When Covid played Cupid

The story of a couple who found love in the lockdown

- ANJULY MATHAI

There was a time, not long ago, when old-fashioned romance—replete with candlelight dinners and movie night cuddles—took a drastic hit, courtesy a pandemic that no one saw coming. After all, the minimum requirement for falling in love is meeting the prospective candidate, right? And how eloquent can you be over Zoom, especially if you face connection issues right in the middle of confessing your love? Social-distancing, masks and lockdowns practically vanquished budding romance.

Imagine, in this scenario, going on a first date that lasted 52 hours. Ironically, Devlina and Varun Kumar say it is not despite the lockdown, but because of it that they found romance. Varun was just coming out of a five-year gruelling relationship and Devlina had started seeing a therapist because she felt something was off in her life. By the time of the lockdown, Devlina's self-worth had increased. "I knew I had so much love to give and no one to give it to," she says. That's when she got on the dating app Hinge, and met Varun.