# He, She And I On Facebook সাদি আহসান পাঠান I first saw her in a Facebook comment. She had disagreed with something I'd posted — a half-baked observation about why Bengali films had stopped making sense. Her comment was sharp, witty, and absolutely correct. I looked at her profile picture. A woman with dark eyes and darker hair, caught mid-laugh in what looked like a candid moment. Her name was Ria. I sent her a friend request that evening. She accepted within the hour. Within a week, we were messaging. Nothing flirtatious at first — just long, meandering conversations about films, books, music, the general failures of contemporary Bengali literature. She had opinions that challenged mine. Not in an aggressive way. She simply *knew* things, had thought deeply about them, and wasn't interested in agreeing for the sake of politeness. I found myself looking forward to her messages the way one looks forward to a good book or a strong cup of tea. By the second week, the conversations had shifted. We were still talking about art and ideas, but now we were also talking about ourselves — childhoods, fears, the particular loneliness of being intelligent in a world that rewards conformity. She told me about her job in an advertising firm that bored her to tears. I told her about my failed attempt at a novel that would probably never be finished. We found each other's vulnerabilities and circled them like cautious animals, testing for safety. Her name, I learned, was Ria Chakraborty. She was twenty-eight. She lived in Calcutta but had been born in Delhi. She had a complicated relationship with her mother. She loved old Satyajit Ray films and hated small talk. She thought most people were pretending to be happier than they actually were. I agreed with her on that last point. By the third week, I realized something: I was in love with her. Or at least, I was in love with the person she was in our messages — witty, intelligent, honest, unafraid to sit in silence and think. I had constructed an image of her from pixels and words, and it was a beautiful image. Whether it matched the woman who existed outside the glow of a screen, I had no way of knowing. That's when Arjun entered the picture. I saw him first in a comment on one of her posts. A photograph of a book she was reading — *The Remains of the Day*, Ishiguro. Arjun had written: *One of the best novels of the last century. Have you reached the part where he understands what he's lost?* She had replied: *Just finished it. Devastated. In the best way.* A simple exchange. But I felt something cold move through my chest. I clicked on his profile. Arjun Mukherjee. Thirty-two. Worked at a publishing house. His photographs showed a man who looked like he knew how to live — candid shots from travels, a reading session at what looked like a literary festival, a picture of him with a group of friends, all of them laughing at something just outside the frame. His wall was full of thoughtful posts about books and culture. He seemed, in every observable way, better than I was. More real, too. His life wasn't happening in comment boxes and private messages. I told myself it didn't matter. Ria was my friend. Our connection was valuable precisely because it existed in this strange space — intimate but unburdened by the complications of physical proximity, expectation, the inevitable disappointments that come when fantasy collides with reality. But it did matter. Over the next few days, I began noticing the subtle signs. She was still replying to my messages, but there was a delay now. Where before she would respond within minutes, now it took hours. The tone hadn't changed — she was still engaged, still thoughtful — but the energy had shifted. Slightly. Just enough that I could feel it. And then I saw it: a photograph on her timeline. Arjun and Ria at a bookstore launch event, standing close enough that their shoulders were almost touching. Both smiling at the camera, but there was an ease between them that suggested intimacy. The kind that happens in person, in the real world, where you can smell someone's cologne or feel the warmth of their arm. I closed the laptop. I opened it again ten minutes later. I liked the photograph. I wanted her to know I'd seen it. That I was happy for her. That I was fine. She didn't message me that night, or the next day. When she finally did, it was to tell me she'd met someone. *His name is Arjun,* she wrote. *I think you'd like him. He works at a publishing house and has opinions about everything, just like us.* Just like us. I wrote back: *That's wonderful. I'm really happy for you.* I wasn't happy. I was furious and heartbroken and, worst of all, I was ashamed of my own feelings. Because the truth was, I had fallen in love with someone I barely knew. I had constructed an entire relationship in my head based on conversations that, while genuine, had existed in a curiously weightless space. I had wanted her without ever having taken the risk of actually *meeting* her, of letting her see who I really was — the boring, flawed, ordinary person behind the carefully constructed persona I presented online. Arjun had done what I hadn't. He had stepped out of the digital world and into hers. He had asked her to coffee, or dinner, or perhaps to that bookstore launch event. He had made himself present. Real. Over the next few months, I watched their relationship bloom through the feed. There were photographs of them at restaurants, at parks, at museums. There were comments between them that were playful and intimate. The digital distance that had made me feel close to her was the same distance that kept me from ever truly knowing her, or being known by her. My messages to her became less frequent. They became shorter. I told myself it was the mature thing to do — to step back, to let her have her happiness without the awkwardness of unrequited feelings hovering in the background. But the truth was simpler and more painful: I was hurt. One evening, about six months after Arjun had entered her life, she posted a photograph. It was a close-up, just her face, in natural light. She looked serene, happy in a way that seemed deeper than the performance of happiness on social media. The caption read: *Falling in love is like reading a beautiful book for the first time. You don't want it to end, but the knowing that it will makes every page precious.* I knew immediately that Arjun had made her feel this way. Not me. Never me. I unfollowed her. It was a small gesture, almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things. She would never know. There were thousands of people on her feed; my absence would register as nothing. But it felt necessary. A way of drawing a line, of acknowledging that what we had — or what I had constructed in my mind — couldn't continue existing alongside the reality of her life with someone else. Months passed. I thought about her less frequently, which was its own kind of mourning. The intensity of my feelings faded into a dull, manageable sadness — the sort you carry without really noticing it after a while. And then, one day, I saw a mutual friend's post. A wedding photograph. Ria in a white sari, Arjun in a formal kurta, both of them grinning with the uncomplicated joy of people who had made a choice and were not tormented by doubt. I had never been invited to their engagement or their wedding. We had crossed paths in the digital world, had touched something real, and then drifted apart. It was natural. It was how these things happened in the age of social media — the illusion of connection, the reality of distance. I sent them my congratulations through a mutual friend. That evening, I deleted all my old messages with Ria. Not out of spite, but out of mercy — to myself, and perhaps to the memory of what we had been to each other, if only in the glow of a screen. Sometimes I still see her on Facebook. We have mutual friends, so her likes and comments appear on my feed. I don't follow her anymore, but the algorithm has its own logic, its own way of reminding us of people we've been connected to. Recently, she posted a photograph of herself and Arjun with a newborn. A child. Their child. I looked at the photograph for a long time. Then I smiled — and I think I meant it — and I moved on to the next post, the next distraction, the next illusion of connection that Facebook offers to people like me, who are still searching for something real in a place where nothing real can ever quite take root. The internet is full of love stories that never happened. This is one of them.