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Journalism of Courage
A video showing the first meeting of a woman from the United States of America and her Indian boyfriend––after being in a long-distance relationship for over a year––has gone viral. We often hear the phrase “Love knows no borders,” and the couple proved it.
Jaclyn Forero, a US-based photographer, travelled all the way to a remote village in Andhra Pradesh to meet Chandan Singh Rajaputra, the man she fell in love with on Instagram. What started as a simple exchange of messages quickly grew into something deeper. Over the course of 14 months, their bond blossomed through daily video calls, eventually making Forero fly to India.
Forero shared a montage—clips from their video chats mixed with the raw emotion of their first hug at the airport––on her Instagram, and captioned it, “14 months together and ready for a BIG new chapter.”
The post struck a chord online, racking up nearly a million views. Many were moved by the couple’s story and some shared their own experiences in the comments. One person wrote, “Very similar to our story—we met here on Insta. Seven months later, I was flying to India to marry him! That was 3.5 years ago, and he just arrived in the US last April. It’s a crazy journey, but so worth it.”
Another commented on the challenges that come with cross-cultural love: “My husband is from Kerala. He was living in Delhi when we met and now we’ve been married for over seven years, with two kids. It’s been beautiful, but very hard. The cultural differences are immense… It’s worth it, but ready yourselves with a strong foundation.”
A third user said, “You’re going to have the most beautiful children in the world. This was absolutely beautiful to watch.”
Forero and Rajaputra have been sharing moments from their relationship on Instagram and YouTube. The bio of their channel paints a picture of their unconventional love story: “A divorced Christian mother struggling to find love centered on faith meets a younger man on Instagram living in a remote village in Andhra Pradesh… The story of Jackie and Chandan shows that a man with nothing by the world’s standards has everything to offer when the cry of one woman’s heart was for a man after God’s own heart.”
