PROMISES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

In this digi-courtship era, the worst nightmare one may expect is to break the promises for eternal love. But this is what every digi-lover must be prepared for. There are umpteen numbers of ‘love-windows’ ; for example, the SMSs, mobile phone  calls, internet chat options like the Yahoo chat messengers, Gtalk, etc to name a few. Easy accessibility to the private contact numbers and  the usage of proper language, be what vernacular medium it may, and enchanting human voice( in cases of audio chat options) could make the trick. And the human mind…………………………..how easily it can be duped.. Not very long ago I read news clipping in one of the regional newspapers that one person attempted to commit suicide when he understood that he can’t really go ahead with this “platonic” relationship. True, man or woman ………both can be duped by beautiful communicative, persuasive languages. However,  not to forget, sometimes some clever ‘romeos’ and even ‘juliets’ also provide good pictures which may or may not be their own. The heavenly feeling of being in love breaks when one partner dumps another for no valid reasons.

I had once read a very good scholarly article by Monica Whitty on online romance and cheating. Ironically, we Indians used to think that this happens only in the US. But look at the reality now, almost half of my readers in India would have experienced such false cupid attacks either directly or indirectly. In India, we women especially, can’t take this sudden hollowness in the relationship as strongly as our counterparts in the western countries may do. The feeling of being in love is the most sacred and purest feeling. Our mythology tells how Meera and Andal loved Krishna. None could really enjoy his company as his consort Radha did. But these two women are worshipped because of their unconditional pure love to some one whom they believed to be the truth of their lives. I find  digi-love affairs quite the same as that of Meera’s love for Krishna. The lover feels heavenly even if she has not seen the partner or she could not enjoy his physical company ……….. but with one big difference… Lord Krishna kept his promises to make his love immortal; the digi-age lovers break their promises to make the immortal feeling very much mortal. The hard and bitter truth is, the heavenly feeling has been reduced to merely earthly feeling when communication was made much easier through digital technologies. When in a stressed office atmosphere, a good female voice could really feel like a splash of fresh cool breeze.. This is vice versa for women walking on tight ropes as well. We humans tend to fall on unknown shoulders when we need to express our anxiety, expectations etc.In these circumstances, I have noticed that men and women often feel like running away from the existing relationships , perhaps to find some one new, who had never heard about them. Problem begins here. When such communications turn to lovy dovy chats, one may obviously feel that a peculiar feeling of trust is being born every time he/she talks with this stranger. In women this feeling could be stronger. But when this trust suddenly evaporates, it hurts; for, there are so many new ways to suddenly close the windows…. The man on the opposite side may change his SIM to avoid the calls, may change his virtual identity, and may even treat the duped woman ghastly by shattering her image in front of the whole world.   Well, known devils are better than unknown ones, and this maxim stands true in the digi-age, because law can probably compensate for the broken promises, but the broken heart takes it very long to understand that promises in this digi –age are not to be kept.

Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2011), “Promises are made to be broken”, 6^th May,2011, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/