Obama gets mail in Indian American's inbox

New York, Aug 4 (PTI) Indian American Guru Raj, who
created an e-mail address on newly launched gmail in the name
of Barack Obama four years ago, is now receiving thousands of
mails every day from the fans of the Democratic Presidential
candidate.
Raj, a recent graduate of University of Virginia, was
watching young senator Obama - a senator - giving keynote
address to the Democratic convention. So, tried
barackobama@gmail.com on just four-month-old gmail in July
2004 and it worked.
Earlier, Raj tried to create an account using his name
but both gururaj@gmail.com and rajguru@gmail.com failed.
In his story recalled by the New Yorker magazine, Raj
used barackobama@gmail.com as his personal email account. And
thus was born a new email account at a time Obama seeking
Democratic nomination was still four years away.
"I'm not some cute little Indian boy who grew up in
America with political aspirations," Raj, told New Yorker
recently. "I just thought it would be kind of funny to create
an e-mail address based on a random senator whose name no one
could spell."
In 2006, he received, for the first time, a message
intended for the Senator.
By February, 2007, when Obama formally announced his
candidacy, Raj was daily receiving dozens of misdirected notes
from all over the world.
The letters expressed a range of sentiments: simple
incredulity ("R U REAL?"), electoral reassurance ("Don't worry
about California, they're old fogies anyway"), mystical
backing ("You represent the spirit of the Lotus sutra"),
conspiratorial opposition ("Obama might not be a U.S. citizen
and not qualified to run for president"), niggling criticism
("You were losing your O.O.M.P.H. delivering your speeches in
Texas and Ohio"), sound advice ("Don't lose your humility").
Raj's favourite e-mail was a nursery rhyme that went,
"Hillery Dillery Dock / Obama will clean her clock / Monica's
a sin / Bu Ba fell in / Now she's gotta deal with Barack."
Other correspondents, Raj told, were more
practical-minded—one extended an invitation to a Seder in Hyde
Park ("We heard you were shooting a movie at the synagogue by
our place"), while another expressed regrets ("I can't make
the meeting tomorrow, but I'd like to buy a shirt—preferably a
medium").
On May 30th, a real-estate agent from Manhattan sent
the following note to barackobama@gmail.com, as well as to
barackobama@hotmail.com and barackobama@yahoo.com: "Mr Obama,
good luck in the rest of the election year. Please let me know
if you have any real estate needs."
Raj, who now works for a software consulting company
in Washington, D.C., never replied to these, or to any other
e-mails meant for Obama, not even to tell an excited would-be
pen pal that he is not, in fact, the Democrats' presumptive
Presidential nominee, the magazine said.
"It just became an interesting portal into Americans,"
he said. "From the beginning, I had no intention of
manipulating anyone."
Still, New Yorker says the experiment has recently
begun to overwhelm him. On June 12th, barackobama@gmail.com
started receiving much more spam. Raj suspects that an
international political website posted his Gmail address,
"because suddenly I was inundated." (He now receives some
sixty e-mails a day addressing the Senator, most of them in
foreign languages, especially Russian.)
It was becoming impossible for him, he says, to
separate his own electronic life from Obama's, so last fall
Raj began using a backup account. This new Gmail address
incorporates his first name, his last name, and—the
linchpin—his middle initial.