Death of a Facebooker

(Obituary, in memoriam, Ms. Ananya Borgohain)

It grieves us to announce the sad and timely demise of Ms. Ananya Borgohain, alias Cynthia, on this 28th day of February, 2080. Matriarch of a fledging family of five children, twenty-five grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren, she breathed her last on a lonely hammock in a far away corner of her peaceful pastoral abode in the rolling hills of Dhemaji, Assam. She was 91.

Our association with Ms. Borgohain goes back to the summer of 2009 when bored after jilting hearts and betraying lovers she fell to the manifold charms of Facebook. Then it was that she discovered the limitless potential of our multi-faceted institution, the diversity of our feeds and the plethora of our online gaming portals. The unrivalled facility of writing long-winded notes and statues as well as commenting on her friends’ walls and in their albums particularly appealed to her then lonely soul and thus helped us become what no (wo)man alive could ever be for: a true friend, an alter ego to project and propagate all her ideas, ideologies and inner most desires.

Indeed, for in this we alone can proudly claim to have been privy to her bottomless heart. In all these past seventy years no incident, no little occurrence in her eventful life was secret to us: be it a movie she particularly disliked, a dish she had cause to criticise or a man she fain would smite, all was revealed to us. Her love, joy, sorrow and lust, all came to us first and thus made us the sole connect between herself and the world at large.

Of course, when we talk of the world we talk of reality as she knew it: we refer to that which lesser mortals in those antiquated days of her youth considered virtual reality. In doing so we cannot but help reminding readers of Ms. Borgohain’s instrumental role in shifting the focus of humanity from that musty arena of physically realisable entities and relationships to those infinitely better ones forged in the corridors of cyberspace. Her own married life was witness to this unflinching devotion to the cause: she had met her lately deceased husband in the famous group Chefs Anonymous; her nuptial was the first in the subcontinent to be solemnised by the Facebook branch of the Marriage Registrar and the first time she heard her eldest daughter cry ‘Ma’ was when she showed her a video of the prize winning aari prepared by her husband in the International Food Fest held in London in the year 2020. Truly, ours has been the bond of a lifetime.

Indeed, not just of but also beyond: even in death Ms. Borgohain remains with us. Her last status update, the monosyllabic ‘Dying’, has seen in the past one hour about fifty likes and over a hundred congratulatory messages. In the meantime, even as members of the group Cynthia Rocks! hotly debate the possibility of the ghost of this Lady Farmer suffusing the software of Barn Buddy, a wizened old man by the name of Mital has claimed to have received a poke from her account ten minutes after she passed on to occupy her own little chicken farm in heaven.

As in life, so in death, Ms. Borgohain continues a transcendental signifier. Her material remains will be cremated the day after tomorrow on the sandy banks of the Brahmaputra, an event which the bereaved family has graciously agreed to telecast live on Facebook. Further, as a final mark of respect Facebook Inc. will remain suspended in limbo for an hour immediately after the much-awaited event to afford the Borgohain clan a few moments of solitude and peace. May she eat in peace.