[image]
[title]I'm pressed up against ten people at 3arthouse, three courses deep into a five-course Korean dinner. And though I've been nursing one glass of wine since I arrived, all ten of us seem to have reached a pretty high level of oversharing. But this is a dating event for singles, after all. And it’s a dog-eat-dog world of delayed single-word texts out there.
'I occasionally use Hinge to find freelance work,' says a dinner companion to me conspiratorially. 'LinkedIn just gets too...vanilla, y'know?'
Oh well. Here I was, occasionally using LinkedIn to find love when Hinge got too...no. I'm joking. It took enough courage to get here.
No city needs what some call 'third spaces' more than this one. Stuck in the chokehold of realty prices since the 1900s (I exaggerate, but only mildly), everyone in Mumbai is done having to line up for an hour with friends on tight schedules to try yet another range of tepid, overpriced small plates. Folks will now Hyrox, embroider, or learn tennis in their 40s just to mingle.
I mean that. Attending this felt like one big bare-all group date. Since 2022, 3arthouse has hosted improv events, magic acts, comedy nights, and karaoke sessions in its 2-room setup. Singles events are their latest addition for a reason. They’re having a hot moment. And so can you.
Some dating events in Mumbai are based around interests or hobbies, like reading. Some are meant to force you out of your shell with egregious games and others let you slow down and explore kink. One might even keep you, at last, from redownloading Bumble for the second time this month.
Food and wine were the only comfort as hosts Durga Chatterjee and Suhani served one outrageous question after another. 'Everyone's coming here at the end of a long day; asking stupid questions at least gets them to lighten up,' says Suhani, a 23-year-old lawyer. Single herself, she strongly believes that dating in Mumbai needs a little less swiping.
By the end of the evening, over dessert takoyaki, all of us knew why a doctor preferred meeting someone at this mixer over being judged for asking her coworker out, how everyone had at least once used a dating app to find work ('Any app can be LinkedIn if you try'), and that maybe situationships need to come with an expiration date to keep all parties happy.
Where else can you find events like this?
Well, there are larger parties like the internationally popular Thursday Dating, where you try your best to make eye contact with someone interesting across the bar. There's also the rise of slow, conscious dating events, often curated so that you can bring your A-game to a select audience.
Take the singles mixer for 35+ held at Fictionary, a bookstore cafe. Everyone attending was as excited about meeting fellow readers as they were at the possibility of finding love. 'Men who read just have to be more interesting,' hoped Janaki, a development sector executive who recently moved to the city. 'Unlike Delhi, or really any other city in India, Mumbai has a dearth of communities, and an event like this at least helps find connections based on a common interest, feels a lot less clique-y, and is not just open to the uber-rich.'
At ₹500, the big hurdle was not the fee as much as getting a spot, because the event booked up well in advance. The hosts of the night curated the final attendee list based on answers to an online form, arriving at 20 people who showed similar interests. Seeing how they all so passionately hated dog-earing pages and had to be literally shooed out of the bookstore so it could close on time, the curation seemed pretty successful.
'At this age, people know exactly what they want, and they are not willing to waste time, especially in a city as busy as Mumbai,' says Kanika, one of the co-hosts of the evening. Still holding on to a reading habit in their 30s, the attendees definitely looked self-assured, even if most of their expectations were pretty modest. 'Once you connect with someone in person, you can just build a stronger connection at an easy pace,' said a male attendee who asked to be identified as The Pilot for this story.
No niche seems to go untapped, really. Mumbai's singles seem to be signing up for all kinds of dating events – from wrecking a room on a blind date at Rage Room (you get a hammer, pick a tune you want, and break everything from glass to electronics with someone else who also signed up for it) to agreeing to be set up on stage by comedians who test your compatibility (like LinkedUp, where comedian Sahil Shah will help you find a date from the audience).
But I’m awkward. What do I say?
It takes hope to make a dating event in Mumbai worth it, and that's where the host who organises, supervises, and regulates nervous systems with icebreakers comes in.
Aili Seghetti, who runs The Intimacy Curator (IC) and also hosts speed dating events for other organisers, finds that she and the event volunteers are often hand-holding attendees into interacting with each other. According to Aili, 'Everyone struggles to hold conversations. Women do not make the first move, and men do not know what to say, so quite often, people just start drifting.'
While her team mostly offers intimacy and relationship coaching, their dating events push people to open their minds to many forms of desire. A good way of shooing awkwardness away is letting people be vulnerable together, it turns out. It started out in Mumbai with a sensorial dating experience in 2022, where attendees got to know each other through touch, smell, and voice while blindfolded. The IC dating events have flourished since into exploring more specific desires, whether it is providing a space for couples to explore polycules, femdom-based dating (which involves a dominant female partner), or offering a safe space to explore foot and shoe fetishes.
Aili thinks Mumbai is one of the safer cities in India to platform these in. She still keeps a smaller venue to maintain privacy, has a thorough vetting process, and offers a workshop before the event to introduce attendees to basic etiquette for interaction.
Duniya, who's attended several of IC's femdom dating events, says, 'With the people you meet at an event curated for a specific desire, you don't have to explain yourself; they are more or less in the same boat as you. So you are more at ease, and that makes it easier to form connections.' In fact, people she met through IC led her to start Pyaar&, a community of polyamorous people spread across the country who are themselves creating more spaces to build meaningful connections.
So are dating apps a thing of the past?
Short answer: Fat chance they are. 'It's the convenience of being able to look when you want to. Every six months I get on the apps and talk to people, but I can only do it for a short time before I'm jaded,' laments Duniya. As everyone talks about app fatigue, smaller apps themselves are trying to do better. Like Match.com's The League, a members-only dating app that only provides eight matches a day. They take stuff offline as well. So far, in Mumbai, they've held an art walk and a singles dinner, and have launched an online card game with Akshat Rajan to build deep connections with just a few questions.
Nitya, who has used the app both in the US and in Mumbai, finds it to be a nice way to break through the clutter. 'At the event, you already know that everyone is there with the intention of dating seriously, and the people you meet are at least people you would want to be friends with.' Kaavyya Kesarvani, who looks into the experience and marketing of the app, feels that more than any other city, single people in Mumbai are eager to try out experiential and experimental events. 'In other cities, people are always looking for a +1 to bring to our events, but in Mumbai, most show up to an event on their own.'
We may not have a guaranteed answer to where you can find love, but rest assured Mumbai's trying to make sure you have a damn jolly time doing it.