<b>Kishore Singh:</b> My secret life with Victoria

For a few months now, I've been nursing a secret thanks largely to Victoria. Even though I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her in person, and am loath to open her emails, she's been coming on ever more strongly. "Thanks, beautiful," she had written in one of her earliest emails to me, by when I had already cottoned on to her chicanery, having previously opened an innocuous "shipment confirmation" email during an office meeting while running a PowerPoint presentation on a television screen. Immediately, a window had scrolled open to a lingerie site that advertised, well, things no grown up man should be seen viewing in public and in the presence of his colleagues. Titters followed as I tried to shut the page, fumbling with the settings and thereby opening even more pages and pictures that looked lurid even to my eyes on the screen. I could imagine myself through the eyes of my colleagues, a dirty old man who spent his spare time surfing prurient sites. With so many present, a denouement of sexual harassment was unlikely though given recent social policing, it might still have got me into little trouble.

Victoria, meanwhile, kept up her correspondence. "Get the scoop," she urged me on one occasion, following up with a come-hither "It's been a while," even though she had written only the previous day. Colleagues with access to my laptop and emails smirked at her entreaties in which she reported that "Giving pays off" and - I'm ashamed even as I write this - "Arm candy (ooh, its free!)." What dissolute things was I up to? Had I touched the lows of morality?

My distress must have made itself obvious to my family who sat me down one evening for a chat. What was troubling me? Was I in financial trouble? Did I have a mysterious disease? "No, no," I told them, but they were insistent. "It's these websites," I finally confessed, "I keep getting mails from lingerie sites which keep soliciting me to buy their line-ups." I'm an emancipated person, I said, "but what must my office think?" "Oh dear," owned up my daughter, who'd been silent throughout my self-flagellation, "I think that might have something to do with me."

It turns out my daughter was the culprit who had used not only my laptop but also my email as well as my credit card to order herself some, ahem, inners from Victoria's Secret, and by default I was now on the company's client list. Since my daughter had been surfing the net while she did this, she had thought to compare prices and, well, whatever it is young ladies compare, and they'd all put me on their email and reminder lists too. Which clarity, while it was a relief, served no purpose so late since by now those who worked alongside me had probably branded me a closet debauch.

Sites for intimate wear might know a thing or two about soliciting business, but their manner of petitioning seems to have become somewhat of a trend with even service providers. Earlier, it was spam that carried mails addressed to "Dearly beloved", but it is now a malaise that has spread to even the fiscal sector. What else would you make of your insurance provider sending you emails with "I love you thiiiiis much" in the subject field? Really? I think I'll stick with Victoria's Secret - however disconcerting - at least for the cheap thrill that it might be my "Last day to get (secretly) awarded."