My Friend Carol : A Flower Unfurls Her Petals

It is generally said that technology has shrunk our world. I don't know. As I look around myself, I find that technology has done just the opposite; for me anyway.

Had the world been what it was five years ago, I wouldn't have known her. If I did, she would've needed to be a celebrity — someone you could see on the telly or whose pictures were splashed across papers. And then she wouldn't have known me.
I'd say she is better — she is one among us. Or to take a broader perspective, she is us – the ones who trudge wearily along a grim life, gathering up all the little moments of happiness on the way.
I met Carol a few months back in Orkut. It took a couple of days to technically turn that acquaintance into a "friendship" as is the way of online communities. As we got along, we discovered how much our wavelengths matched. I live in Kolkata, India and she lives in Bolton, UK. Yet I cannot think of her except as a "girl next door". Her picture was always there in her album. I sent her my family shot – a professionally taken snap with my wife and daughter. In a nutshell, we were doing everything friends do.
Then something happened.
Somehow our exchanges had shifted from the Orkut "scraps" (I wish they'd invent a better word for public messages) and to emails and our topic had shifted to literature. She timidly asked me if I'd want to look at her poems, I readily agreed.
She mailed me two of them.
What stuck me at the first reading was the simplicity of her compositions. Her focus remained on this life though, cruising from one of its beautiful aspects to another, defying the storm, as if, with her determination to reach out and feel humanity in all its hues.
Personal feelings apart, I don't know how many people ever read my blog, if at all. To the few, who do, I present a new poet, whose work can put a bit of vivacity in our gaits as we walk the path of life.
But before that, here's a bit of a bio. This is the best that could be wrung out of the publicity-shy Boltonian.

Carol Selva was born in Wales and was educated in Coed talon County Primary School and then in Castell Alun High School, both in Flintshire. She studied Social Work at Leeds and currently works as a part time social worker with senior citizens in Bolton, UK, where she lives with her son. Her daughter is a graduate student of forensic science. Carol is divorced, regular at the gym. and practices belly dancing every week. She speaks Spanish, loves Spain, travelling abroad, cruising, and foreign cultures. She likes music, dancing, singing, acting.

Apart from this picture, I don't know what she looks like. But that doesn't prevent me from counting her as one of my closest friends. That is technology for you.
In the next few posts, I'd post one of her poems in each of my posts. Drop in a line in the comments section, whatever may it be.