A/S/L

18/male/Bhopal here. Looking for a good clean chat.

This was the time of 1999-2001. The time when the internet connection at home was still a big-ask. The only player providing internet connection being Satyam with packages of Rs. 3000 for 3 Gb download.

Me and my friends would go to one of the many a internet cafes and pay anything between Rs.60 per hour to Rs. 80 per hour to log into the world of the mythical internet. At that time having an email address was nothing less than owning a Blackberry today. Rediff was a rage then and so was 123india.com. Yahoo was still a rank outsider and most people were more content with having a desi address in indiatimes.com.

And there were many of my classmates who wrote their email address while filling out the slam books and which as it turned out, didn't exist. And the majority of these true-liars of email address were girls.

It was said that the internet was the path to have a fairytale girlfriend.

A prospective girl friend was waiting for everyone who could afford the Rs.60 per hour internet charge. One with flowing jet black hair, tinkling eyes, sweet voice and an Einstein brain. Every Sabrina_alone, Bedika_lovely were prospective girlfriends.  Of course no we all have realized that no such girl exists. It didn’t exist then and it doesn’t breathe now. Katrina, Diane Kruger, Eva Mendes and the like being exceptions.

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Yahoo chat rooms used to be much more crowded than the Mohali. And it used to take a herculean effort to sneak into those rooms of love. And even harder was to gain attention of email address like Salma_luvs_salman or Cute_gal_bpl. So there were people like Pagal_aashiq and Jungle_it_took_my_love_away who had graciously accepted defeat and would frequent chat rooms just to offer advice to novices like us.

Time travelling too caught imaginations as guys interacting with ‘foreign Indian girls’ would say that they are residing in Mumbai and in some extreme situations, they would give their address  as 31-Bridget street , Maldives or Hussainhara Khatun marg, Dubai.

But in reality they were more commonly seen in the streets of Indrapuri and Shakti Nagar or the lanes of Arera in Bhopal. Horses for courses became the order of the day. Interacting with an NRI girl required an international address.

And then there were people who were so much burdened by the obnoxiously high internet charges that they would start avoiding the café for months. And then the internet café dude had to send ’muscle-boys’ to their house to force them to part with the credit amount.

There was no Facebook or Orkut and no way you could show and impress the fairer sex with  your charming smile or your deep intellect biography until and unless you could start a conversation with the girl. And not many would succeed. And those who would were rare. But then there were some. And they did go on a ‘date’. Some went to Charimli, some went to Top N town near Jyoti Talkies and some went as far as Guwahati.

And to say that it would all start with a smile and a simple  A/S/L...