Day 75 of 100 Indian Tinder Tales
Thanks S from Bangalore for making her believe in the goodness that exists in the world.
“Soon after I moved to Bangalore, I broke up with my boyfriend. That, and wanting to meet some new people, drove me to install Tinder. One of the guys I matched with, S, was cute and looked and sounded really smart.
We got talking, and we talked about many things. Soon after, I gave him my number, and we shifted to conversation to WhatsApp. We continued talking, and we talked almost every day about so many things – books, poetry, love, Tinder, people, family, ourselves, almost anything. I quickly understood that we were very different people who didn’t get along in most respects. Yet, we continued talking.
Some time, about 2-3 weeks after we’d started talking, he told me he would be going abroad for a week or so. We got talking about letters and postcards, and I told him how I love receiving mail, and he mentioned how he loved sending postcards. He asked me, “Would you like a postcard from me?” I didn’t know. I didn’t know him or trust him well enough to give him my address, and so we both dropped it.
Some time later, after we’d talked a lot more – after I’d stalked him well enough online – I established that he wasn’t going to turn out to be a creepy stalker, I gave him my address . Just as soon as I’d given it, I forgot about it.
We met another two weeks or so after that. It went perfectly nicely. We went to his favorite restaurant, some place I’d never been before, and he taught me how to use chopsticks. We talked a lot about many things and I might have even developed a tiny minuscule crush on him. He told me he was moving to another city in about a month’s time.
We spoke once after that, maybe the next day, to say we had a lovely time and we should do it again. But we never spoke again after that. Maybe we had both learned that it was never going to work out anyway. Or maybe one of us wasn’t really interested in what the other was looking for. Either way, I knew it was done. Another 2-3 weeks later, I deleted his number from my phone, and his texts from WhatsApp, knowing that I wouldn’t need it. For completely unrelated reasons, I even deleted my Tinder account the same day.
The very next day, I received a postcard from where he was. Perfectly chosen, cute and referencing a conversation we’d previously had. It said only one sentence, “Dear S, I saw this and thought of you.”. The warmest postcard I’d ever received because of all it meant. My own boyfriend had never sent me something so personal as that one stranger did, even before I met him. It brightened up my day, and convinced me that there were still so many happy coincidences in the world that I shouldn’t give up just yet.
The saddest thing? I don’t have a number, or any other way of contacting him anymore just to thank him and let him know how much his postcard means to me.”
Induviduality 