Day 74 of 100 Indian Tinder Tales
M from Lucknow talks about trying Tinder there.
“‘Tinder in Lucknow , Eww what kind of men will you get there?’ ‘All good guys are either married or have moved out’. ‘Be careful ya’. ‘Only bold women use Tinder in Lucknow, it reeks of desperation. We are a conservative city’. ‘Ahh I have heard people confuse Tinder with the app version of Shaadi.com’.
This and much more is what I got to hear when I told my friends living in metros that I was finally going to try Tinder. Nevertheless, I downloaded the app, set the age range between 30-33 and got started. Within 30 minutes Tinder told me ‘there’s no one new around you’ but I had 10 matches by then which I further sized to three after exchanging ‘pleasantries’. By then I also knew why my friends said what they did about using Tinder in Lucknow.
Guy 1 was a blue-eyed Kashmiri who was in Lucknow on an official trip. We liked the same kind of books and had an instant connection. Soon we started talking about Kashmir and he unmatched after a heated discussion!
Guy 2 was someone from Delhi who was on an official trip to Lucknow. His bio said he was from TISS and that’s what made me swipe right. He looked like kebab without meat but was very engaging. Soon we moved to WhatsApp and texted till the wee hours.
Guy 3 was F. He looked better than any 33-year-old I saw on the app and was only 6 km away from me. We didn’t talk much but he looked cute and decent in his pictures. I deleted the app after we exchanged our numbers.
It was Guy 2 who looked like a real deal. We were always WhatsApping and I was ecstatic to know that he was looking for a ‘connection’ and not just a hook up. Meanwhile I was also getting to know F and he looked like a workaholic who practically lived in airports and moved his thumb right or left while waiting for boarding to start. We were talking on WhatsApp but would only tell each other how hot it was.
Guy 2 was getting up close and personal and I was loving every second of it. He was travelling to Lucknow again and I was busy telling my friends how I had cracked a deal in Lucknow. Just two days before we were to meet, I asked him to add me on Facebook and he told me he had deactivated his account. But that night I decided to play FBI and found his Facebook account and after scanning through his friends list I saw a woman posing with him in Chura and Mehendi. Damn , Damn Damn he was married. This could not be happening to me. He was a married man looking for some action and he thought this Lucknow girl was the most foolish creature on earth. Really?
It was 2 am and wanted to share it with somebody and laugh manically. No I just wanted to rant and thank god for protecting me. No, I just wanted to call that guy and verbally abuse him like he had never been abused before. After I blocked him on WhatsApp, I started texting F frantically.
I don’t know why I chose to rant about it to F but I am glad I did.
F still was a workaholic and from weather we soon moved to food, love, sex and relationships. I told him I was not looking for casual sex and he was completely fine with that. After talking online for three months, we finally met over overtly sweet strawberry shakes and I can’t remember when was the last time someone helped me unwind completely like he did. No work calls, no ailing grandparents, no fear of living a mediocre life in a tier-two city, it was just me, him and our glasses of strawberry shake.
I am writing this from a different city where I moved for work but F and I still talk almost every day and I can’t wait for him to slip on that strawberry condom when I go back to Lucknow.”
Induviduality 