Red Flags and Rishtas

1 A Serial Dater

A Serial Dater

I f my life was a romcom, the guy sitting across from me would be the guy.

Not the one I was currently on a date with – that would be far too obvious.

I mean the handsome man sitting behind him, two empty tables away.

He would watch me from a distance, an amused smile on his face.

Right off the bat, he’d know I was on an awkward first date, and a force greater than him would propel him to step in and save the day.

He would run to me and tell me my car was being towed away, and I’d follow him out into the parking lot, even though I took an Uber to the cafe.

We would escape to the street and hail an autorickshaw, breathlessly smiling from ear to ear.

That’s it. The perfect meet-cute.

But, of course, my life wasn’t a romcom, and the man I was shamelessly fantasising about in front of my date was not even looking at me.

‘Shall we order?’ asked Manan, patiently waiting for me to direct my gaze back to the menu.

‘Oh, right. Actually, I’m not that hungry. I’ll just get a coffee,’ I said, ignoring the faint rumble in my stomach.

‘You sure? It’s dead in the afternoon,’ he said, sounding confused.

I felt bad for him. But those were the rules – coffee dates for guys I would ghost, lunch dates for second-date contenders, and dinner and drinks for when I was DTF.

To survive dating apps for as long as I had, you had to have rules in place.

Otherwise you’d be spending all your time playing nice to losers and crying over fuckbois who had no intention of calling you back.

Not that this guy was a loser per se. He seemed nice.

We had been chatting for over a week, and he was everything I looked for in second-date contenders.

Funny, charming, respectful and confident.

I was so excited, I’d saved him my prime spot – lunch on a Saturday.

But as I waited for my date to show up at the cafe today, I realised I’d been catfished.

There are two types of catfishing in my online dating handbook.

The first is where you steal someone’s identity or create a fictional one to seem more desirable.

In the second, instead of lying about who you are, you only lie about a few things.

These lies could range from easily detectable physical traits like your weight or height to more personal details about your life like where you work and live or what you enjoy.

So while Manan seemed like a perfectly nice guy, he had lied to me.

I figured it out when I saw him getting out of his car.

He was five inches shorter than the man I’d matched with on Tinder.

I could’ve bailed right then, but that was against the rules.

Ghosting was fine – everyone did it. But standing someone up?

That was a real dick move. And I was not ready to be branded an asshole, even in the slippery world of online dating.

So that’s how I found myself sitting across from a type-two catfish, trying to pretend I wasn’t completely put off by his struggle to hop onto the high chair at our table.

It’s not that I had a problem with him being short.

I am five feet two, so I’d dated plenty of short guys.

In fact, I found tall men slightly unnerving.

But I hated that he’d lied about his height on the app – and not just by an inch or two but by a solid margin.

Tinder was full of men claiming to be six feet tall.

And usually, it was easy to spot the liars.

Some of them would have photos taken from an upward angle, while some made sure not to include any full-length shots at all.

Sometimes, they accidentally added a group photo that put things into perspective.

But Manan had left no such clues for me to pick up on.

His profile, I realised, had been carefully curated to fool women into thinking he was a tall, confident and charming man, when in reality, he was deeply insecure.

‘Can we get two cappuccinos, please?’ he asked the waiter, a look of longing crossing his face as he returned the food menu.

‘So tell me about your work,’ he said to me after the waiter left our table.

‘I told you in a text earlier. I work in the events team of a men’s fashion and lifestyle website. There’s not much else to tell. It’s just regular work,’ I said.

‘Right.’

We indulged in five minutes of small talk before a weighty silence took over.

The thing you should know about me is I’m not afraid of awkward silences.

In fact, I quite enjoy them. You can tell a lot about a man from the way he deals with a lull in conversation.

For example, if he’s too eager to fill the gaps, he interprets silence as rejection.

If he acknowledges it, he’s trying to salvage a situation he thinks isn’t going in his favour.

But the most telling reaction is what was happening to little Manan right now – excessive sweating.

When a man begins to sweat in the face of an uncomfortable silence, he’s not thinking straight any more. He’s panicking, and if I had read this guy right, he was about to ask me the question in three … two …

‘So, um …’ he said, clearing his throat.

‘Yeah?’

I smiled sweetly at him, counting down the last digit in my head.

‘What are you looking for? On Tinder, I mean.’

Bam. The sweaty ones always caved. Okay, just to be clear, I didn’t have a problem with the question being asked.

I just didn’t think it had any reason to exist so early on in the conversation.

But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I wasn’t going to tell him the truth either.

I had a perfectly rehearsed answer for the about-to-be-ghosted.

Something that would speed up the process and soften the eventual blow.

‘Oh, you know. Just going with the flow. I’m not really in a place where I can focus on other people. I mostly keep to myself, but it’s nice to get out there and meet people once in a while,’ I said, the words tumbling out of me mechanically.

Complete, utter bullshit. I went on a date every week, more often than not with an entirely new person. I was definitely out there. Just not for him.

‘Right, okay,’ he said when I didn’t ask him about his stance on the matter.

From there on, it was pretty easy. He drank his piping hot coffee in five whole seconds and called for the bill soon after. I was out of the stuffy cafe and lounging in the air-conditioned backseat of a cab in less than fifteen minutes.

My room seemed smaller than its actual size, thanks to the large shopping bags that were scattered everywhere. They belonged to my best friend, Vrinda, who, in her nonchalant way, was flaunting the spoils of her latest retail escapade.

‘Come on, you know I’d get bored without you,’ Vrinda said, turning around to examine the folds of the metallic green Bronx and Banco dress in the mirror.

‘Stop fretting, you look fantastic. Like a goddess, even,’ I said, hoping the compliment would distract her from pursuing the matter any further.

‘Don’t change the subject, Ananya,’ she scolded, before letting herself crack a smile. ‘But, hehe, thank you!’

Vrinda’s long-term boyfriend was throwing a party tonight, and she wanted me to come.

She had promised that it wouldn’t be like the last time or the time before that …

or the one before that. Of course, I had no reason to believe her.

In the four years that V and Saurav had been together, I had come very close to physically assaulting people at every party he had thrown.

Saurav was great, but I couldn’t for the life of me get along with any of the rich brats in his social circle.

They had all grown up in South Delhi, attended private schools that took them to Europe for exchange programmes and had miraculously glided into their late twenties without a single worry tainting their charmed existence – and they made sure to rub it in my face every chance they got.

Not only did we have absolutely nothing in common, but I also found them truly, truly insufferable.

And sure, you could argue that Vrinda came from their part of the world, but she wasn’t like them. Not one bit.

‘I’m not changing the subject. I just can’t come this time,’ I said, rolling over on my stomach to reach for my phone.

I scrolled mindlessly through Instagram, pretending to be distracted.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Vrinda peeling her eyes from the mirror to face me.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, waiting for me to look up.

When I didn’t, she let out an exaggerated sigh and plopped down on the bed next to me.

‘But why? What can be more important than hanging out with your best friend in the whole wide world?’ she said, pouting.

‘I’m hanging out with her right now,’ I pointed out and scooted over so she could snuggle up in my blanket.

She peeped into my phone, letting herself get sucked into the empty, addictive world of social media.

We aww-ed at a video of a puppy who was too scared to jump from a tiny step and eww-ed at a Bollywood lip-sync reel our school classmate had posted.

This was my favourite part of the week. V and I hung out all the time, sometimes at mine, less often at hers – almost always indoors.