There was nothing exciting about it, he thought. Yet there was nothing that could contain the excitement of his wife and daughter.The internet expanded the dimensions of their lives, especially that of space. They had become quite afraid that one day they'll open their front door and the pressing population of the milling world will fall into their room. They were even afraid to go out for fear of getting lost in the crowd. But the internet gave them an escape. It was as if they were to open their cellar door and enter a new world- a world where you won't be pushed and shoved, a world of endless space and surely of infinite time. A world very close to heaven and yet very earthy. That was internet for them.

The connection was made. Within months their world changed. They no longer related servers with the kitchen, mail with the post-office or sites with travelling. Their lingo got a new interface. The web portals were not an enmeshed net for them- they were like space portals; space to visit, to do things, to think , to breathe, to live. Their lives which often wavered from their tracks came online. The world, already at their door, now seemed of great use to them; knocking with provisions. They were now convinced that even if the world bursts at the seams one day, the effect of the blast will be absorbed by that alternate world. The virtual space and virtual time will prove handy then. Still there was something which could not be had in this virtual world. That was "matter". How can we have virtual "matter"? So there were wars.

Many people went in these wars. These were not the conventional wars. Here technology ruled the roost. Unknowingly many people died. Deaths- some virtual, some real. The man also went in these wars. The wife and the daughter stayed at home. Every day they logged in to search for the man's whereabouts. But the alternate world had already become too big and the search engines were out of steam. And the real world itself was evolving so fast and unevenly that a lot of pockets in it still remained way back in the ice-age. If anybody of the post-modern world falls in such a pocket then it really becomes difficult to adapt. Armed with his gamut of technical terminology and aspiring to make it as the world language, he finds himself speaking a foreign tongue in such a place. His life is not more safe than that of a journalist who goes to interview cave-men.And so...

A couple of weeks later was the daughter's birthday. They were very happy for they expected the man to be home by then. They had already started building up hopes for his arrival when the telegram came which said that the man was dead and his body was not found. Their hopes crashed in the sea of turmoil.The real world seemed to swallow him up and the virtual world just stayed helpless. They were devastated. Everything was so cruel. Happiness was in their hand and still alluded their grasp. A couple of days before her birthday the daughter re-read the few e-mails sent by her father since his departure for the war. Then she deleted all the other mails.She looked in awe how they vanished without any trace. It was magic. The digital world too seemed as ghostly as the real world. She wondered where do deleted items go?

Then it was her birthday. There was no merry-making. There was no happiness until they unwittingly opened the inbox and found new mail. They clicked on it and an e-card opened wishing "Happy Birthday". It was from the man. He was alive. Alive! Wishing his daughter a happy birthday. Oh! They could not believe it. Yet they could not but be happy. Little did they know (though eventually they will) that the e-card was composed much earlier and sent at that future date. But still, till the time you know a person is not dead, that person is either really or virtually alive. And in that meantime their happiness reached the zenith.

Copyright: Amit Shankar Saha (2002)