Also available in the blog section
http://www.sajha.com/guild/read.cfm?guildid=542 PART1: Once upon a time, in the land of Chai Latte and Laptop
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I've dated Miss Sajha. You might think that's an absurd claim to make as no such pageant exists to confer that title. Or that I have elephantitis of the ego, or worse, suffer from delusions of grandeur about dating the most beautiful woman on Sajha. The truth is Miss Sajha was the name I gave a girl I once met on Sajha. I'll explain in a moment why and how it all happened. Before I do that, allow me to cover a sensitive part of my anatomy and dole out the standard legalese about all characters being fictional and any resemblances to anyone being divinely coincidental and my writing venture being covered by the limited liability act of 1836.
In the hopes that that will make me unworthy of a law suit, here's how it started : with a Chai Latte and a laptop. We were both posters on Sajha those days, she much more regular and active than me. I had recently graduated, had a job lined up thanks to the placement services of my university, and was waiting, unemployed and bored, at home for my work permit. I would drink several cups of what I called Chai Latte (Nepali Chiya with cardamon and ginger served in a Starbucks Chai Latte mug that I got as a graduation gift) and surf Sajha on my newly acquired Dell laptop which I figured I'd need at my new job. I'd typically start around nine or ten in the morning and hang out on Kurakani, Trivia and the general chat room till past mid night. It still amazes me how much I could chat those days. I admit I did not have much of a life outside of Sajha at that time. My roommates had moved out, I wasn't too close to many of my classmates, and the few people I knew well at that time had also moved on to new places and new lives.
She had written a provocative article on Kurakani. For purposes of protecting her identity and my bank account from trial lawyers, we'll say she wrote a piece titled "Where have all the Nepali Bachelors gone?". The topic immediately caught my attention and I clicked on the link to the article. I was the 347th person to view it and would be the 10th to reply. What happened next is what inspired me to write this story.
Beautifully written and intricately presented in her article was this idea that Nepalese women had overtaken men in education and achievement and had to look to other communities for boyfriends and husbands. Interesting I thought. I had been doing the same when it came to girls. Well, not really, but that's what I wanted to think at that moment. This girl must be one of those who just hates men I thought. I should stay away from such people I told myself. But being me, my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know more about her. So I posted a comment on her thread and waited see if she would bet back with an answer other than "thanks for posting" or the likes.
Reply she did. And then I did. And then she did. And then I did again. It went on like that for a while. The thread repeatedly showed up at the top of Kurakani for an entire day and a half. By the end of the first day, there were a thousand views. Which must have been a record because I've had a hard time getting even five hundred views on many of my stories and of those five hundred , a full hundred is usually me repeatedly hitting the refresh button. The funny thing is we weren't fighting or even arguing in all those posts. In fact, at the end of the conversation, we realized we hadn't talked at all about the topic at hand ,and as happens on so many other Sajha threads, we had had a scintillating conversation that was totally off-topic.
Our blossoming acquaintance was abruptly cut short by the 20 post limit that existed back then. I was bummed. I had every reason to be. It was my turn to reply to a brilliant rhetorical question she had posed and not replying right away might have looked like as though I had been stumped by her last comment. Which was far from the case and I didn't want anybody, especially her, to think that.
So I decided to email her. I clicked on the Email link next to her user name and a few minutes later I had sent my first email via Sajha. Half an hour later, I received my first inbound Sajha email. That wasn't the first email she sent via Sajha by the way. She had been on the site far longer than I had and being an intelligent and friendly girl, her mail box was full of "Sent via Sabai Nepaliko Sajha.com" emails. Back in those days, that's how Sajha mail was labeled when it was delivered to your inbox.
Like so many other Internet romance stories you must have heard, ours too started with a simple "Hi, how are you?" email and progressed pretty rapidly as the days went by. When email could not keep pace with our incessant back and forth, and when Microsoft threatened to suspend my account because it thought I was spamming people by sending out so many emails in a single day, we found ourselves on each other's MSN friends lists.
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PART 2: The first chat
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"Hi Miss Sajha" I typed into the dialogue box on MSN messenger when I saw her online for the first time. I don't know why I said that. It might sound cheesy now but at that time, that was the first and only thing that came to mind. I have never been good with pick up lines. If I could be granted a wish, it would be that guys didn't have to use pick up lines to start a conversation with girls. Somehow the conversation would just start magically and effortlessly.
"What????????????????" came the reply with an icon suggesting my humor was not up to the mark. I'm peeved when people use a bunch of question marks to do what a simple and visually more pleasing exclamation mark can do. Annoyed, I let it pass as one of those "woman things" that I might not fully understand.
"Hi" I typed and clicked on one of the more affable smileys. I knew I had blown it. What a dumb thing to say I immediately thought. Suddenly I didn't feel like talking to her. She is going to make toast out of me I feared. She is one of those who likes to make fun of men and will make me feel foolish I thought. I was going to make some small talk and say bye at the first opportunity.
