Tinder tales

Indu Harikumar is turning people’s Tinder experiences into art and the result is stupendous.

The biggest change in your life is sometimes just a swipe away. If you need proof, ask Mumbai-based illustrator Indu Harikumar, a children’s book illustrator who is busy illustrating tales of people’s Tinder experiences. It’s only Day 28 of her #100Indiantindertales, but Indu’s work is already going viral.

Go online and search for #100Indiantindertales. You’ll laugh, cringe, and even struggle to keep your emotions in check. “Because all these stories are filled with emotions,” says Indu. The illustrator who moved back to India from Vienna last year, has had her fair share of Tinder tales, some cringe-worthy and some that will leave you wondering.

Indu never envisioned that 30 days into her project, it would go viral. “It all started when I felt a little bored with my routine work. It was then that I decided to take up the #100dayproject. At first I thought I would stitch #100wordsoflove in different languages, but my friend thought it was cheesy and we decided on #100Indiantindertales,” says Indu. And so she began curating stories, which at first, were hard to find, but gradually seemed to just come to her.

“I’ve had my share of Tinder stories and I’ve been put off enough number of times to even delete Tinder. When I was in Europe, being one of the few Indians in Vienna, it wasn’t difficult to get a date. People were interested in culture, a few of them were silly, but others were genuinely interested in conversations,” she explains.

But after she moved to India she found it was a totally different ball game. “It wasn’t as exciting. There were also times that I was creeped out by the messages I got. That would just put me off and I deleted the app,” she says.

But when she started the project she decided to get back on the app and she even found two stories of her own. The illustrations on her Instagram account are funny and sometimes not-so-funny tales of people.

When people decide to open their hearts we often find stories that change our perception of things. “This particular story moved me. It is about this girl from Mumbai and a boy from Delhi who connected. For whatever reasons they couldn’t meet, but they had this strong connection and they kept talking for five months. One day, she messaged him and told him that they must meet and how she was going to Delhi. But after that, she never heard from him. Confused, she called him a number of times but there was no response. After a while, she called his office only to find that he had passed away shortly after they had that conversation,” says Indu.

For now, the only things that have changed are that Indu’s inbox is brimming with messages, her fingers hurt from replying to them but her heart is definitely much more happier.