via SMS

Love, romance- they all sound so abstract. I don’t really know what acting coy is but I do know how to SMS. Poems, feelings and emotions are but “text” to me and colorful umbrellas and chocolates and soft big teddy bears are but my SMSs. SMSs are my white doves, with those “messages” tied to their legs with bright shiny strings, they are my electronic love letters, a royal way to flirt which even kings could not device!
It all started one day when we became good friends and I gave her my mobile number! She SMSed that eventful night! I had watched a wretched movie that evening; we discussed over it. Then when it was late night she sent her last SMS “GN TC.. SD” (roughly decoded as Good Night Take Care Sweet Dreams). Bells started to ring, songs commenced, sea waves and happiness flooded me! That night, my dreams had me running, hand in hand with her, across lush green meadows and rose gardens. Spring had come in my life! Then came that phase of my life- the sleepless-nights’ era. Whole night the light from my mobile phone will be flickering, “sending, sent, delivered” or “message received, text reply”. Those SMSs made me happy, they made me cry. They were riddles, anecdotes, wishes, both personally crafted and typed or carefully selected forwards. Day and night, train, buses, classrooms or the street- any time any where, her SMSs were expected. Those bad networking problems did trouble me but I kept my expectations alive, and my expectations kept me alive!
Calendar pages flipped, days and months went by and we continued SMS flirting. We grew SMS close. “buddy” replaced “hey”, “dear” replaced buddy, and I replaced dear with “sweetie”! We even started giving those odd timing missed calls! My SMSs started to mean so much to me that I never ever realized the need to actually meet her up, outside classes or outside the college, not even once! It did not flash my mind even once that people actually get really shy and coy during the actual flirting. I was proud (and rather safe), literally, to be into such encounters where shame and logic are areas of less concern. But those silly ideas did get my sleepless nights more sleepless. Are we ever going to express ourselves, face to face, verbally in some one-on-one conservation? Are we really serious? Whatever was the reasonable case, we were both enjoying it intensely (at least I was!). The only thing in SMS flirting is that you really tend to act and become like the person you were always jealous of. Looks tend to take a back seat! You tend to act out a lot because in reality you can never find out what the other person’s doing when she tells she is really missing you. It could be a roughly fake thing to say as you never know what the expressions at the other end are. But then again, this risk is everywhere; the butcher might tell the previous night’s meat as instant-fresh with that big innocent smile on his face, you can never really tell what is in a person’s head. It is just so that that risk is a bit more in case of SMS romance. What is (my) life without risks?
Soon came autumn and along followed winter. Those seasons when trees shed their leaves, looking all barren. It was the season of exams when I had to flip through the pages of my books as well, in between the usual typing for my expectations- my SMSs. The mobile company turned hostile. They cancelled on the plans of free SMSs. I was charged for keeping my life alive with my expectations, for being in love! Ah! Damn you cruel, business-minded corporate world! Why on earth was I shown the way to SMS love if you had to cut my throat in the process? I was one of those pilots whose plane hit a crazy loitering eagle up above the sky on his first day of flight! I was like that treasure hunter who went lost in the sahara desert because his careless caretaker lost the compass! I was a ship. Half sunk in the ocean water and waiting for itself to float up, once few passengers jumped into the water. I was all of those syndromes you could use to describe hopelessness and helplessness! But my expectations kept going even costlier and dearer to me. Those lush green plains and cowboy-settings in my dreams got all extinct. They got replaced by a concrete cubicle- the ATM. I dreamt of cash withdrawals and easy recharging. I still kept my hopes and expectations alive.
Alas! Things had changed. My fate turned me down. She stopped SMSing me! My world came crashing down. Hopes and expectations got badly beaten. Her emotions got dried up in the whole no-more-free-SMSs fiasco. I dearly wished we could continue, in some way at least! Till today, I don’t blame her. It was all due to the ugly mobile corporate who did not consider strangling the lives of all time SMS lovers in their cheap desire of making SMSing pricy. She was innocent. Or at least, I want to reminiscence of her as having sent me all her love, via the SMS!