Soulmate Hunting

-Parting Note-

“Only a human mind could create something as insipid as love”

- Agent Smith, The Matrix Revolutions

Love - the sweet surrender; the only thing that’s eternal in a blink-and-you-miss-it world. It’s what makes the world go round, isn’t it? Move over petty addictions like crack, smack and pot, here is the miracle drug. As history has been witness, Homo-sapiens have been wretched without the warm shoulder

and gentle peck on the cheek. We’ve raided cities on wooden horses, crossed salty deserts and even saltier oceans, our genealogically distant cousins have been known to scale the Empire State Building - all in the name of the pretty little thing called Love. Through the ages, Love, or what we make of it, has been transforming, evolving and adapting. So, what does love look like at the dawn of the new millennium?

The answer is one word - ghastly! Like all other well-meaning horribly mashed up by-products of Technology (read: Windows Vista, Farmville and Justin Bieber), Love in the Time of Mozilla is like a Sarah Jessica Parker Botox lift: ugly. As you read this, millions around the world are cringing, smiling, flirting and blushing in front of a computer screen, their fingers neatly positioned across a hundred and four plastic keys, and occasionally glancing at the tiny aperture of a web camera, trying to make the impossible eye contact, and hoping that its love at the 425th sight. Yes, dear mortals, our relentless quest in search of a better world has had some unfortunate collateral damage.

Before you make accusations of how anachronistic, old-school and steadfastly purist I am, let it be known that my idea of love is not to consume poison below some antique balcony at the sight of a passed out girl (now that I think of it, that latter half of the idea with the passed out girl isn’t all that bad).

I’m all for science and progress and betterment of society and world peace. But, I do believe that there are certain “somethings” in us that define us, make

us who we are - the most intelligent species on the planet (dolphin-lovers go take a hike!). Remember the simple joy and growing anticipation on meeting that friend’s friend at a party. How one could start on a completely empty slate, devoid of any mental imagery, and then build on it, and keep building. Sometimes

(or most of the times, depending on how much or how little you know your Stinson), what we built would come crashing down like a house of cards, but every once in a while, we would end up with a Legometropolis. And at the end of it, we’d look back with a little “Ha!” in our voice, thinking how incompatible

we would’ve been if we’d played by the rules (the rules that most dating sites now follow to ‘match’ people - books, hobbies, interests and all that jazz). There is something truly beautiful in watching Love bloom unhindered and undirected, as though it were a natural progression of events. The idea of registering on a website and striking up a conversation with somebody who you know is probably talking to five more like you at the same instant, and mouthing the same words of affection and terms of endearment is not my idea of romance.

Think about it, we are today what our Facebook and Myspace profiles suggest. I’m a hardcore Floyd and Classic Rock fan, yet I have no reason to believe that my Cleopatra will appreciate the true beauty of Dark Side of the Moon. Just because the two of us love Ayn Rand does not mean that our rational self-interests are suitably aligned. In the era where parents want to order their children a-la-carte off the gene menu, the idea of fully-customized, factory-fitted “soul mate” seems somewhat reasonable.

Make no mistake, I’m not implying complete banishment by decree of all social networking and online dating sites, or the internet as a communication medium. All I’m saying is that, at the risk of sounding hackneyed and clichéd, it’s alright to use them as a means to an end, as opposed to an end to a means. I’m pretty sure I’m going to ruffle quite a few feathers with this endless rant of mine, some of you may want to unload a double barreled shotgun in my throat. But, while you’re at it, stop for a moment to ponder. Go out, dear Reader, the world is your oyster. You don’t need a couple of mainframe servers stacked in some corner of the globe to tell you who to love, you surely know better.

Or do you? {t}

A lifelong apathy towards work has left him absolutely inept in the ways of the world. Ingit, hence, spends his time critiquing anything that catches his attention (especially to his pet shoe called Shoe). A Floyd and Doors fan, he is infamous for his incessant zest of trying to be funny, come bouquets, brickbats or lethal projectiles. Ingit is managing his new student life at MDI (with ease) after working a microscopic stint in the Foreign Trade sector.