Are you feeling lonely? Like pizza, you can now get yourself a friend by simply punching a few buttons on a dial a date service. Friendship clubs have mushroomed all over the place. We are now in the explicit urban world of dial-me-now instant relationships. Telephonic friendships to get rid of boredom, Sex on the phone. Often the question arises in our mind that are these clubs just a big tease or do they really help you make friends.

HOW THEY WORK?

Spell out your preferences in "friendship" and in less than two minutes, you will be given quite a few names and numbers of people who match up with your criteria. Some conversations will be like the following instances: "I'm married too," said Prakash, who owned a garments shop. "My wife isn't as smart as most women are today. I want a genuine companionship with a liberated woman. I don't want to flirt," he said. "First tell me, are you going to meet me, or you just want to talk? I am tired of girls who just want telephonic flirtation. I am serious."
"It is not sex that I am looking for...but I don't enjoy doing it with my wife... What about you?"
"Hi! So what if you're married? Friendship has nothing to do with marriage. It's about fun," said this booming, enthusiastic voice.

Whether these conversations are comic or violent, shy or brutish, weary or idealistic, one thing is that they are all about unconsummated sexual fantasies. You call a club; enroll yourself, giving name, phone number, age, preference. What/who are you looking for? Then, you are given numbers and names of people which suit your preferences. That's their role. From then you are on your own. These friendship clubs are a perfect foil for the double standards many of us carry. A majority of those people floating around in such friendship clubs are people from apparently respectable well-to-do backgrounds.

WHO ARE INVOLVED
One of the owners of these clubs claim to get 400-500 calls everyday and most of the caller’s falls in the 25-40 age categories. Most of the people are from good backgrounds, but all of them possess the same bottom-line: boredom in their existing relationships. They are all depressed souls. Others are in search of fun and adventure. But there is one or two per cent who come with the sole purpose of looking for sexual satisfaction in a paid-for relationship. A majority of them reveal that they are distant from their spouses, or find them tiresome. While, by and large, the ratio of males enrolling in such clubs exceeds that of women, but frustrated housewives is also part of the scenario. Sex appears, is the underlying pursuit of such lonely hearts. Boredom doesn't seem to have killed their desire to experiment. Some admit easily to that, others hem and haw evading the subject. Some women, especially those who claim to be housewives, only 'talk'. They don't meet; still others are game to go the entire hog,