The smiley-challenged are the new geeks; the Blackberry is the bachelor’s hottest seduction tool; the love letter is dead; the flash‘new message’ leads to the new Pavlovian response of the heart skipping a beat. Typing out ‘Gudbye n gudlk’, or breaking up over the short message system, is synonymous with the ‘new cad’. SMS, while changing the rules of communication, has also altered forever the dos and don’ts when it comes to mankind’s oldest game. A timely new book by US-based relationship pundit Kristina Grish, Mating, Dating and Techno-Relating, drives home the point that you are what you text. It explores how the communication leap in terms of text messaging, instant messaging and emailing have brought along with it text-driven power games. Grish throws up questions like what does it mean when a woman abruptly logs off a chat session? Does she mean it to sting or to tantalise? She deciphers your punctuation habits, in a sort of modern day handwriting analysis, to show what your typing habits say about you or your prospective partner. She also gives pointers on how not to fight on text messaging and how to brush-off an unwanted suitor.

With SMS declaration of true love still an uncharted path, infested with arbitrary abbreviations and ruled by the smiley super-gods, travellers worldwide on the highway of techie-love could do with some help. But this is especially so in a country which has taken to texting like the proverbial fish to water. While Grish’s study is certainly a take-off point, the rules have to be altered to take in cultural differences. As Dr Subho Ray, President, Internet and Mobile Association of India, says: “With the popularity of texting in India, we have given it a whole new cultural twist, a sort of curry flavour to it.”

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