Cyber-kat

[Befitting as the caption might be for a seasoned blogger, a better oxy-moron I could not come up with! To give you a little perspective, just about five years ago when the rest of the twentieth century world was glued to www.you-name-it.com, I was still toying with the idea of giving up the conventional writing pad and switching to Microsoft Word ......... Finally, I did, as you can see (and I still don’t dare Adobe Acrobat) and this has sure brought me a ‘blong’ way! Nevertheless, since I am trying to reflect here a certain contradiction in my personality (think Jekyll and Hyde), I decided to stick with the misnomer.....]

For as long as I can recall, I have gone about life looking for that ‘one’ thing that would make me happy, not really knowing what it was. I still don’t, but now I have a name for it ---‘cheese’. And for those of you who are worrying about the amount of calories I have gained, nope, much as I love that coagulated chunk of ripened milk, this name is more out of appreciation for Spencer Johnson’s Who moved my cheese than any craving I might have for the real thing.

I have been carrying the weight of “searching for happiness” about my shoulders since age 12 and always felt good about it. For a long time the cheese was really myself. I loved the way I was, my many traits and idiosyncrasies and took great pride and happiness in just “being me”. It was after I realized that the task of being me was wonderful, no doubt, but was proving to be as prosaic as breathing, an act that every human on earth is capable of doing for himself (let me not make light of it, considering I have been asthmatic for atleast six painful years, but it sure doesn’t come under the category of leisure in any diction), that I began to look for other ways of entertainment.

So, my cheese became the enchanting world of books. I lived, breathed and ate books for eight straight years from there, personified every character that I loved; even walked, talked and spoke like a few of them! And when the black and white of paperbacks ceased to inspire, I turned to the colorful world of celluloid. Living the intelligent Darby Shaw during a recess in academic achievement, a successful Laura Cameron during a particularly vulnerable moment or a boisterous Kate Blackwell during flashes of feminine helplessness did feel extremely good but amidst this myriad of personas, I was in constant fear of somewhere losing the real me.

I was soon absorbed into this deep chasm of botheration that I was living in a fantastical dream world that had no chance of transposing to reality. Hence followed a “realization” phase that included everything from rock climbing expeditions to a course in journalism. But alas, I still did not like the way my cheese was tasting.

The Wachowski brothers timed it well. Matrix could not have come at a more opportune time. Launching into philosophies of the real and the virtual, I was soon trying to comprehend if the ‘best actress’ award I had won in high school indeed tasted any better than the sight of Abel Rosnowski’s first and very own Baron Hotel (with all due thanks to Jefferey Archer).

Setting all my skepticism aside, I launched into limitless journeys of the human mind. With it, came my entry into cyberspace. The intriguing mysticism of the digital world added a certain dimension to the fantasies that hitherto ruled my life. My online counterparts not only had a profundity and abstractness that made me oblivious to living, breathing people around me, they also did away with the uninteresting prospect of dealing with the banalities of the tangible world. My flesh and blood companions were baffled by my relentless love of the computer. “This isn’t real” was their constant complaint.

“Well, what IS real?” Like all things, I grew out of my virtual existence and now I have a “real” world where I continue to say hi and hello, continue to discuss the weather, continue to go on a reasonably challenging hike. One recurring thought comes to mind--- I told an online counterpart once that I would love to go on an expedition like that in the Amazing Race; he echoed the thought that crossed my mind in retrospect --‘I’d rather have my mind go on such a journey’. Since then I have never used the term ‘couch potato’ for anyone. There is far more the mind can explore in a single day than the body can in eons.

---the cyber-kat that until a few years ago never knew a mouse that responded at the click of a button.