Love, Sex and Loneliness At The Time Of Internet

When I watched Aparna Sen’s Parama for the first time, I was just out of my teens. We saw it in one of the theatres in the Bhawanipur, bunking the college but me or neither of my friends could relate to the film much and the only memories we carried back home was that of some brilliant camera work, Rakhee’s hauntingly beautiful face and the bold and intimate bed scenes she had shared with unusually good looking Mukul Sharma.

I watched the same film again a couple of years back, one afternoon, all alone, at home. I could strongly connect to the film this time and tried to understand the character portrayed by Rakhee from a sympathetic point of view. The ‘bold and intimate scenes’, which created a ripple at the time of my first viewing did not appeal to me much any more. The emotional upheaval the woman had to go through, because of the indifference and neglect she had to face from her family and then the camaraderie and the relationship with a younger man, who was also her nephew’s friend, left an impact on my mind.

‘The lonely woman’ syndrome among the wives of workaholic men has been a favourite topic in literature and films over the years. In real life too most women have to perhaps go through that phase at some point of time or other. The husbands, almost all of them, get more and more involved with their work as they start climbing the career ladder and it would be foolish for any woman to expect the same kind of attention she used to get in the pre marriage or the initial post marriage years, forever.

Normally, the women, who do not have their own career to follow, start seeking refuge in their children’s company during and soon they get so involved with the kids that they hardly find any time to miss the lost romance from their day to day lives. One big reason for Charulata’s loneliness, in Tagore’s Nashtoneer, was cited as her being a childless woman,if I remember it well. I think, the real loneliness, in the lives of most women, who do not have a very hectic and involving career to follow, begins only when the children remain children no more.

In most cases today, the children leave their parental home and the home town to pursue their higher studies or jobs. They start managing their own homes along with coping up with the study or job pressures, all by themselves and we actually cannot blame them much, if their priorities keep shifting at that stage.

I have been noticing that among my friends, who are mostly mothers of this particular age group, are falling prey to their sudden loneliness. This also happens to be the age, when we all are going through a big physical and hormonal change, which often leaves an impact on our emotional state of mind. Many of us also have to deal with our parents’ death or their ill health and that too affects our mental wellbeing a lot. Everything when compounded together, we tend to act like a vulnerable lot and more and more, we get distanced from our family physically, more and more we seek for a shelter in the social networking sites.

Facebook, that way is a real boon to women, like us, as we are not only reconnecting with our childhood friends through this site but also discovering many like minded souls, with whom we can share and who sometimes do make us feel, cared for. But on the other hand, I also keep hearing stories about friends of our age responding to the temptation of getting instant attention from men of all ages, whose sole intention is to enjoy the pleasures of female company, from the safe distance of internet so that they can vanish from the scene, according to their own convenience. We women are comparatively more susceptible and vulnerable in general. Women tend to get more emotionally involved with whoever makes them feel important enough and I have been hearing of many heartbreaks among my women friends, these days due to their online breakups.

That at the end of all such liaisons, women have to suffer mostly is nothing new. This has been happening in literature and films and in real life since time immemorial and now it is happening in the virtual domains too. Charu had lost her sleep after her brother in law left, Parama suffers a mental break down after being betrayed while the men fled from the scenario and had a gala time, in their own worlds.

What I would like to tell my women friends is that we should learn to combat our loneliness by having a different approach towards life. Instead of seeking solace in a male company, we should learn to engage ourselves more in creative and constructive work. This is the best time of our lives when we can indulge ourselves in those hobbies and interests which remained unattended and neglected due to our busy schedule before. We can always explore the vast unknown through the internet, we can update and upgrade our knowledge everyday and we wouldn’t get time enough to the luxury of feeling lonely, any more.

For my male friends, whom I have befriended through the social media and also the ones, whom I have been knowing since long, I do have a request. Please stop seeing us as mere objects of desire. We might be single or married, with spouses living at different places for work, we might be struggling with issues like loss of parents, menopausal symptoms, our children leaving home but we are not to be mistaken as the ‘desperate housewives’, often portrayed by television serials and some third grade films. When we accept your add requests, we do that to be your ‘friends’ and not for having some FREE internet sex. So please, learn to accept us as fellow human beings and respect and treat us as you do to your other male friends. Every time you feel the urge to send us a direct or an indirect proposal for having a sex chat with you remember the faces of your mothers/wives/daughters at home and try to imagine how you would be feeling if they get sexually harassed by any thoughtless man !

I am writing this with a very heavy heart and a bruised mind, as a response to the message I have received on my Facebook inbox, from one of my close friend’s son. What the boy, who is still in his early twenties had written to me read something like this, ‘ You have a husband and I have a girlfriend, fine. I have been following your posts and comments on my mom’s wall. I am attracted towards you. Why can’t we go wild, online?’ My friend’s son had also added a post script. It read, ‘Do not tell this to my mom, she will feel hurt. I like her a lot.’

I know all women are not vulnerable. I know all men are not predators. This note is for those exceptional ones, whose behavior make others believe in false generalizations. No offence is meant to anyone in particular. My personal experience in the internet has caused me a lot of pain, suffering and humiliation but I do not want to lose hope. I look forward towards a better experience in future.