Chandresh Singh and Dhara Mehta’s love story is breaking the internet, but the fairytale ending hasn’t come without hardship.
New Delhi: Two life-changing things happened to 25-year-old Army cadet Thakur Chandresh Singh on 8 September, 2018 — he became an officer of the Rajputana Rifles after graduating from the Officer Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai, and he proposed to the love of his life.
What followed was an outpouring of support and congratulations from all over the country, as a picture of the proposal posted by an Instagram account (@ssbcrackofficial) quickly went viral.
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In a matter of two days, the post has garnered 33,000 likes on Instagram, been circulated through WhatsApp groups, and shared on Twitter, while a short write-up covering the gesture has been shared over 14,000 times on Facebook.
Great way to propose. pic.twitter.com/RUjNFqJovE
— Lt Gen K J Singh (@kayjay34350) September 13, 2018
At the end of a highly regimented year at the academy, which instils a rigorous sense of discipline and duty in young cadets, the heartfelt gesture was seen as moment of romantic spontaneity.
But the truth is, Chandresh had decided he was going to marry Dhara Mehta, 23, the moment he was sure about the other love of his life — the armed forces.
“I planned this moment the day I got recommended for the Army. Before graduation, I called both our parents for the tipping ceremony, where parents pin stars on our shoulders. I wanted all of us to be there,” Chandresh says via video conferencing.
“We’ve been together for three-and-a-half years now, and I remember showing my parents a picture of her three years ago and saying ‘She is the one I’ve chosen’. But first, I had to make something of myself. I had to fulfil my dream.”
College sweethearts
Chandresh and Dhara’s story began in the lecture halls of St Joseph College of Arts and Science, Bangalore, in 2012. The two were students of the same course, but with an entirely different set of elective subjects. Fate, it turns out, presented itself in the form of one solitary class where their timetables overlapped — Hindi.
“For the first two years, we didn’t even meet properly… Just had a fairly basic ‘Hi, hello’ kind of friendship. But as third year approached, we realised that we might never see each other again, and actively spent more time together,” Chandresh says.
“The funny thing is that she fell for me first. I wasn’t sure then, because in my head we had this wonderful, ideal friendship. But on 3 May 2015, when I told her that I’m leaving Delhi permanently, she called me and told me she loved me.”
Despite the declaration, Chandresh took over a year to make his way to Dhara. His priority at the time was to focus on studying for the Services Selection Board examination. After failing to make it through on his first attempt, Chandresh took stock of the things that had stuck by his side through difficult times.
Dhara, he realised, had not yet given up on him. Chandresh smiles as he talks about falling in love with his best friend. “She was loyal, she was always there for me, and so I realised that I will never be able to find a person as genuine as her,” he says.
Love in the line of duty
Despite the magic, Chandresh and Dhara’s story has been far from a fairytale. They have had to navigate mismatched priorities, family expectations, distance and extreme infrequency in communication while Chandresh was training at the academy.
“In the beginning, her parents weren’t that very supportive because my future was not settled. By the time I got selected for the Army, she was already working as an air hostess with a big airline. ‘There’s a lot of difference between you and him, how will you manage?’ her parents used to ask,” he recalls.
“They said they would give me one year, and if I didn’t prove myself in that time, she would move on from the relationship. You’ll never believe it… I got into the army 15 days after she told me this.”
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Nearly a year apart at the academy wasn’t easy either. Cadets in training are required to deposit their phones at the academy on the day of initiation, after which they only receive access to basic phones for a limited time on Sundays. “She used to wait for me to call, and I’d wait to call her,” he says.
The other cadets, including his seniors, would often talk about how their relationships were straining and breaking under the pressures of distance, time and duty.
Service before self
Chandresh counts his blessings to have a patient and independent partner, who always supported his lifelong dream of serving the country.
“Ever since I was a child, I wanted to join the Army,” he says, telling the story of the time he spent in Arunachal Pradesh with his father. “On the way to school in Kanubari every day, we passed by officers and jawans doing their training, and from those days, the uniform has always appealed to me.”
It took him six attempts to get into the armed forces, after struggling to pass the SSB, AFCAT and NCC. Dhara is a former National Cadet Corps corporal.
Chandresh says that while Dhara is afraid, like most are, to be married to an Army man, in case he gets “posted to a faraway or dangerous place”, she feels, more than anything, “a sense of pride”.
Slow news day.