The same scene plays itself over and over again in dorm rooms and apartments across America each night.

It’s Sunday evening and Payal’s ready to curl up on the couch with her roommates for a night with Sex and the City. Her girls are there, the popcorn’s ready, and Carrie hasn’t even started in on the night’s latest series of exploits when, in the distance, a cell phone rings. It’s mom.

“Hi beti, vat are you doing?”

“Not much Mom, just homework.”

“Good girl… You know, I vas talking to Pinky Aunty on the phone today.”

“You talk to Pinky Aunty everyday, Mom.”

“Yes yes, but today she vas saying, her sister Dolly’s neighbor, Reena Patel, has an aunt in Ahmedabad, whose cousin’s niece is in New York, and she has a brother-in-law who just finished his medicine in the Caribbean…”

Before Payal even realizes what’s happening, one of the precious final episodes of Sex and the City is lost to a half-hour spent trying to untangle the web of a complex Gujarati family tree.

Face it: if you’re a desi girl, you’ve been warding off questions about marriage ever since the day you hit puberty and your mom started hounding you about making sure your dupatta covered your chest. The fact that you had no chest was irrelevant; it was the idea of the chest that mattered. Aunties, uncles, distant relatives, neighbors, video store owners, and other assorted random Indian strangers suddenly began taking interest in you, with but one thought in mind: “Your daughter ees wery pretty. Ven ees she getting married?”

And you quickly learned – the hard way – that, “I’m only 12, you sick bastards, leave me alone!” was perhaps not the appropriate response.

For desi girls in their early 20s, however, marriage pressure becomes a more serious and valid concern shared by both young women and their parents alike – albeit in very different ways. Most South Asian women get married far younger than their American counterparts, and so the hunt begins early, with both parents and daughters on the lookout for that perfect match.

“According to my dad, he wants to pick the person,” says Vipra Sharma, 24, a medical student. “He thinks the type of guy you meet on your own isn’t the type of guy you should want to marry. The ones who go through their parents for that purpose of finding the woman they want to marry, they’re the kind of guys who’ll settle down.”

Vipra finds herself in the same boat as many of her friends – their parents want a high level of involvement in choosing their future son-in-law, but the girls prefer finding someone on their own. While traditional arranged marriages are being rendered more and more obsolete, many parents still want to introduce their daughters to men they approve of and be actively involved with the entire dating and marriage process.

Archena Bhalla, 25, saw her older sister take the traditional route to marriage, and knows that path is not for her. “My sister is very traditional, and she probably met the guy four times,” recalls Archena, a law student at Syracuse University. “I didn’t like the way it was with her, there was too much family involvement. Whenever they got off the phone, my parents wanted to know what they talked about. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

But as much as many parents may dream of chaperoning their daughters from date to date, sitting between the happy couple at the movies and listening in on each phone conversation from an extension, they seem to have come to understand that since their kids are being raised in America, they have a slightly different mindset than what may prevail back in the motherland. In other words, their kids are gonna date and they’re gonna have to get used to it.

“My mom is like, ‘If you love someone, let me know,’” says Snehal Shah, 22, a research assistant. “They have a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. They know this is what’s going to happen, but they don’t really want to know while it’s happening,” she says. Snehal is currently in a relationship with someone she thinks she is likely to marry, but isn’t in any rush to tell her parents. “When they start really hounding me about getting married, then I’ll be like, ‘I found someone.’ I don’t think they have any idea now.”

Karishma Kishnani, 21, a senior at Boston College, would also wait before telling her parents she was seeing someone. “If I told them about a guy they’d know it would be serious, and they’d research, find out about his family. They’d be asking a lot of questions, and their minds would be racing. So I need to be completely sure that I want to be with this guy long-term before I get their hopes up.”

Parents need not worry about what their little angels are up to behind their backs, however. Most girls overwhelmingly seem to be looking for the same qualities as their parents, but with just a bit more. “They basically trust me, we have a mutual understanding about what they expect. They know that I’m not going to bring home somebody random,” says Farhina Muneeruddin, 22, a pharmacy student at Northeastern University. “Whoever I meet should be Muslim, has to show he can provide for me financially, and come from a good family. I’m looking for everything that my parents are looking for, but obviously on the more personal level, somebody that I can really get along with.”

While many parents and daughters may agree on what it is they’re looking for, when often becomes a problem – and many girls start feeling the pressure way too early. “My mom’s talked about marriage since I was 16,” says Nazia Ahmed, 23, a scientist. “She wasn’t serious, but she wanted to start looking around. Now that I’m out of school and working, I really have no reason to put it off any more, so the pressure has been building.

“I want someone raised here,” she continues. “My mom says she gets that, but when I turn down rishtas from older fobby guys, she says I’m being closed-minded, and accuses me of not wanting to get married.”

As exasperated as her mother’s methods may make her from time to time, Nazia does concede that she understands where her mom’s coming from, to an extent. “She knows it’s her responsibility as a parent is to make sure her daughter is married off well at a good age. She understands that it’s hard but she doesn’t want me to turn into that 28-year-old unmarried girl. So, she stresses.”

Many young South Asian women, however, say that the pressure they feel isn’t coming so much from their parents as it is from themselves. “I’m the type of person who does want to get married soon. I don’t want to be 25-26 and not know where I’m going,” says Farhina. “I think the pressure’s there because there’s so many girls around you freaking out about it, so you freak out even more even though you don’t need to all the time.”

