Spam Struck

"Would you like to add 8 inches or more to your penis?" asked the email in the most casual of tones.

I was stumped. I have spoken to a lot of people in all of my twenty-seven years and never been asked that. Also, having never given this particular question a serious thought I now considered the posibility for several seconds. Needless to say, I don't have a penis and 8 inches or more could make a whole, functional one. But while having a nice, long dick might even be fun for a change, I have always secretly pitied men for having their very sensitive reproductive organ be so accesible. So, no, I concluded, I did not wish to add 8 or more inches to my penis.

"Not even two or three inches, thank you" I muttered much to the confusion of my colleagues as I determinedly hit the Spam tab.

A few days later an aunt who had just very recently been introduced to the world-wide web wrote me an interesting email.

"Take a look at this email I received" she urged. Below was a lengthy forwarded message.

"It is with a deep sense of trust and brotherliness that I convey to you this news which I hope will not cause you any emotional distress" began the email making my stomach churn.

"I am Daren K, the Director of the Plks Bank Of Nigeria and am writing to you about the dormant savings of an account holder Wasidullah Nadkarni who died without electing a next of kin" continued the email with the sad news of beloved Wasidullah's death.

It is at times like this that I wish more than ever that my grandfather was alive.

"Wasidullah had no shame" he would've announced wagging a frail, vehement finger in the air, "Had he no care for the family's name...we are Brahmins! How dare he convert to Islam without informing the family elders!" he would've roared and then purposefully typed out a reply to Mr. Daren K completely convinced that Wasidullah Nadkarni had to be one of his estranged brethren.

"Dear brother Daren K, while we have no interest whatsoever in Wasidullah's enormous and unclaimed savings we will be arriving in Nigeria to carry out his last rites as per Hindu tradition." the email would've read and a worried Daren K would've never written to another Nadkarni again.

"Delete the email, its just spam" I promptly wrote to my aunt who had since then expressed worries of Wasidullah Nadkarni being the village bumpkin Wasanta Nadkarni who had gone to Dubai and never returned.

My own parent's attitudes have been stoic in the face of illustrious and uplifting lottery news that arrives daily in their inbox.

My dad in particular has a very practical yet slightly pessimistic logic in dealing with such news no matter how authentic it sounds.

"I have never gotten anything in life without working my tail off and so it is highly unlikely that Coca-Cola would send me a one hundred, thousand pound lottery....especially when I despise their product so much" he once stated very matter-of-factly.

Then there is Poetry.com which sends all aspiring poets letters of deep appreciation. One could enter "My Bonnie lies over the ocean" as a contest entry and will still receive voluble praise for their poetic talent. "World's Poet Of The Year" or some such heavyweight title is printed across the very top of the letter making many a young and naive poet's heart flutter in anticipation of the glorious journey they were about to embark upon. Then towards the end it becomes clear that one needs to pay about a hundred dollars and then some to get a plaque with "Poet Of The Year" engraved on it. And whats more you even get to buy your own book. How wonderful.

Now, isn't that what every talented literary genius wants, to be the only one buying their work? I have decided to walk over to Things Remembered and get myself a "World's best poet, author and just everything talented in general" award with the signature of some obscure person at the checkout counter. I think it might cost me less. Also the Gods Of Math have blessed me with the understanding that the leather bound coffee table edition that Poetry.com promises is a lot more expensive than printing out my poem and reading it over and over again.

How can one forget the whole weight loss industry with marketing personnel who cannot rest until everybody in the world is on some sort of a diet.

"Have you tried the cabbage diet?" Mona religously enquires every other Saturday.

I have half a mind to write back and ask her if she has ever tried the no-spam diet. While the cabbage diet could lead to some serious gas, a no-spam diet has no such flatulent gastrointestinal manifestations.

There was a time when I was new to the internet and the dot com trend was sweeping the cyber world. One could find websites with practically everything followed by a dot com. I began receiving offers for crystal and ceramic miniatures to decorate my bookshelves with. Shelfart.com would dedicately convince me each week as to why my home looked less like a home without any crystal or ceramic ornaments to brighten things up. When they did stop writing I was heartbroken. I wondered if they had finally figured out that while ShelfArt was a pretty cool play on words, ShelFart was not.

Years later now, Shelfari sends me mails from people in my address book asking "Do we like the same books?". How does it matter, I wonder. I don't even know when and why it became so important to find out if two people shared their taste in books.

Orkut of course has opened up a whole new range of unwanted emails. They are personalized and very sweet at times when the grammar isn't atrociously bad.

"Please, can I do friendship with you?" wrote a guy, "Your smile is like Madhuri Dixit" he added and I immediately forgave him for the incorrect and slightly dirty sounding "do friendship". While a Madhuri-smile should probably have no bearing on friendship, he did manage to flatter me quite effectively. I have to admit, sweet-talk is my favorite dessert. So I took a quick, noncommittal peek at his profile almost gushing from this unexpected comparison to La Dixit. And then it took me about twelve seconds to hurriedly reject his friend request once I saw "Shokeen Auntiyaan" listed among his favorite communities. That explained why he would want to "do" friendship.

Spam has become so much a part of my life now that if I don't hear from Tamara Coon who convinces me every single day that "Size does matter", I begin to worry that something's happened to her. When I don't hear from friends and family as often as I like, I send them emails telling them that I have spammers who love me more than they do.

Even as I type this post, I take a quick glance into my inbox and there sits an email posing a question that has long since haunted my psyche leaving me sleepless on many a night.

"Do you like your nipples pinched?" asks Tony Silver

"I thought they'd never ask" I whisper with a smile as the emphatic click of delete resounds.