Feature :: The Romantic Meet-Cute is Dead?
This feature was first published for The Hans India. Read it here: Click to read
---Your eyes meet theirs’ for a fraction of a second and you both look away. It’s a split second for either of you to decide to look again. Do you take that plunge, go say hi, exchange a smile? Or do you put your head back into your phone, back to whatever you were scrolling, back to your coffee, or to the conversation you were having with your friends?
Perhaps the concept of the meet-cute, that nostalgic rom-com moment that many of us have grown up watching, has disappeared. The accidental glance, the spontaneous conversation, the stranger who becomes someone, all of it seems almost quaint now. In this digital age, who exactly is experiencing a meet-cute anymore?
Interestingly, while the meet-cute is gone, dating apps don’t seem to be serving youngsters either. And yet, the romance is very much alive.
A decade ago, relationships were increasingly being fostered through phones and dating apps. Today, even that seems to be changing. There is growing talk of younger generations swearing off dating apps, using them more for research, curiosity or entertainment than for finding someone to date. And, as the joke goes, all you apparently find there are married people looking to simply “time-pass.
But if dating apps and meet-cutes are dwindling, where exactly are relationships beginning?
That was among the more interesting questions that emerged at debut author Kiran B Nambiar’s meet recently at Gallery Café, during a discussion around her book, ‘From Left Swipes to Lonely Nights.’ Organised by Author’s Banter Club in association with Hyderabad Reads, the event was houseful of youngsters as well as people above 40 who came with questions about relationships and dating in an era where rules seem to be changing faster than ever.
What conversations must be had on dates? Are people getting beyond the first or second date when there is a sea of options available with every swipe? Or perhaps they are not getting to a date at all.
One attendee put it rather poignantly: “I am desperate to date.”
And then there is ghosting. People meet, they connect, and then, one person simply disappears. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ asked an attendee. This and other questions came up during the discussion. Questions that seem to belong not just to one generation, but to anyone trying to navigate relationships today.
There’s a glossary for dating dummies at the beginning of the book that will come in handy for dating noobs.
Nambiar, meanwhile, has deftly used her own friends as “guinea pigs”, in her words for her debut book. Each chapter is more or less a true story, based on real-life instances, with protagonists across genders navigating dating, relationships and, sometimes, the strange space of being on dating apps without actually dating.
What makes these stories work, however, is not necessarily the circumstances themselves. It is the emotions.
You may not recognise yourself in a particular character. You may never have been on that particular date, experienced that relationship or made that mistake. But there is something universal about the emotions that bind these stories together and eventually reaches the reader’s heart: Attraction, uncertainty, excitement, loneliness, hope, disappointment, attachment, and loss.
In that sense, Nambiar’s book becomes an interesting contemporary exploration of relationships for the current age. While marriage might be the end-all-be-all about relationships, it is about what happens before we even get there. When relationships are especially in the murky middle of their messy, uncertain existence and when they are moving towards their end.
But perhaps the most interesting thing is this: despite everything, people still want romance.
They want someone to choose them. They want someone to make the first move. They want to be surprised, pursued, understood, and loved. Beyond yearning for that one person who will take the plunge and make the first move, finally break through all the awkwardness and uncertainty; how much are we willing to do ourselves? Are we so afraid of rejection? Or are we simply too wrapped up in our own insecurities to risk finding out?
"How much are we willing to do ourselves? Are we so afraid of rejection? Or are we simply too wrapped up in our own insecurities to risk finding out?"
Perhaps that is the real paradox of dating today. We have more vocabulary for love than ever before, more ways to find someone, more conversations about relationships and more understanding of what we want. We talk about ‘love languages.’ We talk about ‘princess treatment’ and the ‘bare minimum.’ All the dialectical modules we can fathom to cushion the pinch of rejection. And yet, when the moment actually arrives, when your eyes meet across a room, when there is an opportunity to smile, say hello, start a conversation, we retreat.
So perhaps the question is not whether the meet-cute is dead, or whether dating apps have failed us. Perhaps we are simply waiting for someone else to make the first move.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all…’ What are we waiting for? Just do it.
