Date With Hot Tinder

Tinder! All the girls and boys of the current generation know about Tinder. A dating app. India is many countries within a country. While the traditional culture and religious values are being revived in the name of Hindutva, Apps like Tinder have made considerable in-roads. Youth are subjected to considerable peer pressure. If one is not on Tinder and hasn’t dated you are not cool. So was the case with Shalini. Brought up with traditional values, particularly being from a Sindhi community. All her uncles and aunts, cousins and nieces have had arranged marriages within their community. The only exception her parents had made for her is to let her study and now work in Bangalore, a most happening city in the country, at least in the southern part of the country. Already her mother had started sounding about marriage. Shalini has been buying time saying she is enjoying her work and doing well. Her mother often argues girls don’t have to work. She would be taken care of by the boy. Shalini being a good looker would find a boy who is earning well by his business or working in a company.

Being independent and living in Bangalore, Shalini succumbed to peer pressure and entered the world of Tinder. She found there was a wide choice of boys available. Her hormones got fired and she was not exactly discreet in scrutinizing her Tinder profile, an error that came to haunt her in the future. She was not in the know-how of it that time when she said yes to a particular date. She found one Ravichandran, a boy hailing from the god’s own country, called Kerala officially.

Talking of India being many countries combined into one culturally and metamorphically is not out of place. India herself is being referred to as Bharat Mata, a majority sentiment not exactly shared by minorities. Her rivers are named after Goddesses. There were many Goddesses being worshipped. Education, wealth and power were symbolised by the three Goddesses called Saraswathi, Lakshmi and Parvathi. In the days of Jai Shir Ram reference to Sitha was not far behind. Sites were not supposed to cross the Lakshman Rekha. Yet Shalini had crossed the line. While Goddesses were being worshipped girls were also being raped on the streets. Traditionally girls were supposed to bring dowry. Legally it is not permitted but cultural practices prevailed. So, some friends of Shalini had cautioned her saying to date was ok but not getting date raped was not ok at all. Date rape was a common thing in the west, from where the idea of dating originated. Indians don’t date traditionally, a practice looked down by elders and some youth as well. Girls who date were considered to be immoral. Such values didn’t affect boys. When it comes to rape people would say why was the girl out in the night? Or why was she dressed provocatively? It is a boys’ thing; boys would be boys and so on. Such a patriarchal attitude continued after marriage too. A recent survey revealed that the majority of men and women considered wife-beating to be ok. The reasons for wife-beating were not cooking tasty food; not taking care of children; not taking the husband’s permission for going out and so on.

Not that Shalini wasn’t aware of all this. Yet peer pressure forced her to register with Tinder and she gave a false profile. Yet she decided to choose Ravichandran even when she knew his profile like hers was most likely to be false too. Dating went on for a while. Her friends would accompany her unseen by Ravichandran and would maintain a discreet watch over her. No hotel meetings and going to ‘dark corners.’ Soon it became obvious to Shalini that Ravichandran’s interest lay in getting her to bed with him. He didn’t show much interest in knowing her or having any long-term relationship. Being warned of the pitfalls of dating Shalini kept her hormonal urges in check whereas Ravichandran was trying to get physical whenever they dated. It was but natural that Shalini soon got weary of her non-existing relationship with Ravichandran and soon stopped responding to Ravichandran. However, Ravichandran didn’t take kindly to this. His ego felt slighted. Overnight he turned into a stalker.

It so happened that COVID struck much to Shalini’s relief. She could easily dodge him on social media as long as they were not any physical threats. Anyway, she hadn’t disclosed that she hailed from Mumbai and her family details. With the first break in COVID Shalini departed home as she lost her job in the travel company. Everybody knew that the travel sector was the sector to get hit first. Her parents were relieved and started looking for a suitable boy. Shalini having lost her job and independence and once bitten twice shy had to fall in line with her parents’ dictum.

That wasn’t the case with Ravichandran. He had a dark streak. He had long back seen Cape Fear and liked the villain ‘ish’ character portrayed by Robert-de-Niro and closer home by Sharukh Khan. In both, films the villain got slighted by a girl and how he continued to stalk her to her discomfort. Ravichandran did like-wise. But he had no clue that Shalini has gotten back home. She was successful in dodging him in the virtual space.

In the mean time with COVID on the wane her parents pursued finding a match for her. That meant seeing photos of prospective boys, inviting boys with his entourage home, offering them tea and snacks and initiating talking with one another. Luckily for Shalini with her good looks, she got matched with better-looking boys and her ordeal was less comparatively. She did find a boy to her liking in a relative way. She told her mother the only misgiving was that boy was more than five years older to her. But her mother dismissed her misgiving stating that her father was ten years older than her mother and that was good since women tend to attain menopause early but the men had a thing going for them. The age gap took care of the biological fit to an extent. So, it was for Shalini that she met with the boy who was not so bad to look at. He had his own business going and was a partner in a start-up and she didn’t have much choice but to say yes.

In the meantime, Ravichandran aka Robert de Niro aka our local Shahrukh Khan tasted success in finding that Shalini has returned to Mumbai and managed to track her changed profile in the social media space. While wedding engagements were on Shalini’s fear over the social media space had become to haunt her. She reached out to her trusted friends who in turn reached out to their friends in their network and finally found an Inspector who worked in the cyber-cell. Rahul entered the cyber cell of the police although he was good at hacking and could have found a much better paying job in a private company. He had a sense of moral duty to the society and particularly towards women. His sister, like Shalini, was a victim of cyberspace and went into depression. Rahul then had decided that his hacking skills would be put to use to make cyber space a better place for women in society and to all human beings in general. In a short span, Rahul had made a mark in the department and even his senior officers had considerable respect for him. Not that they ever understood what cyberspace was all about. Beyond sending emails they had not much clue about the internet.

When Rahul came to know of Shalini’s predicament which was very similar to that of what his sister went through he didn’t lose much time in chasing the stalker, Ravichandran. He found out quickly that Ravichandran was already married but was living alone at Bangalore while his wife was staying in Kerala and worked as a teacher. Rahul became a stalker of Ravichandran and started exposing his dark deeds. Shalini wasn’t the first girl to become a victim of Ravichandran. Ravichandran was essentially a coward and got some cheap thrill at targeting timid women in cyberspace using Tinder and taking them to bed when dating became successful. But when Rahul started stalking him, he got frightened. He realised he was up against a far better hacker. Rahul had also given some hints that he was from the police. He quit cyberspace and even quit his job to return to Kerala where he started a private internet shop.

Shalini is now happily married but yet wary of cyberspace. She just posts, tentatively, harmless photos of events in her life. When you look at her one would be amazed at how quickly she has assumed the role of a traditional housewife. Mother India is good at making mothers of women. Ravichandran’s wife was quite amazed at the sudden transformation of her husband although she felt her freedom got curtailed by his presence. Rahul felt good as he felt that he has avenged some villain for an unknown sister’s plight.