of one week. It was 7 in the morning when I sat in the plane. We left Katunayake at about 8 a.m. and I enjoyed the view below.

         Slowly, as in a dream, Colombo disappeared. Below us I could see the vast blue Indian Ocean. To my right side, an old lady about 70 sat with a laptop and she was looking for something in her handbag, I noticed. Noticing is my baby! I thought. Cos’ I am a writer. I write what I notice.

         She smiled with me and I too smiled back.

         After a few minutes I started reading Stephen King’s latest short story collection ‘Just after sunset’. I read 3 short stories in the book and saw the stewardess bringing tea and breakfast. I opened my note book after having tea and started chatting with Geetha.



‘Where are you?’ she asked me.

‘Halfway between Sri Lanka and India, dear’ I said pausing to look out of the window.

‘What?’ she sounded surprised.

‘I told you that I would be flying to Madras today?’

‘Oh I forgot it, Anil!’

‘When I come back I’ll come and see you in Matara’ I typed smiling to myself.

         I was much eager to meet her and talk to her in person and to get to know her since I discovered that both us were from Sri Lanka.



‘Do that!’-she sounded like a typical teacher.



In my mind I saw a girl about 30, with a white saree and a bead necklace teaching to Montessori children.

The old lady stopped her writing and helped herself to some tea. She smiled with me again, looking through her glasses. She looks just like my aunt, Sybil, I thought.



‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in Madras shortly, please fasten your seat belts’ the captain announced.

‘But Anil, I will see you soon’ Geetha’s writing popped up in my screen suddenly.

‘How come, I will be gone for a week?’ I typed quickly.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, in 4 minutes we shall be landing…’captain again.

‘No Anil, not in a week, but in Madras, today!’ Geetha’s words shocked me.



Finally we were in Madras.

Through the other side of the plane I could see the airport-a very busy airport. To get a better look of it I angled myself nearer to the old lady and looked down below.

‘Unfasten your seat belts please, thank you for the ride…’

I shifted my glance from the window to my seat belt to unfasten it. In doing so I had a glimpse of the note book that the old lady, Sybil holding.

She was On Line!

She was looking around the plane as if to find someone!

Her screen caught my eyes

It screamed-'in Madras today!’