Even the girls who want to get married in two or three years feel they need to start meeting people now, but… where? “It’s definitely hard for a girl my age who’s interested in meeting Muslim guys. How do I go about finding people? Why aren’t any Muslim guys normal?” Farhina asks. “There’s always one extreme or another with them. It’s not like we’re asking for this extremely well-rounded person. We’re just looking for someone who’s normal.”

And finding that normal guy is no easy task, because he doesn’t seem to be lurking in any of the places most young South Asian American girls frequent. “People go out, go to clubs, even Internet sites, but I don’t think serious relationships come out of those things. If you want a good date or hookup, maybe, but nothing else,” Vipra believes.

With the man-market looking abysmal at best, many girls do see themselves willing to concede and let their parents help out if things don’t look up in a few years. “The plan was to find a guy in college and be ready to get married by the time I graduate, but that’s not happening,” says Karishma. “My parents hope I find someone in the next two years, and if not, they’ll intervene.”

“The sense of what an arranged marriage is has changed a lot,” adds Snehal. “It’s not so much of a stigma now for your parents to help you find someone, because you still talk to the person and go on dates. Before people were more like, ‘I want to find someone.’ But now as people get older, they’re more open to letting their parents help.”

So regardless of who does the looking, finding the guy is widely agreed to be the hard part. Most South Asian Americans still look to marry within their own religious and cultural groups, and so women find themselves resorting to new ways to meet men that they might have normally looked down upon in the past. Sindhis and Gujaratis often organize huge conventions or cruises with the intention of bringing the younger generations together, and the annual Islamic Society of North America convention is notorious for “Club ISNA” – the late night hotel lobby scene, a haven for intermingling between young single Muslims.

But with the new millennium, new methods of meeting people have come to the forefront, thanks to the Internet. While the matrimonial listings from India Abroad still continue to bring looks of disdain to their faces, many girls aren’t quite so weary of using websites such as Friendster and its Muslim counterpart, Naseeb, in their quest to find their perfect mate. Taking their inspiration from good old-fashioned networking, these sites connect people through their friends – meaning you can only see profiles of people that you are connected to through people you already know. “It’s hard enough to find Muslim guys, let alone the right one that you’re compatible with,” says Nazia. “You have to branch out. The Internet makes the world smaller, and connects people who may not have met otherwise.”

While the Internet is heralding in a new wave of modern methods of meeting people, the majority still prefer simpler, more old-fashioned means: face-to-face. “Parents pressure their kids to get married, but at the end of the day, who? How? Where?” asks Shadab Raziuddin, 25, an analyst at a consulting firm. “It all comes down to friends introducing friends.” Raziuddin saw from his own experience the challenges South Asians face in meeting like-minded people, and took matters into his own hands. He heard about young Muslim networking groups sprouting up across the country, and was also familiar with the success of other desi networking associations like SANA, and decided to try to recreate their success in the New York area by founding MuslimEvent.com. He organizes parties catered toward young single Muslim professionals while maintaining Islamic codes of conduct, and the response is overwhelming.

“The first one we were expecting 80 people, and we got 150. It’s tougher for girls in that they have more pressure, so something like this becomes very attractive to them,” he says. “The idea was established by a lack of venues to meet people for marriage, friendship, or professional purposes. We realize that it is very hard for South Asians to meet each other, for whatever reason, and we used that as a reason.”

For Muslims who want to meet people without parental interference, parties like the ones Shadab organizes are an ideal opportunity to mingle. “A lot of people go, ‘You know what? Worst-case scenario, I’ll expand my circle of friends. And a potential bonus would be to actually meet someone I’m attracted to and want to get to know better,’” says Shadab. “For me and my friends, it’s twofold. It’s definitely to expand our circle; for some it’s like, ‘Let’s try to meet the wifey,’ but for others, it’s just to meet girls to start the process.” And for some people, the process has definitely begun – though he just began his events a year ago, Shadab’s parties have already been credited with two engagements.

It’s a tough world out there for that 20-something desi girl. Your parents are on your case, waiting for you to slip up so they can have an excuse to start shopping around your biodata. You’re on the lookout for the man of your dreams, but the men you have to look at are still just boys looking for a good time. What’s a single brown female to do? “I’m 24. I don’t want to sneak behind my parents’ backs,” says Vipra. “I don’t want to date someone just to date them, I want to know there’s a future there. I don’t want just a boyfriend. I don’t want long-term. I want lifelong.”

You’ll find him, don’t worry. Or rather, tell your parents not to worry. For now, just focus on your friends and your career, and keep the faith. The guys are out there somewhere. In the meantime, ignore your parents when they wallpaper your room with pictures of guys with well-oiled mustaches, and pretend not to hear them when they start not-so-discreetly ooh-ing and aah-ing over the latest Punjabi matrimonial listing in India Abroad. Start warming them up to the idea that, while yes, doctors are always going to be number one, lawyers and engineers aren’t half bad either. Giggle and shake your head at the aunties when they ask you when you’re getting married, and avoid mauling them when they talk about you like you’re over the hill. At 22. Keep your eyes open, focus on having a good time, and everything will fall into place. But perhaps most importantly, don’t let yourself miss too many episodes of Sex and the City over it – after this season, it’s never coming back.