Yesterday I did the unthinkable – I didn’t know I had it in me to sink so low. I almost replied to the Dating Classifieds in the newspapers, and then with a snap, in a saner moment, with utter horror, realized what I was about to do and then immediately called G in Bangalore, hoping he’d talk me out of it and tell me that that’s something only very very depraved individuals would do! Not people like me, not “cultured, educated, well-read, well-travelled, thinking” people like us, yeah right.

He didn’t. All he said was “M, don’t blame you, I am very close to doing the same!” Little background here would help. G was in the same shoes as I find myself in today, having returned from Boston last year, where he was dating a twice over Ivy Leaguer Latina babe, and now he finds himself thrust amongst “duh 23-year old babes with their brains stuck somewhere in their gyrating asses or plunging cleavages” or amidst 28-29 year-old thoroughly jaded cynical bitches who see no redeeming feature about life and he can’t seem to find a “happy balance” in his own words. He is 29 by the way, and thinks his only hope is women on the right side of 30 – that would be me, people, as he so painstakingly assured me last evening that I should be oh-so-thankful that I am on the right side of 30 (a k a, above the watermark). But, still doesn’t help my cause, because similarities and like-mindedness notwithstanding, we are family-friends from a long long time, so “we” can’t get it together. Not in a million miles from here.

Coming back to the moot point – I need a date. Back home in the US, after all else failed, I came really close to making myself available on Match.com, driven by an overly-excitable exuberant Chinese hairdresser who saw me every six weeks and assured me each time in her non-existent Chinese English that there are “valey goo” men out there on Match.com. Yeah right. Not if you live in Midwestern cornland white-picket-fenced America where you could only hope to find beer-bellied, bald, pony-tailed, 200-pounders who also happened to be proud owners of shiny black Harley-Davidsons, and who for the most part suffer from intense dyslexia. Thanks but no thanks. I believed then (sadly) that the average Indian was far better than the average American, whose IQ as well as EQ ranged between -100 to 0.  Incidentally, as luck would have it, the Chinese hairdresser got lucky, found someone in NYC (a Chinese-American investment banker) and I even got her wedding invite in the mail yesterday!  Valey goo!! The only way I would take a chance on Match.com were if I lived in Boston, NYC, Chicago or San Fran. That’s all. But I didn’t, so I refrained.

Anyway, life is actually pretty good, my date-less existence notwithstanding. The second part of this post will be up in a few hours from now, where I shall spin my yarn about Thanksgiving and for the few people in my life I cherish from the bottom of my heart, and who bring me endless hope and happiness. One especially, whom I have never seen in flesh and blood but who regardless makes my day, maybe my life, every time I talk to him across oceans in packets of digitized data.