Opinion Tinder at 10: Love in strange places, freedom of choice — and shame

Soon enough, online dating became a parallel universe for people like me, where we took risks and cautiously violated our parents’ wisdom — don’t talk to strangers. At some point, if the conversation with the stranger materialised into something concrete, it was time to build a story around how we met, to avoid being judged for our desperation.

On the one hand was the judgement from family, which considers it dishonourable to put yourself out there, because it is not part of the glorious Indian culture to behave this loosely. On the other hand was our own internalisation of this shame coupled with notions of pure love and how to find it.

In retrospect, I see that the profile I made was not very different from what my mother did. I picked the best pictures that filtered my flaws; I highlighted my strengths in the bio and occasionally, like seasoning, sprinkled some of my “Malayalee wit”. I simply swiped right and left while my mother invested in a premium membership. Before I knew it, I was subconsciously racing against her to find a suitable match. I needed to get there faster, lest I end up with someone she finds, who has a significantly lower IQ and is not a “sapiosexual” or “bibliophile”.

The world of online dating, beginning in India with Tinder, had taken me and several others by surprise. Technology had suddenly offered an open space to find love. But we were not ready to give technology this credit, as to our millennial minds, it was “shameful” to seek love in strange spaces, like a dating app. The idea of love needed familiarity to develop and the screens of our phones suspended that familiarity. Signing up on the app was an act of desperation.

I say this with some degree of reservation because at least five couples I know, who met on a dating app, are now married, restoring faith in the belief that love can be found in the strangest of places. On the other hand, I am also fairly familiar with romantic malpractices, described with Gen Z terms like ghosting, breadcrumbing, catfishing, submarining, etc.

It is critical how a partner is presented to families and acquaintances — as a friend of a friend, a colleague I met during training, a college batchmate, etc. Say anything, except that you met each other on a dating app. This is not limited to families. A public servant I met on the app introduced me to his colleagues saying, “We met during a cultural programme at IIC”. Our creativity peaked while making up stories for the outside world, for we were surprised by the love and friendships our phone screens offered.

On mutual agreement, we did everything to shield the casual love and prevent it from slipping through our fingers. The casual love mattered more than the lies we made up: It validated us, often involved gut-wrenching pain, but still represented the freedom of choice, which our middle-class families did not offer. And it did not hurt to have a good story!

Years later, now happily unmarried, I can say that Tinder (and other dating apps) taught me some lessons for romance: How to filter people in real life; register red flags (and then ignore them) and process all of this faster. And after a heartbreak, the recovery period is substantially shorter, because there are always plenty of fish in the sea.

anuradha.vellat@indianexpress.com