A Tamilian and a Punjabi walk into a bar. It’s their first date. The Punjabi mispronounces dosa. The Tamilian walks out before the drinks arrive. As much as I’d like to take credit, this isn’t a made-up story. Call it the North-South divide of India’s dating pool—it’s got to go now.
The country is fighting over the delimitation bill, and comedian Nirmal Pillai has proposed a solution. He wants all North-South couples to start pumping out babies—make an army of people so ethnically confused that they won’t know which state to fight for. Pillai is talking about something BR Ambedkar was promoting. Intermarriage. Fusion of blood—ending the caste and community segregation with love.
As it turns out, North–South romances aren’t quite the taboo they were in the 1980s. “I always say, North-South romance was the Love Jihad of the 70s, 80s. Unthinkable. By the 90s, thanks to reforms and the IT sector, it started to ease,” said a Tamil woman raised in Delhi. Then came Chetan Bhagat’s 2 States, which did its bit to romanticise the cultural divide. But has it really helped? North Indians still think South Indians are conservative; South Indians think North Indians are loud (and also conservative). Gujju men, well, are battling some truly terrible PR in both corners of the country. Should dating apps start an interstate romance campaign to help?
What has changed, though, is this: Gen Z women don’t want to date in their own communities—a homegrown brand of misogyny tends to kill the romance rather quickly. Take me, for example. I would never be with a man from Lucknow, my hometown, and I will spend my entire life warning other women against doing it. A Telugu friend, raised in Mumbai, confirmed my thesis. “There’s a sort of narcissism in North Indian men (her sample size is one man from Lucknow), which makes them emotionally constipated. They don’t dance, don’t cry, don’t express love, happiness,” she said. “It’s hard to be childlike around my North Indian man, I guess.” She needs to pick another state and try again.
Women in my gossip network can’t stop giving their hot takes on men, state-wise. Apparently, Odia men only like to eat and sleep and can’t be bothered to make date plans. Tamil men have a diverse palette when it comes to the food they can tolerate, unlike Delhi men. Kashmiri men are only good in theory; all the compliments about their looks have gotten to their heads. And men from Madhya Pradesh always marry their mother’s choice, so there is no point in dating them—so I have heard. Men say Delhi women are air-headed, Malayali women are too dominating, Rajasthani women are too orthodox and a lot of South Indian men think that all North Indian women are locked in the kitchen as soon as they are born. (Dear reader, I haven’t had the time to fact-check these claims, so believe at your own risk.)
Also read: In the dating app world, long distance lovers are the new normal
Food and capitals
A UP-born man has crossed the final hurdle—after five years together, he’s finally convinced his Karnataka-born girlfriend’s parents that he’s, in fact, good for her. His loud North Indian demeanour didn’t deter the girlfriend. The only cultural rift they encountered in their relationship was one of rice vs roti—the South Indian rice won in the end because, honestly, who has the time to make rotis every day?
In fact, food is a big battleground—everyone thinks their home state serves the best. A Bengali woman, who is dating a Malayali man, always makes it a point to mock her boyfriend about how his people eat dried fish—unlike her people, who only prefer fresh water fish. She’s suffering from maachoism. A Chandigarh boy, on the other hand, teases his Malayali girlfriend for how she can eat ripe jackfruit without making a face. “His understanding of good food is tandoori momo floating in Afghani sauce. It’s mortifying,” she told me.
Some healthy bickering is inevitable when people from two vastly different cultures cohabitate. A Delhi girl was called “Vadakkan” by her Tamil ex-boyfriend, which basically means northie (derogatory). She didn’t mind; she doesn’t quite identify as one anyway and it made the boy very happy to call her that.
Both sides, of course, are convinced the other is geographically challenged. I recently had a breakthrough with a Tamil boy who was ranting about how North Indians lump everyone together and can’t tell Kerala from Tamil Nadu. I asked, “What’s the capital of Uttar Pradesh?” You could hear crickets in the room. To him, all northies are Punjabis, anyway.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)