Tangled Website

Mummy, do all fairy tales begin with 'Once upon a time...'? asks a daughter being tucked in and put to bed with a story. "No, dear", says the mother, wearily, having waited for hours for her husband to come home. "Some of them begin with "Sorry darling, I was held up in the office".

This cartoon story might have helped in the past to draw the chestnuts from the fire. But modern housewives see through excuses when the spouse attempts to pull the wool over her eyes. The Bible spoke of the seven deadly sins and what the price to be paid was. Now British marriage counselling firms, psychologists and sociologists have added on eighth deadly sin - the Internet, to the earlier list.

The poet did say "What a tangled web we weave/ When we first practise to deceive". Here the tangled web is the website surfed on the sly, the cyber-pornography sites revisited, and e-mail relationships which are built on sand. Britain's largest charitable marriage counselling organisation, Relate, with nearly 100,000 couples as members, has disclosed that their staff and psychologists have identified the Internet as a "relationship-breaker", posing the same kind of threat to harmonious domesticity and mutual trust, as long working hours did in the past.

Almost one in every 10 British couples was seeking 'virtual' companionship through Internet and the most vulnerable age group was 25 to 35. Voltaire did mention how ''man is born free, but everywhere, he is in chains".

The Internet chains have come on the wings of science and technology but are no less restrictive for all that.

Some obsessive web-surfers, cyber-pornography viewers and e-mail relationship seekers, have started referring to their time away from the Internet friend as 'widowhood' and 'widower-hood' - a sequel which the progenitor of Windows 95, and its sequels had not fully thought of.

The pitch is also queered, since Internet introductions provide easy and ready access to old school and college companions and hold promise of reviving old flames and rekindling adolescent romances.

Just as the ubiquitous cellphones have the potential of tearing down the walls of shyness, gender differences and privacy, the Internet has opened the floodgates of virtual companionship and enticing the many who were hitherto looking at these developments feeling "lonely in a crowd".

Some observers say that Boccacio's Decameron and Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra have come alive again in the 21st century.