No, not because I had relocated to a sarai in Delhi. But because he had just gotten married and I was single and living alone. “Can’t get better than that, can it?” he asked glumly. He was clearly not a Smug Married. “I guess not,” I said brightly. “You don’t even need to lock the bathroom door — I never did when I was single and living alone,” he revelled in his former colony. “I wouldn’t go so far,” my disciplined house training came in the way.

But, yes, I said, being single rocked, as hard as our economy rocked in 2006 — probably harder. I read somewhere about the urban trend called Singles Economy, and I particularly loved one line that defined the category: “Moralists fret about them; marketing folk court them; urban developers want to lure them.”

Moralists? They would have to be my mom and her ilk. When I finally managed to drag her on to the living room couch and forced her to watch a rather risqué episode (now that wasn’t my fault — it was Murphy’s Law in action) of Sex and the City, she gasped in horror: “Is this what you do?”

Marketing folk? I never see money in my bank account, so I guess I have been a marketer’s case study in success.

Urban developers? That too. Ever since I bought myself an apartment somewhere in the National Capital Region, I’ve constantly been fretting about who in the wide world would foot my Equated Monthly Installments in case I were to lose my job. “It’s a fallback, just in case I don’t find that Rich Guy,” I tell green-eyed monsters who expostulate: “My, my, you’ve certainly planned out your life well, haven’t you?”

A bustling singles economy — so many people I know contribute generously to this parallel economy’s GDP — but, as a nation, why are we not Single and Satisfied? Popular culture is supposed to reflect popular sentiments. How come we don’t have our own Bridget Jones’s Diary or The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing or Bergdorf Blondes or — I know my mother will hate me for this — Sex and the City? What about Friends? When have we ever seen a movie where people celebrated singlehood? There was that urban legend Dil Chahta Hai — where everyone wanted to go traipsing to Goa to play beach volleyball — but Sonu Nigam’s high-pitched Tanhaee that went on and on through the second half was a shrill reminder to the pitfalls of single existence.

I told my friend — this time over a round of tea from a certain low-lying garden in North Bengal, the waiter informed us — about the ‘singles’ article I so loved, the one that mentioned moralists, marketers and urban developers. That also happened to mention how nice English girls like Ms Jones and hip New Yorkers like Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe, and Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha actually play a double role on the small screen in Friends and Sex and the City. The ‘originals’ in real life now dominate city landscapes “not just in New York and London, but increasingly in Tokyo, Stockholm, Paris and Santiago”. Why not Delhi or Bombay or even — as market optimists would have us believe — boomtown Calcutta?

“I think you need to settle down,” my friend offered helpfully. “And dry up the singles economy?” was not what I said. I will first have to find a nice sensible boyfriend, I explained, borrowing freely from Bridget’s Diary, and stop forming romantic attachments to the following: “alcoholics, workaholics, sexoholics, commitment phobics, peeping Toms, megalomaniacs, emotional dimwits (okay, I changed that one — a bit), perverts, misogynists and freeloaders”.

Besides, I told him, I’d have to stop writing ‘Single in the City’ if I settled down.

He had started looking slightly exasperated. “I know I started this entire singles chatter, but what is this Single in the City now?”

It’s a column, silly. My column.

“And I have to be in Delhi to read it?”

“Or you could try seeing the ePaper.”

“I think I’ll just walk across the street to the bookstore and buy myself a copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary instead... Or should I get the movie? Maybe both,” he muttered.

That’s when he left me to study the tea leaves.

But Happy New Year in any case.

sushmita.bose@hindustantimes.com