Ragini is now 19. She has just finished her final exams at university and is looking forward to her summer vacations. It's the hot summer of 1997 and she has been really lucky in general, the whole year. India is finally entering a modern era. Her house has a ‘MTNL' telephone landline since about 4 years. The internet is now available to most middle-class families. Her family actually has a second hand 486 computer that is now connected to the internet. There are new shops opening up around her home called Cybercafes. These places have several computers that one can rent for an hour to surf the internet. The rates are reasonable, so even younger Indians can access them easily.
During the months before her final exams, Ragini had made some pen pals from the more modern and technology savvy cities of the south of India. Some from Bengaluru and some from Chennai. During those times, it was common to write to people from different states and countries and this phenomenon was called ‘making a pen pal’. When Ragini had been 16 this was common to do by reading magazines in which there were pen pal sections. You could find someone giving out their postal address in this section! The person's profile just comprised of age and gender. Ragini had already made a couple of pen pals using that method. One never met the friend in question. There were postcards and letters one sent and that came through the actual postal delivery service. Most people who want to make a ‘pen pal' are generally curious people. They are keen to discover life that happens elsewhere and generally check that most people all around the world are the same.
Ragini was one of those kind of people. India had changed so much in three or four years. Being young meant, that she had access to the internet and making a friend somewhere across the country happened quicker than before. There were chat rooms where people made friends. There was a crazy buzz to switching on the computer, waiting for all the screens to reach the start point and then ringing in for the internet connection to take place. The tune of the connection was unique and unlike any sound young India knew till then. Msn and Yahoo were huge back then. On one of these websites, Ragini made friends with some young Indians. So her pen pals when she was 19 were actually 'internet pals'. Some of them were guys and some were girls. They connected once a day and had a lot to talk about. They spoke about their hobbies. They explained how it was to travel within their cities. They talked about everything that was unique to their youth. Ragini found that some were regular and sometimes there were weeks that went by for her to continue these connections.
When it was the month before her final exams, Ragini connected to a cousin who also resided in the city of Chennai. She had occasionally seen her cousin, Asha, over the years. Once at Asha's wedding, another time at a common relative's wedding and also back when Asha visited Ragini's home when Asha was a younger woman. Ragini asked Asha in her letter if it would be ok if she could come stay at Asha's home. This was okay for Ragini's parents as this was sort of a normal thing during those times. Luckily, Ragini received news from her cousin that she was welcome to stay as long as she wished.
Ragini was keen to be able to travel on her own out of her city by train and discover Chennai. Just the 24hour train journey in a sleeper train alone was a very exciting. She was a bit scared about the prospect of anything untoward happening, but there was also this pull inside her that said that it would be fun and full of discovery. She was very lucky that her parents allowed her to do so. It had not been super difficult to convince them. She had not seen her cousin Asha since a couple of years. She was keen to discover her cousin's life in her own city. So, she bought herself a return ticket from Mumbai to Chennai. Ragini had planned a month of time away from home.
She was not planning to tell her pals on the internet about her trip. But, of course, the upcoming vacations did become a topic for everyone and she ended up talking about her booked ticket.
Read part 2 of this story here
https://lekhawrites.blogspot.com/2025/04/ragini-travelled-by-train-to-chennai.html
Read older stories about Ragini here
A Mixed bag of thoughts: Safe, under her wings
Read older stories about Ragini here
A Mixed bag of thoughts: The depth of innocence
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