How did it all start? Why did you try a matrimonial website?
Adnyesh: I wanted to find a girl on my own. If you meet someone through references and if it doesn’t work out, then saying no becomes awkward and messy. I decided to try out Bharat Matrimony, which was a mature website by the time. Fortunately, the second proposal which I saw clicked and we were chatting online soon after. Our chats went off well, we connected and felt we should take this further. Apurva: To be honest, I was wary of meeting anyone online, you know how it is! But meeting someone on a matrimonial website had higher chances of connecting me with someone actually interested in marriage and commitment (as opposed to finding someone on a social networking site) so I took the step. Once we started chatting I felt this was different, that there could be a future here. But I was wary and didn’t give him my phone number. I asked my aunt to speak with him first. Related reading: Why finding a match in arranged marriage can be like F1 racing
How did the call with the aunt go?
Adnyesh: It was amazing. She asked me a lot of questions about my childhood, my parents and where I stayed. I could sense her smiling all through the call. It turned out that she had been our immediate neighbour for a large part of my childhood, before my family moved homes. She knew me and my parents well! What are the odds of that happening? She immediately ‘okayed’ me and that earned me Apurva’s phone number. We spoke on the phone and soon after, we met in a cafe!
How did you both recognise each other the first time you met? Did your profile pics resemble you?
(laughter) Apurva: Well he did not look like his photograph at all, he had used an old photograph from his college days! I had put a recent one. Adnyesh: I was standing outside the cafe waiting for her that day, I recognised her as soon as I saw her. She looked exactly like her photograph. She looked lovely, she looked beautiful.
