Day 38 of 100 Indian Tinder Tales
Inspiration: Edvard Munch’s Kiss
L, an expat who lives in Chennai, writes about finding love on Tinder
“When we matched on Tinder, we had both been using the app for about 3 months and each had a few dates already. I had kind of stopped using the app for a while but swiped a Saturday night away. Meanwhile, she was in Chennai for work, and having not much to do was doing pretty much the same. And we matched. We started chatting, and tried to meet 1 or 2 times, but it didn’t work out. As I said she was only in town for work, so when she left the city after a few days, we still talked for a while and then moved on to other more promising prospects!
About 6 weeks later, I left for a weekend trip to Thailand, and since we had talked about travelling, I texted her to let her know. When I got back from my trip, we started chatting everyday. We both didn’t know where this was going (shall I remind you we hadn’t met), but we were enjoying the day long conversations, each other’s sense of humour, wittiness, and abundant teasing and flirting.
It was only 5 months later, that she came back to Chennai for work. And then, we finally met! There was such an instant connection, that we kissed within the first 30 seconds of meeting, made out in the elevator, and were in the bedroom within 5 minutes. My flatmates were out of the country for the whole duration of her stay, so she spent most of the week staying at my place. It was an amazing week, but I still had in mind that this was only a one time thing, that she would go back and that we would both move on. Until the last night we had together before she left. She fell asleep before me, and I remember wanting to wake her up just so I could hang out with her for a little while longer. I knew something was on then!
The next day, we were lounging together in the living room, hating the fact that she’d be leaving in the evening. And then, she gathered all her courage to invite me to her birthday, which was the next weekend. And then I knew something was really on when I said yes, without a doubt, that I would fly out to spend the weekend with her, her closest friends, and meet most if not all of her family, two weeks after meeting her. So I went!
When I got there, she picked me up from the airport and we went to have lunch. After discussing about it a little bit, still trying to shake off the unreal feeling of it all, we decided it was just going to be simpler if we would call each other boyfriend/girlfriend. She was excited haha! During that lovely weekend that we spent in her family’s secondary home by the beach with a few of her closest friends, our relationship took another leap. While she was peacefully washing the dishes, I came to offer my help, which she politely refused and suggested I go mingle with her friends. As I was moving towards the living room, she let a very casual “Love you” slip out. You know, the kind of “Love you” you say before hanging up the phone when you’ve been dating for a while. I replied, slightly confused, “Love you too”, and moved on with the rest of the night.
So after the weekend, we both flew away to our respective cities, and this is when 10 months of long distance relationship started. Luckily enough, we managed to see each other pretty much every 3 weeks, except when I left for my home country, twice. She came to Chennai, I went to Kolkata, we went to Mumbai and also travelled to new and known places together. There were a lot of chats, phone calls, and Skype.
And now? Well we’ll celebrate our 1 year anniversary, 1 week before her birthday, in a month. We just moved in together, in Chennai, about a month ago. Yep, she made a big leap! As I’ve been in India for two years, and it has never been my plan to settle here, she might even make a bigger leap and follow me back home in a year or two. We’ll see!”
Induviduality 