I have only two girl friends and I met both today. One for lunch and the other for dinner/drinks. It was refreshing to hang out with women instead of men. When I am out with the guys, the conversation invariably revolves around sports or video games. Neither interest me much, so I'm usually quiet. Today, however, I talked incessantly with my women friends. We have the same profile - single, female, Indian, in our mid to late twenties, and the topics of discussion were pertinent to these conditions.

I am living alone now and really enjoyed it the first couple of weeks. Lately though, I've started feeling lonely. I was sitting at work the other day in the evening and did not feel like going home. There was nothing to go home to. I was curious to know how my other single friends felt about it. So I brought it up at dinner. One friend, who doesn't live alone anymore, said that she hated it. I argued that there are some advantages to it. I get more time for myself, I think more (which could go either way), I read/write more, in general I pursue my own hobbies in my time alone. My friend wasn't convinced though. I think I wasn't totally convinced myself.

The worst part about living alone is having to eat dinner alone. I have yet to go to a restaurant, and sit and eat dinner alone. I always end up calling a friend or get take-out and eat at home. My friend had done it many times, but always with a book, which she called an essential prop. I agreed with my friend when she said that the first step is to probably accept the fact that I'll be living alone for sometime now and make lifestyle changes accordingly. To this effect she recounted an episode of "Sex And The City" in which Carrie realized that she might never get married and decides to embrace singlehood. So she goes to a restaurant without any props (book or newspaper) and eats alone. Personally I am not particularly keen about solitary dining yet. Fortunately, my friends who live in the city told me that I should call them up whenever I feel lonely or don't feel like eating alone. So I kind of get best of both worlds.

As a consequence of living alone , I have started feeling the need for companionship, which is the reason why I've started searching for a "suitable boy." The first question that popped out of this was "what are you looking for in a guy?" I didn't have an answer to that so my friend answered it for me. She said I seem to find really smart guys attractive. The other woman at dinner thought that was the norm with Indian women. Somehow that doesn't narrow it down enough. Most of the people I meet, professionally and socially, are very brainy. A majority of my male friends are from IIT, which is a sufficient (not necessary) condition for being intelligent. I was faced with the same question a couple of years back. An acquaintance was trying to hook me up with one of the many guys who worked with her. She insisted on some specifics so she could somehow narrow it down. I just blurted that I don't like moustaches on guys. Incidentally, the guy she was thinking of did have a moustache and he wasn't about to shave. I did end up being friends with him, and he is one of the nicest, and smartest person I know.

Judging that I probably needed some help in figuring out the right guy, my evening companions started listing out qualities to look for in men. Then we somehow moved to relationships in general. Not surprisingly, the one advise that I've heard most, came up - you would be happiest with the person who loves you more than you love him. We all seemed to be in consensus that somehow we are always attracted to guys who do not love us as much and end up getting hurt. We women are such perverts.

Another thing common amongst all three of us at dinner was that we all felt quite patriotic towards India. We started talking about movies like Yuva and Lakshya that invoked such feelings in us. I mentioned that I generally don't like Pakistan bashing movies and that we've just been brought up to hate Pakistan. We don't give enough thought to the reasons why we hate Pakistan. I faced strong opposition as soon as I said that. The others were really passionate in their dislike for Pakistan. I have to admit that they did give good reasons for feeling the way they did. One made a good point that because I don't live in India and am not directly threatened by the terrorism, I have mellowed down. That could be true, but I have only started feeling this way after watching the India-Pakistan cricket match. I read so many places how they were hospitable to Indians who went to watch the game. They cannot be that bad. I also questioned their bias in not being against America since it has always supported Pakistan. They countered that they did not like American foreign policy; to which I replied that they should then hate Pakistan's foreign policy, not Pakistan.

Inevitably the conversation then drifted to religion. I feel that Hinduism is a very tolerant religion, though there are a lot of Hindu fanatics too. I still don't understand completely what happened in Gujurat. To me Christianity seems very extreme. I remember a coworker telling me that I will go to hell because I'm not Christian.

At this point we were interrupted by a drunk guy who came up to us and started blabbering about some conference he had come to attend in California. From what I could make out, he was talking about some non-profit organization that did some work in "third-world countries" like India. I get put-off by the term and was a bit rude to him. I don't know what the deal was with him. He seemed to have come with a group that was snickering at a distance, looking at him talk to us. He also kept saying something about beads. After he left I explained to the other women (they were a bit naive that way) the whole concept of beads and Mardi gras. I told them about my experience of Mardi Gras in New Orleans in which I asked guys to flash for beads instead. I totally scandalized them.

One of them reminded me of the way I used to be a couple of years ago. She didn't drink, had no clue what Mardi Gras meant, constantly worried about which neighborhoods were bad in Bay Area. I told her that Sunnyvale is one of the safest cities in the US. I attribute the fact to all the desis who live in Sunnyvale. My friend later scoffed me for telling her about our smoking/drinking experiences. My excuse was that she seemed like a non-judgemental person to me and I was a bit tipsy.

So the topics at dinner ranged from makeup to living alone, from dieting to anti-Pakistani feelings prevalent among Indians and of course the Presidential debate. The only thing I had to say about the debate was, these are the times I wish I could vote.