She’s 50, he’s 65: A story of Tinder love

Human, After All

At 10 am on a Saturday afternoon, our flight from Mumbai to Kochi took off. “Hello Sexy,” she said.

“Err...excuse me,” I looked up, a little taken aback.

She pointed to Indigo’s in-flight magazine, 6E.

“Ah, sure, here,” I said.

She reached out for it. It was then that I saw the henna on her arms, dark, right up to her elbows. She had my attention now.

I’d planned to listen to a podcast I’d downloaded but put off listening for a month. I saw it pushed down the list of priorities once again.

“That looks lovely,” I started the conversation about the mehendi. “You must have been to a wedding?”

“Yes, mine,” she laughed.

I’d assumed she’d say it was her daughter’s wedding. Or a niece’s, at the very least.

I turned to her for a good look. There was nothing that said newly-wed or just married. Or even a bride.

“I’m 50. It’s my first marriage too,” she caught me almost judging her. In my head, I kicked myself for assuming she was the mother of the bride.

She’d met her husband two years ago. He was divorced, with a grown-up daughter.

“His daughter didn’t come to our wedding. Somehow, she felt her father was abandoning her, even though he’s been divorced for ten years now,” she said. Did she look sad as she said that? This secondary school teacher in a Kerala village was about to prove me wrong again.

“I’ve dated a lot, through my twenties, thirties and forties,” she chuckled.

Really? Villages in Kerala have a vibrant dating scene?

“My friends and family have been playing matchmakers for years. I’ve been through three stages of dating: first, it was young men looking for a bride. Then came divorced NRI Malayali men who missed home. Now, it’s people who are looking for companionship,” she said.

So, your family must be pleased you’re married?

“You’d think that but they’re not. I married not a Malayali but a Punjabi man. We met on Tinder,” she laughed again. A man from another culture for their 50-year-old daughter was unacceptable to the family.

Not just her family.

“My husband is 65. When we went out on dates and held hands, people would look at us as if we were criminals, like, why are these old people in love?”

Wait! A Punjabi man! That explains the henna, I figured.

She showed me a picture of the two of them on her phone. His arm was around her and they were looking at each other lovingly.

She quoted Priyanka Chopra to me now. “You know, Pee Cee said in an Instagram post, always marry a man who looks at you adoringly,” she said.

So, are you going to find yourself a new job in Mumbai now where your husband is? We Indians are so curious, and I am definitely one of them.

“Oh no. We’re not going to live together. We’ll continue living our lives as before -- his world is Mumbai, mine is Kerala,” she said patiently.

What? No living together?

“Why not? We are so in love; we’re married, committed to each other. We share our time, the bed when we’re together. But we also respect each other’s space,” she smiled. “When we’re not together, we’re on the phone. We have no plans to live together, to buy a house, have children,” she laughed again.

We landed in Kochi. We didn’t ask each other’s name, or where we lived. We didn’t exchange phone numbers or promise to find each other on social media. But on that short flight, she shared a part of herself which was beyond right and wrong.