Kankana Ganguly - Is she there?

When I started chatting in yahoo, I did not know whom to chat, how to chat. Then I learned about various chat rooms, chat abbreviation, chatting tricks etc and made lot many friends online. I used to change my chat id everytime, so I can say I have a lot of them, but I don’t remember the older ids. But one id I will never forget in my entire life, “Kankana Ganguly”.
I created this female character just to have some fun with some of my friends, just to see how they talk with strangers and especially with girls. First person whom I hit was Anshuman Sarkar. He is my neighbor, however now he is more than my own brother. One night I just send him an instant message from Kankana’s profile. Soon I got the reply, “who are you and where did you get my id?” I was ready for the answer as I knew he was a frequent visitor of some of the chat rooms. I just mentioned one of them. Then we started talking. He never expected me behind all these. I tried to make him talk something silly, something what he does not talk generally in front of friends, so that later I can make some fun out of those. But I failed. The conversation was going on in boring direction. Then I shifted to plan B. I started trying making him feel that I am a person who stays near by him only and one day we could meet. But he was smarter than me. Within five minutes he told me “hey raja (my nick name) don’t try to bluff. I know its you”. When I denied, he called my land line. He knew I used to access internet using my land line phone connection only and at 1 am in the night connection busy means I am using internet. But my original id was not online so rests were very easy that Kankana and I are same entity.
After Anshuman I targeted some of my college friends. There I tried to pretend that I am a girl who knows everything about them and challenged them to find me. Every night I used to tell them what they did in college. Somehow they started feeling that Kankana is not a girl it is some one from our class only. The first accused was me only. But I denied. Saptarshi said he can find out easily if it was me or not when next time Kankana would log in. Picture was clear to me. He will take the same trick by calling my land line. To fool him again I took help of Anshuman. I asked him to be online as Kankana from his home so that my phone line doesn’t come busy. In that evening I got call from Saptarshi that how come my phone line is not busy and I am talking to him where Kankana is online. Their believe that I am Kankana just crashed. But I wasn’t able to continue this bluff for long. Saptarshi and Debargha figured out me as Kankana very soon. It was my fault only. One day in college they asked me to take a girl’s name randomly who is not from our college. I took a name eventually it was the same question what they asked last night Kankana and both the answers were same. I did the blunder and paid for it that day in college. Don’t ask me how I paid.
After this, Kankana went to sleep mode. But she had to make her return very soon then. This time she came for Dhimoy Chakraborty. I met this guy in orkut. Very humorous and decent. Personally I did not know him before but after some scrap exchange in orkut, I found him a good friend of me. I remember me, Dhimoy, my sister, Anshuman and some more orkut friends, we had one get together in botanical garden as well. Now back to Dhimoy. What we (me and Anshuman) found about him is he used to send scrap to all the girls around and whenever we ask why you send scrap to unknown girls, he used to answer us “I know them” and “they are like my sister”. There we felt the need of Kankana to test Dhimoy. But being a good friend, Dhimoy knew about Kankana part. So Kankana opened her account in orkut as Sulagna. We set the trap in different manner. We wanted to test if Dhimoy sends scrap to unknown girl or not. So we made Sulagna as a good friend of mine and Anshuman. We three started exchanging scraps. Those scraps were clearly visible to Dhimoy. After a few days I got one message from Dhimoy in Yahoo asking who was Sulagna and was she someone whom I knew. I said no, she was just an unknown friend of mine. That’s it; it was all set for Dhimoy. The very next night Dhimoy posted a scrap to Sulagna’s scrap book. It was a small piece of Poem. Yes!!!! We trapped him so easily. To make Sulagna a real character we did a lot. We added 50 odd friends first. Then added her name in one school community and one college community. Some more profiles had to be created as good friend of Sulagna. Else her scrap book would be full of scraps saying “who are you” “nice to meet you” “may I know you” etc etc which might lead to think Dhimoy that someone is making prank. We enjoyed our success. I guess Dhimoy still doesn’t know that Sulagna was a fake character.
Soon after Sulagna episode, Kankana reappeared in yahoo. This time the target was Kaushik Sinha. He is also my neighbor and a very good friend of mine. One day he asked me about any unknown girl’s chat id. The moment he asked me, I planned the whole thing and I introduced Kankana to him. For him Kankana is still alive I guess. When I left Kolkata and was sure in next few months I wont be able to come online regularly, I just made sure Kankana got a job is a small village in Rajasthan where Internet connection is not available. The best part of this episode was when Kankana had a good friendship with Kaushik, every body around Kaushik and me knew who is Kankana except Kaushik. So in any occasion whenever me, Suman, Amit, Anshuman and Kaushik we meet together we used to ask Kaushik about Kankana. His expression about the conversation with Kankana was really hilarious. He was ready to go any where to meet Kankana also. All these ended in 2006 when I got my job in Mumbai. After that I never logged in as Kankana for three years.
A month back when I came to US, in one lazy morning I logged in as Kankana and after clearing the entire offline messages I went into one of the Calcutta Global Chat room. I wasn’t chatting with anyone, just watching how weird messages I was getting. All of a sudden one message came from an id (also present in that chat room) which I felt I knew and chatted before as Kaustav. I checked my own address book and found I was right. It was Partha Nandy. I met this guy in a rally (against OBC quota) and he became a good friend. Eventually his cousin brother is also my chat friend. It was grand father of co-incidence that he entered into same room with Kankana and pinged her. For me it was a god gifted opportunity. Without wasting any time I started talking to him. I started giving him all the info which I knew about him. He was totally surprised, and started guessing me randomly. He was so confused, so confused that I can not explain here. For him it was impossible to think that Kankana is not real and it is a prank because he pinged Kankana, not that Kankana sent him im from nowhere. He has literally become mad to know who this Kankana is.
I did not get time after that to talk with Partha or Kaushik as Kankana or as Kaustav. I don’t know what they would feel if they read this blog. I want them to read this article in front of me. I wanna shoot them while reading.