SITTING erect and tense before the silver screen of his P4 PC, he was watching the silver bar moving back and forth on the bottom left corner ... come on man come on ... don’t take so long. His muscles were all stiff, eyes fixed on the blinking signals and fingers were placed on the keyboard, ready to type the next command. His face was hard and red with sparkling droplets of sweat on the newly grown whiskers, and tightly closed lips showed the inward anxiety. ‘You have two new mails’ ... as soon as the massage appeared his heart started beating hard. The most desired thing had appeared. ‘Out of two, one should be hers,’ he said to himself with clenched teeth, and clicked, ‘go to inbox’, but had to wait again. He closed his eyes but could not keep them shut for more than a second and opened them the very next moment. Damn it! He hit the table with his fist and leaned back in his chair disappointed. None of the mail was sent by her. One was from some strange place and the other one was a forwarded message by one of his cousins living in Canada. He opened her last mail sent 13 days back of two kb only, which he had read more than 13 times. God, why didn’t she write to me?
He could not understand his own feelings. He did not know what to do. He did not want to see anybody that moment. Hearing his mother calling, he pulled the plug out without switching off the computer properly, and jumped onto his bed. The door opened with a slight creaking sound and the mother peeped in and found him in bed. She stepped inside, switched off the light and gently placed his dangling hand on bed. His room was dark when she closed the door and went away.
Doesn’t she care for me? Doesn’t she know how madly I wait for her mails? What’s this? God. What’s this? When he logged on, his anxiety was at its peak. On a daily basis, even twice or thrice a day, he got connected with the hope she might have sent him a mail. She might appear online. And when nothing such happened, he felt like destroying everything that was in his sight.
He was 15 years and seven months old. It was his first experience of any such situation. All he wanted was to keep looking at her all the time, talk to her. If she’s not around, she should send him mails, he thought. He would be talking about her with somebody or the other all the time. Those days, his heart and mind could not focus on any other thing. He could not concentrate on his most favourite pastimes. And the seriousness of the situation can be gauged from the fact that he was not even glued to his TV to watch Euro Cup football matches, something he never missed. But what was the fuss all about? Who was she?
Here is the real story. He was doing his O’levels and she was a newly appointed teacher in his school. He thought she must be a fresh M.A because she did not seem to be more than 22 or 23 years old and had been appointed in the junior section. But she was much older than him. He did not know how he got attracted to her. Within no time he had developed so much fondness for her that he started to hang around near the teachers’ lounge just to catch a glimpse of her.
That’s what happened with Ali and its effect lasted for more than two years. He could not forget the charisma of that teacher. Unfortunately, it was not only the problem of the 16-year-old Ali, a 14-year-old girl also harboured the same affection for her 29-year-old computer teacher. Twenty-one-year old Danish had the same feelings for his course mate of his own age. Another 19-year-old girl was in love with her 45-year-old male teacher. There are numerous such examples that can be quoted here, but that would take the real issue to a different place.
This kind of attraction to members of opposite sex can be placed along a continuum to see what causes it. In our Pakistani social set-up, we can use a ‘hypothetical continuum’ for the kind of categorization whose two extremes are infatuation and love marriages. The middle stages are fondness, inspiration, adoration, devotion and fidelity, which also lead to a love marriage. But very few people can climb this steep cliff. From 60 to 95 per cent people stop at the fourth camp down the summit, which is the ‘adoration stage’. If the feelings are reciprocal, the relationship is likely to move on to the next stage. But if it is an unrequited crazy type of feeling, the heart pangs are likely to continue as long as the ‘beloved’ is in sight. After his or her exit from the scene, the ‘love’ victim may take one month to two years to come out of the heartbreaking situation. Somehow you get adjusted to life in some days, and suddenly you find another heartthrob around you. You get lovesick again. You start seeing the face of your beloved everywhere.
Once you have been through all these stages, you get settled in life, gain experience, maturity and wisdom. Probably you get married and do not even bother to look back at the things you have done in your life at some time, perhaps because of immaturity, impatience, natural instinct or because of any such reason. You do not care any longer for your once most prized treasure. The mail in your inbox and outbox, a pink colour pen with a red heart swinging inside, a birthday invitation, some ‘I miss you’ and ‘I believe in you’ cards, some pebbles collected together and probably some photographs of your beloved, don’t any longer mean anything.
And some more years down the line, nobody waits. Everything is at its place. There are only some cherished possessions, still suspending somewhere in mind, shining and sparkling like dust particles of a ray of light coming into a room through a hole, which dazzles the beholder for a moment but when you try to catch it, you get nothing. Only this attempt disturbs the order of a harmonized universe.
