'What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?' asked promos for the film 'You've got mail' starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Sanjay and Nidhi share a similar story.
They met at Rediff's Smoke Filled Café way back in 1998, kicking a conversation off with a row about life and philosophy. "We gave each other a lot of attitude," says Sanjay, "but I received an email from her the very next day. We were married in February this year."
Being veterans online got them through marathon chat sessions. Sanjay says, "Despite the fact that I was in Calcutta and she lived in Delhi, we trusted each other implicitly. I still tease her saying that she chatted with me only because I was a stock broker and she could ask me for advice on where and when to invest."
Courting was never easy as he had to wait for hours before she would log on. "I once sent her 107 emails over a single weekend," he remembers. As for Nidhi, she didn't even know what Sanjay looked like until they met at the Taj Mahal. That was when he proposed, after almost a year of chatting and calling.
Neither has confessed to family members about having met online. "I don't think they would have taken us seriously…" The suave stockbroker has absolutely no regrets though. "Whether you get to know a person online or through personal interaction does not matter."
On hindsight, he wishes he had saved some chat transcripts. "People finding love in a similar fashion should do so. My only advice is that you should be yourself, and never pretend to be someone you're not."
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