Face(book) is the index of the mind!

     "In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."

     "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

     "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

    Three decades back, my uncle got married to my aunt. A couple of years down the line; they found my aunt’s cousin to be a nice, responsible young man and introduced him to my uncle’s youngest sister. They were married before long and they hardly knew each other. My mom was 18 and my dad close to 30.

     Fast forward twenty eight years. My brother met my sister-in-law after everyone else in our family had met her. They spoke for 10 minutes the first time around, got engaged the second time they met, and had shared their wedding vows within 6 months from their first meeting. Common factors? Plenty. The trend was set. And I was next in line.

     For those who don’t know me well enough, I’m the party pooper. I have not lived up to the expectations of my elders (remember those filmy dialogues, “beta thou shall follow my footsteps” – sure I will, but I’ll wear my own shoes and walk a different line). My mom was always worried that I would end up marrying someone from outside the community. And I gave her enough heart burns with my antics. Not that I intended to do it, but you never know, right? I wanted to marry someone after spending enough time knowing them. I wanted to end the trend, of getting married to the one my uncles/aunts/cousins/neighbours chose.

     And then it happened. When I least expected it. I added her on my Facebook friends list without knowing that it would change my life forever. Off the 500+ friends in my list, she was just another one. I had met her before at family gatherings and knew that we were related (clause: If Mallu A related to Mallu B, all mallus are related). But nothing more than that (in the background I could hear the song from Mohabbatein, on the violin).

     I still remember our initial conversation. I asked her if she had watched Dev-D. She blushed. I wasn’t embarrassed (Rule 1 in flirting; be downright shameless). And then the romance began. We built our farms next to each other (on Farmville, of course!) and sent each other chickens and goats. We poked each other and had pillow fights (we got to choose the pillows, totally love the options), fought her brother from the same side of the mafia and kept beating each other’s score on brain buddies till the time we got bored. She also put me to work on her café and I returned the favour. Sud-Suddenly we realized that our data and functions had been encapsulated in love and would remain like that forever. Our life on a social networking site was being downloaded into reality, and there was no firewall to stop us.

     Talk about love stories and perfect endings. We might not be the perfect couple, but we are better off than most others. 30 years back it might have been a crime to fall in love without your parents’ permission. Today my parents write on her wall and we get tagged in family photos. If Facebook hasn’t changed your life, hard luck! It surely has changed mine.

     “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning