An American Girl, A Mofussil Accountant And Ganesh Chathurthhi!

The year was 1998. Internet had come for the first time to Madurai. We got a Net connection in our office at an exorbitant cost – Rs.60 per hour.

I used to have mail IDs in various sites and would be chatting with unknown persons across the world in Yahoo Chatrooms.

It was there I met this girl. Let’s call her Helen. She was from Michigan, USA. She was hardly 18 and was deeply in love. I don’t know what made her look up to me for counsel. She started confiding in me, almost everything that was happening in her hectic life.

I had been an academic nerd all my life. I grew up in a city which insists on a gap of at least a mile between men and women. I had never been in a co-ed college.

Yes, I was married and had a daughter. But the kind of the premarital relationship the girl was trying to describe was beyond my ken.

‘Why did you choose me of all the persons roaming in the net?’ I asked her.

‘You’re 40. Live half way across the globe. There’s no way you can blackmail me after the incident as you don’t even know my first name.’

Smart girl.

Then I decided to help. I started thinking about her problem. My analytical mind stepped in at first.
What was her basic problem?

To what extent of physical intimacy can I go in a romantic relationship?

I started thinking about her problem. If she let her boy friend have whatever he wanted she might be looked down as an ‘easy lay’.

If she held back everything her boy friend might seek those denied pleasures elsewhere. It’s a classical damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.

My analytical brain sharpened by more than 23 years of exposure to education and training let me down.

At that time I had not even started to write. Sridhar was there. Varalotti was yet to be born.

And then one day the answers for Helen’s questions came rushing to me.

The next time she came in a private chatroom in yahoo I shared my insights with her.

“Helen, do you love your boy friend?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he love you?”

“Oh, sure.”

“When you are struggling hard to express your love, when hand holding, hugging and kissing could not convey the love buried deep in your heart, when he is also in the same boat, whatever you feel like doing is fine. Provided it does not hurt you.

I am not limiting the area of exposure or defining the act of physical intimacy. I am concerned about what’s behind it.

If it’s love then anything is okay. But if there is no love, even letting him touch you is a grave sin.”

After that day Helen gradually stopped coming to me for counsel. Did I go beyond my limits?

A year later there was a crisp mail from her. She had moved to the Eastern Coast with her boy friend. ‘That counsel helped me adopt a healthy attitude towards sex, Sri. Thanks.’

This insight into a woman’s mind helped me write my first short story which appeared in Vikatan in May 1998.

Yesterday an ILite sent a message saying that it was difficult to believe that the story was written by a man.

But why should I talk about all these things on this auspicious day? Have I gone nuts? Not yet.

Today any pooja involves a lot of rituals. In some houses the Ganesh Chathurthi Pooja lasts for two, three hours. Should I be a part of that ritual or not, people keep asking me.

I remember Helen and rephrase the advice I gave her.

“If you are in love with God you can do anything. A ten-hour Pooja, an elaborate Yagam, fasting, all night vigil, anything. It has to be an expression of your love.

But if you don’t feel the love in your heart, doing a ritual for an ulterior motive is as heinous a sin as buying sex for money. Don’t ever do that.”

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!