‘Whether you live in New York or New Delhi, the male species of this age is despairingly identical’

The digital age is enabling us to talk about the messy bits of romance
8216Whether you live in New York or New Delhi the male species of this age is despairingly identical8217
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I love a good love story. Just this afternoon, I read in The New York Times about how Bill and Melinda Gates' romance started with a rejection. He asked her in a parking lot to go on a date in two weeks' time; she replied that he wasn't impulsive enough and to ask her closer to the date. Instead, he called her a few hours later and they went out that night. I took a screenshot of the paragraph, and sent it on WhatsApp to the guy I've been dating. “I don't get the point,” he said. He was similarly unimpressed last year when I became obsessed with Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas' wedding. My girlfriends and I debated everything: Is the love real? (Hell, yes!) Was the white dress OTT? (Yes, and it was sensational.) Did Nick really need to shut down Tiffany to pick out a ring? (Who cares? Have you seen the size of that rock?)

When I was seven, I'd steal romance magazines from my older sister. At university in America, we got The New York Times delivered to our dorm. I diligently read the papers—and secretly, the Weddings pages—who married whom, where they met, how they courted. I was convinced the modern fairy tale involved Ivy League grads who married at The Plaza amid pink peonies. Even when I moved back to India, the land of arranged marriages and four-day extravaganzas—and not a peony in sight—my vision of love was, well, whitewashed. But IRL, a wedding is not an ending. Love is a shaky, scary thing. It can build gradually or ambush you with its full force. It ebbs and flows. It is a living thing, an energy that can consume and dissipate. You don't often read these stories in the Times—at least not in the Weddings section. But Instagram is full of them.

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My feed now is the polar opposite of the sort of love stories I used to love: There's @violetclair, in which illustrator Samantha Rothenberg showcases Screenshots with Psychopaths. These stories do not have happy endings. They reveal the incredibly messy dating lives of single people today. For instance: John freaks out because Jane gets her period while they're having sex and the next day, asks her to pay for a new mattress and sheets. On @textsfromyourex, more screenshots. “Do you have a minute?” “No, I don't. I already blocked 2 of your numbers and 2 Instagram accounts. Pls take the hint.” Then there's @tindernightmares: “Do you like burgers? Then you'll definitely like my meat in your buns.” And there's @adrianamanhattan, who illustrates relationship issues: “I just called to ask how long I should wait before I text back.

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Each post is always followed by dozens of comments, discussions on not only relationship challenges but issues of patriarchy and commitment. These accounts do for Generation Z what Sex and the City did for Generation X: make (primarily) women realise that they aren't alone in their dating challenges, that we are dealing with changing gender roles that can make both sides uncomfortable and throw us into the unknown. Add to that internet porn, dating apps and the entire institution of marriage/monogamy in dire despair, and you've got fodder for a million posts. But also, I realised, these stories of love and dating, mostly from urban cities across the world, seem familiar. Whether you live in New York or New Delhi, the male species of this age is (despairingly) identical.

The more time we spend on Instagram, the unhealthier it seems to be—especially for women, who are constantly being subjected to impossible cheekbones and thigh gaps. And yet, in corners of the internet, new-age love gurus are showing us that our dating stories are crazy, but not uncommon. A bad date that might previously wreck a woman's confidence might not any longer. A single friend of mine called last week after a disappointing date and seemed unperturbed by the guy's statement that she “was hairier than he was comfortable with”. Her response to me: “I wish he had texted this to me. I would have sent the screenshot to Violet Clair.”

Everywhere we look, people are hooking up on apps, and more often than not, breaking things off or being ghosted. It's the new normal. It's fine if you don't marry your college sweetheart. It's fine if you do, and then divorce him a decade later, and make your own way with your kids in tow. It's fine if you discover that casual sex and Netflix are actually all you crave on a weekend. It's 2019, and today's love stories come in a million shades of grey, and every colour of the rainbow.

I still read the Weddings pages, and I follow the (seemingly) fairy-tale romances on Instagram as well as the screwed-up ones. I am no Cinderella waiting for a prince. I'm just ready for a man who will be genuinely happy when I get promoted at work, will drive the kids to school and raise our sons and daughters as equals. My current beau may not share my love of celeb weddings, but he drove across the city the other night and recreated our first date to celebrate that it had been a year to the day. Romance may be occasional these days, but it exists. And when it comes, you have to recognise it. That's why we will always need more love stories.