Or maybe not. She replied with a smiley that seemed to suggest she was now grinning. I grinned too. I put that grin into a smiley and sent it to her.
I hopped onto Google to search for "cool pickup lines". After going through some of the results Google showed me, which were totally cheesy and tacky to say the least, I didn't feel as bad at what I had written. If I were a girl and going on a date meant having to hear the absurd things Answers.com suggested, I 'd prefer to die an old maid and never date than be picked up by lines like that.
But I am glad I Googled. Because one of the search results was an article about how pickup lines are overrated and there are so many things, persistence included, that really work on a girl. Just be a nice guy with a decent sense of humor the article suggested.
That article was right. Persistence paid off. A few minutes and sentences later I had her laughing at my comments and the jokes I had lifted off Sardarjee.com.
She asked "Are you always like this?" perhaps signaling tacit approval of every thing I had said up until then. I was elated but didn't know how to react. So I did what I normally do when in doubt: reply with a simple smile. That emoticon surely must rank as one of mankind's cleverest inventions as it allows you to say something without really saying anything.
At the end of the first conversation, we said "Bye", "take care", "keep in touch", "see you around", "talk to you soon" , "nice talking to you" and a few other pleasantries implying that we were interested in chatting again. It was the longest goodbye I had ever bid anyone in my life.
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Part 3: Coffee in Los Angeles
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After you chat with a person for a while, which in this case was about three months, there develops this urge to have coffee with them. Even if you are not a coffee drinker. In our case, there was a slight logistical problem though: we separated by 3000 miles of the contiguous United States. But nothing commercial aviation and my hard earned dollars waiting tables and busing dishes in an Indian restaurant could not solve. I hopped on a Southwest flight from La Guardia to Burbank. It was a long way to go for coffee. Not to mention that it would probably be the most expensive cup of coffee I would ever have had but what have I to loose I reasoned to myself. Best case, I meet a nice girl; worst case, I'll take a picture in the Hollywood Hills with the "Hollywood" sign in the background and send it back to my friends in Nepal.
You can't get around without a car in Los Angeles. Which worked just fine for me because I didn't own a car in New York those days and was thrilled at the opportunity to drive a nice rental. The dare-devil in me wanted to go for the Hummer. That would be a turn off I quickly figured. The gallons-per-mile the Hummer would give would not be something that Miss Clean-Green-Eco-Friendly-Prius-driving-Sierra-Club-PETA-contributing environmental activist (that's the impression I got) would approve of. I might as well have showed up on her doorstep in an M-1 Abram tank as far as she would be concerned. Besides the Hummer was an ugly vehicle that did not fit my budget. I settled for a Mustang convertible. By merely considering the Hummer for 5 seconds, I secured my bragging rights about how I almost rented a Hummer in LA once. Just like my friend Rishab back in New York who used to brag he had been to Switzerland because of the 6 hours in transit he spent in Zurich.
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Part 4 : Message sent: Landed in LA, checking into La Quinta Inn
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I am not the nervous type of person. You know the type that feels weak in the knees or tongue tied when meeting a special person for the first time. I had to keep reminding myself of that. But for some reason, my palms were sweating. It had nothing to do with nervousness and everything to do with the muggy LA weather and the air conditioning not working properly in my hotel room. The thermostat showed 64 degrees Fahrenheit but I figured in LA, you could sweat at 64 degrees. After all, in no two spots in the world do people sweat at the same temperature. Isn't that what the "six degrees of separation" theory was about? That the same person sweats at least six degrees apart in two different places?
Ok, I was clutching straws and needed to come out of my denial. So yes I was a bit anxious. But nervous, no way! . So what? Nothing a nice shower could not fix. I trimmed my nasal hair, clipped my nails again and took a nice long shower. I was dressed in Calvin Klein jeans and an Express T-shirt with a lion on its hind legs stamped on the left side.
I gain a lot of confidence when I look at myself in the mirror. I wont hold it against you if you think I am a narcissist. Back then I was very self centered and everything was all about me. As the only child in the family, I had never really learnt to share or care much and the whole world revolved around me. No wonder I had been such a failure at having lasting relationships. As you will find out during the course of this story, I have come a long way since and the relationships I got into, including this one, had a lot to do with it.
That slick designer-clad person staring at me in the mirror boosted my self confidence enough for me to pick up the phone. I had her on speed dial and I called her as planned before I left the hotel. We had been talking on the phone for two weeks then.
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Part 5: Miss Sajha
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I reached Yamashiro, an Asian-American fusion restaurant in Hollywood 10 minutes before 7. The restaurant had been recommended by one of my cousins who used to live in LA. He was a man of expensive tastes and I made sure I carried an extra credit card to be on the safe side. The reservations were under my name and we had agreed whoever would reach earlier would be seated at the table. I was hoping to get there before she did.
