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![[Rediff Chat leads to marriage]](31lead.gif)
![[Rediff Chat leads to marriage]](31lead.jpg)
Suman Chhabria
Picture an expectant bride walking into a room, unskilfully holding a tea tray, stealing glances at the man she's going to marry. Compare this with a girl chatting online for the first time, at Rediff's Smoke Filled Café, and unknowingly sending her first message to a man she will end up marrying.
Sounds like a script for a soap opera? It's true, and you'd better believe it.
Shobhana Jain, former employee of a Mumbai-based market research company, would never have imagined that her curiosity about chatting would get her into a nuptial knot. "It was the first time I had logged on to a chat room, in September '98, and exchanged a few words with a guy called Ram," she recalls, fondly.
Ram Badrinathan was, at the time, an MBA student in Hong Kong. "I was surrounded by unfamiliar people who spoke a different tongue, and touched base with other Indians by logging on, daily. Then, one day, Shobhana logged on and I started chatting with her. It was purely accidental!"
Did it start with the usual, hackneyed, 'A/S/L?' "No," says Ram, "I asked her where she worked. Strangely, I knew people working at her office, and the conversation just took off." While Ram was figuring out how to keep her interest alive, Shobhana worked on basics like private messages and chat linguistics.
Perfect, for starters. But, even though the 'what-are-your-vital-statistics' question never came in, did the visual/physical aspect not matter at all? Not to a great extent, say both. "I totally trusted what she said. We created our own chat room, identified our common interests, and I conjured a mental picture of her," says Ram.
Shobhana adds, "Our long conversations made us comfortable with each other, but a relationship definitely requires physical proximity. I was curious to know who Ram was as a person, and couldn't let my guard down at any point of time before seeing him first."
![[Ram and Shobhana]](31pic3.jpg)
Three and a half months after their first chat, Ram decided to put a face behind his ladylove's words. "I spent four days visualising the moment. She had sent me a photograph after almost two months of chatting, and I was sure she was the one I would marry in ten days!"
However, things weren't what he expected. "She looked like a stunner in the photograph. But, at the airport, she looked like a 'pappu-plain jane' and I didn't recognise her." In typical Bollywood ishtyle, they passed each other several times before recognition dawned. Both were speechless.
Says Shobhana, "I couldn't believe he had made the trip just to see me. He was exactly like what he said he was -- no difference between the virtual man and the real one. So, in that sense, I was lucky."
The mutual understanding developed well. So well, laughs Shobhana, that "our conversation began more or less with Ram intending to marry me! The first time we met, he spent about 12 days in Mumbai. On the day he was leaving, he proposed marriage to me in an auto-rickshaw on our way to the airport." She blushes. "And I said yes!"
![[Ram and Shobhana]](31pic5.jpg)
After that, the net was their lifeline. The second trip Ram made was to meet her parents. His family was intrigued, though the match was between a Tamil Brahmin and Svetambhara Jain. Her family liked him, but it took a little cajoling to convince them. They were married (Tam and Jain style) two years later, on June 22, 2000.
Her parents were made to believe that they met through friends, and that's how the two would like to maintain it.
So, finally, proof that miracles do happen online. This story is, however, still an exception. Ram clarifies that the Internet "did have its own handicaps. We realised that we could never sort out any issues, what with textual misunderstandings and time lags between messages."
![[Ram and Shobhana]](31pic6.jpg)
They both reiterate that they were lucky, advising others to look for hints and common interests, when talking to strangers. Shobhana stresses the importance of "being completely honest to the person you are getting to know, because it is tantamount to being honest to yourself." She also warns youngsters to take their time and not accept the first person they chat with as an ideal friend.
While they may not be the first couple to have connected online, they are one of the few willing to talk about it. "It seems absurd that some people think they're social losers if they lean on the web to find their spouses," says Ram. "Personality is not just about how you look or speak, it's also how you write and present yourself. And even great writers can look like dorks."
Touché, Ram. And congratulations to you both!
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