"Project Arin, a mystery". It was a blog about a search for an old friend, which the author had undertaken, leaving intricate details of the process in her blog. The author had detailed the painstaking effort of trying to locate me from the minimalistic of information available to her and she had succeeded.
She knew almost everything about me, my family, my friends, my university, my home address, my likes and dislikes.. and even about Emaan.
Kind of private information like this can give anyone creeps of their lives. My very first reaction was to delete my orkut profile, which had been the initial source of leak. But I knew it was a bit late.
I rushed back home and went back to reading the blog and surprisingly, enjoyed it a lot.
Who doesn't love a story featuring oneself. The blog also mentioned a friend of hers, who had been trying to track me since early 1994 and had asked the author to help him out in the search. The plot thickened by every passing post. Finally, when I almost reached the end of the story, It abruptly ended. Mr X, my so called reminiscent lover chose to move on and retreat from my life. So close and yet so far, and the project Arin closed. That was exactly 2 years from now, when the post was written.
Imagine when you read about a boy deeply in love 17 years from now, you initially reject it as mere infatuation but what amazed me was his persistence that kept his search alive for the next 14 years before he finally gave up.
My life had always been the normal, nothing-so-greatly exciting ordinary type. My dad worked for a major oil PSU and he would keep on shuffling cities and me and my family would follow. Each new place came with its own set of people, friends and experience. I tried hard to recollect who the boy in the story was. I kept reading back the "Barauni experience" that he mentions but 17 years is a really long time to remember. I soon gave up and c'mon one shouldn't blame me for being insensitive. That comes with the ageing process and well, one really can't help it. Right?
However, I did remember the limited correspondence that I had with a some Rhea Kapoor, who buzzed me more than once on orkut. I didn't reply back as I felt she was a joke being played on me by my college friends. Now things seemed clearer. As I started connecting the lose ends, I also had a concern at the back of my mind.
I was getting married next week.What if Emaan or someone else had also read the blog. What would people think? How would Emaan react? What would the society say?
Just as I juggled through these questions, I remembered, I had to catch a flight the next day to Kolkata where the marriage preparations had started. I quickly turned off my computer and went to sleep.
8 years ago