Ayodhya ka Romancenama: From love letters to 4G-enabled interactions

“Kisi bhi ladki ke saath chat kare (chat with any girl),” goes the tagline of the dating app, Happn. It comes with an important addition: “woh bhi Hindi mein (and that too in Hindi)!”

Started in Paris, with a Series-A funding of close to $8 million, the chat/dating app Happn has its strongest user base in London and New York City. But Happn is now very much used in a few (arguably) unmapped spaces–dating app data-wise–such as the small towns and kasbahs of Uttar Pradesh, most notably, Ayodhya.

“If I happen to be crossing her path, or she happens to be crossing by my gali, we can crash together through Happn,” says 20-something Ravi, who is a fan of the app. How many dates has he gone on since Happn? This is when Ravi turns demure. “I’ve actually made more friends with boys than girls on this,” he says.

Ravi might just be onto something there. And we’re merely talking numbers. If Tinder is failing when it comes to the disproportionate ratio between men and women in urban India–“we’re scum and we know it,” to quote a 30-something male lawyer at a GK pub–the numbers are enough to make any member of the Indian male species lovesick, and not just on Valentine’s Day. 89 per cent of mobile internet users in India are male. To go back to Ravi, only 27 per cent are in smaller towns and cities.

There is more heartening data though. India, in the first few months of 2018, had become the global leader in app downloads–a direct reflection of the exploding smartphone scene and data boom. With Jio leading the pack, at this rate, it is well-placed to reach the country’s number one telecom operator position by 2021. 4G subscribers in India are expected to rise to 432 million by 2020, with 75 per cent of mobile internet users in India aged between 20 and 30.

Sania, 20, tells us she downloaded Happn about two months ago only because she wanted to understand what all the fuss was about. “Nayi cheez thi, seekhne ki lalak bahut hai mujhmein, technology se judi hui, toh bas woh tha (It was a new thing and I have a great desire in me to learn new things related to tech, that’s all).” How does Happn work? It allows you to find profiles of those you might be crossing paths with every day. If you are keen to strike up a conversation or more, you can send him or her a “charm”, like a push notification. If the “charm” is reciprocated, then you’re on the “crush” stage.

Designed with an entirely different lifestyle in mind–where you might be secretly pining for the person you see in your Starbucks queue in the morning, or on the subway ride back home in the evenings–small town India is once again proving its creative and innovative use of technology, with the success of Happn.

Ravi and Sania are not mere users. Like their 20-something urban counterparts, they make the app work for them—or not. Recently, Sania deleted Happn. “I met this boy in Lucknow where I’d gone for an exam. I mean, we saw each other in the hall. When I came out from the hall, I was wondering if he would be on Happn, and when I checked my phone, he had sent me a request on Happn!”

Excitement comes layered with the inevitable fear if you’re female. “I’d had an unpleasant experience with a boy on Facebook. And I immediately thought of that.” On Facebook, Sania had had a lovesick boy download her photograph and send it back to her. “Why all this?” she asks and completes her Lucknow story: “I rejected that request. Later, when he approached me for my WhatsApp number, I lied to him. I told him that I don’t use it.” In the two months that she was on Happn, Sania made friends with “three or four boys”, she tells us, voicing what the data tells us quite simply: “There are so many of them!”

“50,000,” says Anjali, another young app user in Ayodhya. “I had 50,000 friend requests.” Anjali is speaking of WhatsApp and the way in which it is used locally, wherein unknown numbers will send you messages usually after midnight. “Hiiii” is often how they start. “I confirmed only one,” she adds. Anjali says went on a WhatsApp date with the chosen one. “Jo friendship se kuch aur badal gaye (something more than friendship),” but she’s broken it off with him last month. She only has a cryptic response when we ask why: “It can be bad at bad times, good at good times.”

This is a sentiment echoed among the young female populace in Ayodhya. Sania too had spoken of it in a similar vein, boiling down all tech and app use to: “If you use it for good, it’s good. If you use it for bad, it’s bad.”

The gender-related data is helpful here. Access to a mobile phone continues to be a male prerogative in India, where no more than 38 per cent of women have ownership of their mobile phones, as opposed to a whopping 71 per cent of men. Uttar Pradesh is also amongst the top three states in terms of the highest gender gaps in mobile phone usage—pegged at 40 per cent.

What’s more, the widening of the gap is dramatic as adolescents enter puberty, and girls are restricted/denied access altogether, for reasons of safety and exposure. Having your identity become a known thing is no small fact for a girl on an app that entices the boys with the line “aas-paas ki ladkiyaan patayein (Get it on with girls nearby)”. This is best shown in the video report, where almost every young girl we speak to preferred to cover her face before speaking to us.

Ragni, who has been in a WhatsApp-pyaar relationship for over a year, tells us: “bahut achcha chal raha hai (it’s going great).” She is looking forward to getting married to him now. Although we do meet Vandana too, who’s in a serious Facebook-love relationship at the moment. “Five months,” she tells us, all smiles.

As we meet the older generation, who are initially shocked at being interviewed for a Valentine’s Day special report, we listen in on the texting methods of their times. You can almost feel the romance when Deep Narayan shares with us the ritual of love letters. “So, what you did was you wrote out how you felt, sometimes you used film songs. Then you had to go and drop the paper, as if by accident, just as she would pass you by, or outside her house, when you were sure she was looking.” If the girl liked you, and your expression of feelings, she would do the same, he adds. “Uttar ka aadan-pradaan chalta reh ta tha (Thus, would start a back and forth of interactions).”

Reporting: Kumkum Yadav

Written by Pooja Pande

This piece is jointly published by Khabar Lahariya and Newslaundry.