In a changing city, a stable hangout
Tejasvi Thakur and Gaurav Mehlawat
Tejasvi Thakur, a lawyer, and Gaurav Mehlawat, co-founder of Partypal India, a start-up, first met in school in Vasant Kunj. “We were only 12 then, and decided to start dating each other a few months later,” said the duo, both 25 years old.
Dating in Delhi has its perks, as it offers many places for couples to ‘chill’. For this couple, the place to go was the DLF Promenade mall—because of its proximity to their school, a movie or just hanging out at the arcade after school or on Sundays almost became a ritual. With old spaces like the arcade Smaash being shut, and new cafés that kept taking its place, DLF Promenade has remained the couple’s stable point of a hangout.
“My family was particularly conservative,” says Mehlawat. For him, the weekly outing to DLF with Thakur was sometimes tricky; instead of “getting caught”, he decided to be open about the relationship. “That he told his entire family about us came to me as a shock, because I know his family is a bit rigid,” says Thakur. In her home, the “big reveal” happened when she was in 11th grade. “At a parents-teachers meet, my accounts teacher told my mother that I was particularly close with a boy and this ‘concerns’ her as it might affect my performance,” she says.
With the families accepting each other by and by, their hang-outs changed. “We started going to coffee shops in Green Park; Hauz Khas Village became a new favourite,” she says. But what is a relationship without challenges? Coming from different families with different cultural values also at times hindered their compatibility. “However, we always found our way back to each other,” the couple, who tied the knot last December, says.
Dating on the Metro
Yash, 25, founder of Official Humans of Queer, an online queer story-telling platform, from Rohini, met his partner in 2023. “Things are especially hard when you have a partner working in the Defence forces. You are not allowed to talk about them,” he says. “Most of our relationship has been long distance, but when he is in Delhi, not one day goes without us spending time together,” he says.
Yash’s partner last visited Delhi in February 2023; their dates were on the Delhi metro. They would just board a metro from different points in the city to meet each other at a common station. “It was in that limited interaction that I fell in love with him all over again,” he says with a laugh.
And when they did spend time together, it was at their friend’s place in Vishwavidyalaya. “I studied in Kirori Mal College, so the space around Delhi University (DU), for me, has always been a safe one. DU has helped me shape my identity, so walking there with my partner always feels safe,” he says.
What about other places? “People have become more welcoming, true. But we still cannot express our love to our partners openly in public,” he says. “So, we go to places that I know are safe and will not have people who would know my partner and can reveal his identity.”
“How does it make you feel?” I asked.
“Sometimes weak, sometimes frustrated. We are at this point fighting for marriage rights, and I know that at some point that too will happen, but he and I would still have to wait till he retires from his service,” he laments.
They watched Cleopatra at Odeon
Mitali, 73, originally from West Bengal, now a retired teacher and Siddhartha Baul, 73, a retired general manager of Ashok Leyland, are just one year short of their golden jubilee anniversary. Their dating life was, by current standards, a bit unusual—they dated all around Delhi but with family in tow.
Mitali is a cousin of Siddhartha’s sister-in-law. She was in Delhi to attend a wedding and it was there that their eyes locked for the first time. “We had known each other since we were eight, but it was only when she came to Delhi for the wedding that I realised I liked her,” he says. Much like couples today, the two picnicked and went to the movies. One day it would be a meet-up around the Qutub Minar and on another day it would be a movie at the Odeon. “We watched Cleopatra there together,” says Mitali. “But back in those days, there was no concept of space, so we went out to places with several people around us. This was dating for us,” the couple says.
Was it difficult to start a new life in Delhi for Mitali? “A lot of strategising went into it,” she confirms. Mitali taught Sanskrit in a school in Midnapore, coming to Delhi, for her, meant leaving her job and finding a new one here. “We both knew that Delhi is expensive, so we knew that we both had to work,” she says. Siddhartha, who back then lived with his family in Kashmere Gate, informed Mitali about an opening in a school, the Bengali Senior Secondary School, nearby. This seemed like a good start for Mitali.
“I wanted to have a job in hand so I could start right away after marriage.” she says. She not only secured the job, she worked there until 2005. For her, this school was an integral part of her life. Even after her retirement, the couple are active participants in the school’s activities. After all, it had played an important role in the early days of the marriage of the then young couple.
Barsati sunsets, dodging the landlord
Delhi played a big role in the lives of Nikita Sharma, 23, from Bulandshahr and Saurav Mishra, 27, from Dhanbad. “We had known each other, but it was truly the pandemic that facilitated a romantic relationship,” says Sharma. The year of lockdown, 2020, helped Sharma explore her interest in cinema. Mishra, a film buff, started suggesting films to watch. “Our conversations grew,” the couple says.
By 2021, Sharma started working as a journalist at a news organisation in Barakhamba, while Mishra was preparing for his master’s. “It is during that time that we kept meeting a lot near her office, sometimes in Janpath, sometimes near Connaught Place,” says Mishra.
“At that point, both of us, from small towns, were living alone in a big city like Delhi, so our conversation was all about our lives here, and how lonely it can get at times,” says Sharma. The market meetings soon turned into frequent visits at Mishra’s rented flat in Nehru Enclave. It was a small house on the first floor whose main gate opened into a balcony-cum-gallery leading to the landlord’s house at the other end. This was a nosy landlord.
“Saurav would sneak me in after sundown. While visiting him was fun, it was a daily dodge-the-landlord and run-towards-the-house drill,” says Sharma. When the third wave of the pandemic hit in 2022, Mishra had moved up to the top floor of the same building. “Though in the same building, this took care of any interference. Nikita and I spent a lot of time there together. Since it was on the top floor, we watched the sunset together, every day, without a miss,” he says.
Both are currently working as journalists in two different news organisations. Their weekly offs do not match. The only time they get together is before and after their shifts. “We still like to do things that we enjoyed when life was simpler, but time is the constraint. But we still make an effort and that counts,” they say.