RIP Chat Rooms

 

One fine winter evening of 1998, I went to a cyber café nearby. I had created an email account only few days back on a US based website. Those days email was not that spread as it is today, only my brother in law who lives in the US used to communicate via email, hence there used to be only one mail in my ‘Inbox’ and I used to reply it quickly and then try to surf different websites for next 50 odd minutes, since there was nothing else to do. The cyber café used to charge me on an hourly basis, so I had to use the remaining time to compensate my 35 rupees. On my second visit to that café, I saw a boy sitting next to me typing in a small window and after writing few words closing it down, then that window closed on his taskbar started changing colors and he then clicked on that window and I saw someone replied him and he replied him/her back. I got curious and I asked him, “what is this?” He said “this is called ‘chatting’ where you can meet people across the planet and can be their friend.” So my next question to him was, “Does this facility available in my email?” He promptly replied, “No, this is available only on Yahoo!”

 

He was certainly very busy with that person who was replying him, so I called on the owner of that cyber café who was in his late teens. I got all the information about this extraordinary thing, he not only taught me every single thing, but also helped me creating my Yahoo! ID which is still in existence after good long fourteen years. Though no mail is coming in or going out from there, but it has emotional attachment to me, as this ID has given me plentiful of great buddies across the planet as that unknown guy first elaborated me when I queried about this. Slowly that one hour stay at that cyber café started to stretch for two hours and sometimes even four to six hours per day. By now, the 35 rupees per day decreased to 20 rupees per day but the number of ‘priceless friends’ has already increased in my ‘friends’ list’. Not only friends but I also got a girl from same messenger, whom I once proposed my love for the first and last time!! Well, she denied my proposal and we still remained good friends for a decade after that.

 

There is a proverb in Gujarati, “If you are good, the world will remain good to you”. That's exactly what had happened with me, all the while when I was on Yahoo! Messenger. I never tried to take any disadvantage of those who became my friends, most of them were girls. That time I was also single hence ‘The law of attraction’ was more in effect than it is now. (Though it's still very much there but the velocity has decreased ;) ) In the end I didn’t get any girlfriend out of it but got basketful of girls who became damn good friends, with whom I could share anything happening in my life and they too used to share the anything happening in their lives. There was one girl who then was in deep love with a guy and then she got married to him only and today she is the mother of two lovely kids, but she is still a very good friend of mine after Fourteen years in reality and we are in regular touch with each other via Facebook. Then there was a married lady, who gave me plenty of tips when my wife was pregnant, which helped me a lot. Then there was a doctor girl who too helped me by consoling me on the phone when my wife had to go for immediate cesarean seven years back.

 

But only females became my friends to be very frank. Some of them because of social commitments after their marriage, stopped their friendship with me, but few, as I have mentioned above, are still going strong. But now Facebook has taken the place of Yahoo! Messenger. Just two days back, when I read about Yahoo! Shutting down its chat rooms, I remembered all those glory days, when I had the dare  to ask any an unknown ID, thinking that it is of a female, “Hi !! Can we chat? Your ASL please?” And then used to wait for few minutes for the answer, if the reply used to come, one could not imagine the happiness I used to get and if someone had replied with “Male here”, I used to curse him too :P. The reasons Yahoo! gave to close those chat rooms are more genuine. Even when I was in full swing, there used to be few rooms, which were not required. There were many idiots who used to have fake IDs and what not? Everything has its negative side too and Yahoo! Chat rooms were no different.

 

Every good thing has to come to an end, and so Yahoo! Chat rooms too will get closed on the 14th of this month. I believe even Yahoo messenger has less relevance in the world of Facebook and Twitter now; hence that service may also come to an end soon. By increasing numbers in mobile phone every day, a newspaper of USA as already predicted that even Facebook will be closed down by 2020. Well I won’t be surprised if that will happen in next seven years. But right now I am still basking in my memories of the sweet days of Yahoo! Messenger.

 

 

08.12.2012, Saturday

Ahmedabad.