I found her seated at the table in the corner. We had exchanged pictures but she looked somewhat different in person. I smiled, we shook hands and we both put on our best manners asking after each other, the flight, the weather and made all the polite small talk genteel people make. It is funny how when you talk to a person online, you make all these assumptions about their persona. She was an articulate and smart girl and for some reason I associated more aggressive mannerism to go with that. I was pleasantly surprised to see that was not the case. She spoke in a soft voice, much softer than what I was used to hearing on the phone.
She also looked much more calmer and relaxed in person than in her MSN picture. For a brief second, I could have been talking to a stranger. I guess my mind was still trying to reconcile the image that I had built of her online to the reality of what she was really like in every day life.
For a few moments thereafter, I wasn't sure if I really liked her now that I saw what she was like. She wasn't bad looking but she wasn't Angelina Jolie either. For some reason, I felt a girl who could talk and write so well would come with the face of a Hollywood star. Or Bollywood, which had quite a few hot stars too . Yes, that's it, I was, for some odd reason, expecting to meet Preity Zinta.
I got the same impression from her. Perhaps she was expecting to meet a Brad Pitt or a John Abraham. I am not a bad looking person but I don't have a face either that can give the male stars of Holly and Bolly wood a run for their money. If I did, I'd probably be acting out, instead of writing, this story.
Reality was setting in. With every word said, every movement of the body, every glance of the eye we were taking in this new reality that we found ourselves in.
She ordered a Sangria and I a glass of Cabernet-Shiraz.
Sajha dominated the conversation that evening. Back then the leading lights of Sajha were people we don't see much of these days. No one talked about Sajha without mentioning them. Two very talented guys happened to be her favorite posters. I was immediately jealous. I was tempted to say something to pull them down. Except that I couldn't think of anything as I actually liked them up until that point. My better senses prevailed and I let her go on about how witty one was and how sharp the other was. When it was my turn, I talked about two girls who wrote great stories . I looked for the faintest sign of jealousy in her eyes. I couldn't find any. I felt foolish for having let that tinge of jealousy come over me.
Sajha was the topic over the drinks, appetizers and entree. Talking about Sajha helped us reconnect. We started talking about some of the same things we used to talk on MSN like our favorite threads, some of our favorite posters. I guess that was our way of bridging the virtual world with the real one and served to remind us that the person sitting opposite us was the same one we had been chatting with for the last three or four months.
During dessert time, the conversation shifted to travel. Any conversation on a first-date about travel does not go without talk of Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and a few other quaint European cities. So we talked about the left bank and the right bank of the Seine and the Gondolas and all the pot they smoked so freely in the land of the Gouda and clogs.
"Have you ever smoked pot?" she asked the first difficult question of the night
"Once" I lied. OK, may be 5 times in all my life. That too in college where everyone smoked. What's a slight exaggeration on a first date I reasoned and asked her the same question
"No, never" she was speaking the truth as I found out later.
She had not been to Copenhagen and Berlin, which were two cities I recommended and I had not been to Spain and Greece which she in turn recommended. Neither of us had been to Budapest. I don't know what got into me but I told her I might be visiting Budapest that summer and she was more than welcome to come along if she wanted. She laughed it off but did not dismiss the idea. Perhaps I was getting too bold for my first date. I changed the topic to movies.
As the evening wore off, we had covered threads and posters on Sajha, travel, movies, books and authors, a little bit of sports, our families, friends, our school and colleges amongst other things.
She was different from my expectations. The lively, talkative and somewhat aggressive girl I thought I had come to know seemed very calm and almost subdued that evening. Emboldened by the Cabernet, I asked her if everything was okay and told her I thought she was much more conversant on the phone than in person. She replied she was just fine and she was herself.
It was a great conversation over good dinner and I walked away feeling good. I later learned so did she.
We drove our separate ways that evening after dinner.
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Part 6: Centrifugal motion, perpetual bliss, pivotal moment
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Much has happened since that first date a year ago. We both live in San Francisco now. Separately of course. She works with the Diera Club and I with Fun Macro Systems. We get together almost every weekend. This summer we drove up to Napa and Sonoma and down to Carmel, Hearst Castle. We are taking things one day at a time. We don't know yet if there is a future for us together and we are taking our time to figure that out. Neither of us visits Sajha as often these days. She is tied down with a new project and I have been coding a chip that I am told could break new grounds in home comput-ing. We both have huge student loans to pay and expect we need to work extra hard the next couple of years to be stable financially. Her parents recently suggested she get married and she told them she needs three more years to pay off her loans. That's the same thing I told mine.
My phone is ringing. That's her calling. Got to go. It's our "anniversary" today. She probably thinks I forgot. She doesn't know about the reservations I made for dinner tonight. Shhhh, its a surprise.
Thanks for reading.
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