I Found Something Like Love on Tinder – and So I Left It

Tinder is not for making friends. Tinder is not to develop attachment. And it’s no place to share parts of yourself.

They say Tinder is where love goes to die. But, when I’d see the lady next to me on the Delhi Metro swipe over male faces, my eyes would remain fixated on her screen pryingly, and my mind would scream in disagreement with her decisions.

While I felt the concept wasn’t for me, I was itching with curiosity to download the app, just like I had done with Flappy Bird.

My boyfriend didn’t really care when I told him I was getting the app. Delhi boys are known to be notorious on the app, and he was sure I wouldn’t be interested in any ‘gym freak’, ‘lady killer’ or ‘demigod’.

I got it and spent all my time on the pot swiping left and right disinterestedly. Whenever I’d find a match, I’d smile to myself when I realised I had been ‘super liked’ and made small talk till I realised the boy was boring.

After ignoring all the sleaze and trivial (probably made up) life details that my inbox was cluttered with, I finally found somebody who, in retrospect, I think I right swiped on by mistake. He wasn’t anything I would be interested in but nevertheless I responded politely, simply because I had nothing else to do.

The conversation took a conventionally interesting turn, and I knew this the moment the question shifted from “How are you?” to “What does your day typically look like?”. We began sharing relatively significant details of our life.

I told him what I studied, what I enjoyed reading and what made me cry. He once told me he loved to play cricket and was about to take it up professionally, but he had to give up on his dream when he got badly injured. This is painful news to digest for someone who makes it a point to watch every cricket game, and for somebody who played football and knows what it feels like to sit on the sidelines when hurt.

He didn’t whine about it. He dropped it casually in the middle of a conversation about Virat Kohli and went on to cheerfully talk about how he now enjoys playing cricket with the children in his colony.

We kept talking, I kept saying lame, hollow things about how brave it is to follow what one wants, knowing very well that my words meant nothing.

At some point, our conversations fizzled out. The reason I kept persisting was not known to me, but I suspected it could be because of the sense of sympathy I felt for him.

At some point, I realised that it was closer to feeling attached on a level where I wanted to make him feel better. I was curious, I wanted to know more. Are we friends or not, was a question I kept asking myself – wondering if he spent so much time thinking about the silly details of my life I told him.

I felt exactly like James Blunt did when he sang ‘You’re Beautiful.’ (Or not really.)

While this individual had become a part of my everyday rambling and complaining about my day, I suddenly began feeling uncomfortable with this. I knew that I would never agree on meeting him. What was the point even? I wasn’t out to find love.

People on Tinder do not go out as ‘friends’. This wasn’t a place where I could just get to know somebody. You cannot feel like you’ve shared a part of yourself on this sorry excuse for social media.

He was probably in for something more meaningful, and something potentially romantic and if he was, I didn’t want him to think I was leading him on. He already had so much going on.

I didn’t want to add any further uncertainty to his life. I immediately deleted my account and for the first time, prayed that he had the exact same conversations with multiple women simultaneously.