Mumbai is a city that never sleeps and neither does its dating scene.

In theory, being queer in a fast, modern, chaotic, beautifully messy city should mean endless possibilities. In reality? It’s swiping, ghosting, overthinking, and wondering if you’ll ever meet someone who wants to hold your hand on a walk to Marine Drive without acting like they’re committing a culpable homicide.

To be honest, it’s not that the city lacks queer people. Mumbai has drag nights, poetry circles, underground parties, pride marches, queer cafes, and at least four Bumble profiles per square foot.

But here’s the twist: access doesn’t automatically translate to connection. You can be surrounded by queer people, queer spaces, queer events, queer energy and still feel like you’re wandering through an emotional desert with a cracked bottle labelled “Meaningful Connection – Out of Stock.”

Because while the city is bursting with people, the dating pool somehow feels like the same 40 men copy-pasted across four different apps, simply rotating profile pictures and identities like they’re doing costume changes at a drag brunch.

The apps are where optimism goes to get gently roasted.

Grindr is chaos. Bumble is a job interview. Hinge is a therapy session you didn’t sign up for. Tinder is… well, mostly deleted.

You swipe, you match, you feel a spark and then the conversation goes something like:

Him: “Hey :)” Me: “Hey, what’s up?” Him: goes missing like an unregistered parcel

Or worse, he responds after a week with: “Sorry, hectic week year.”

My brother in Bandra, unless you’re manually repairing the Mumbai Coastal Road with your bare hands, nobody is that busy.

If ghosting were an Olympic sport, gay men in Mumbai would win gold, silver, bronze, and possibly the lifetime achievement award.

You’ll have a great chat, maybe even plan a date. And then silence. Gone. Disappeared. Unmatched so fast you could feel the breeze.

One man unmatched me while I was typing. Do you know how humbling it is to watch your own words dissolve mid-sentence?

And then there are the closeted men — valid, understandable, but often operating at security levels previously unseen outside spy films.

Dates with them feel like covert missions:

Choosing cafés in an unknown locality

Whispering like we’re in a library basement

Repeatedly checking over their shoulder

Wearing caps like a celebrity leaving the airport or like celebrities honestly hiding from paparazzi

At one point, I genuinely started wondering: is this man dating me or recruiting me?

If you ask a queer man in Mumbai what he wants, you will almost always get very polarising answers. It’s like ordering from a restaurant but telling the waiter, “I’m hungry, but not hungry-hungry.” No wonder everyone is confused, exhausted, or both.

Even if the stars align and someone wants to meet you, the city itself becomes the villain, and the distance between Central Line and Western Line makes me want to shoot myself. Then comes the main attraction: if we plan to meet, the trains are always full, the traffic is slow, the weather is exhausting, and the cab fares are expensive.

Meeting someone in Mumbai requires stamina, patience, good luck, and a minimum of two transport apps.

And just when you think you’ve conquered the city’s geography, infrastructure, and your own will to live… you finally sit across from the person you’ve been texting for days.

And then comes the reality check —

Because, let’s be honest, half of dating in this city is just discovering that the man whose profile gave “soft, thoughtful, plant dad” energy actually shows up giving existential crisis, bare-minimum enthusiasm and the emotional availability of a shut door. They’ll say things like, “I’m not good at texting” or “I’m bad at expressing” like it’s a cute personality quirk and not the foundational crack in every failed situationship from Churchgate to Thane.

Mumbai’s queer nightlife is gorgeous. A rainbow tornado of sequins and sweat. When you walk into a queer party expecting community, sometimes you get a runway show, a gym convention, three exes and at least one man who swears “you look familiar” (translation: he saw you on an app but never replied).

Then there’s a special species of Mumbai queer men i.e. The Emotional Support Seekers. These are the men who will trauma-dump on the second text, or say “you’re so comforting to talk to”… but the second you hint at a connection, they say: “I’m not ready for anything serious.” Of course you’re not ready, Rahul. You haven’t been ready since 2017. Readiness is not your vibe.

And somehow, you end up doing emotional gymnastics worthy of an Olympic scorecard trying to be supportive, kind, patient… while he builds a relationship with someone else in the background.

Here’s the thing that nobody tells you: Despite the ghosting, the disappearing acts, the long-distance-within-the-same-city, the chaotic parties, and the emotionally unavailable men. There is a hope that there is someone out there for me who will love me like I will love him.

And this manifestation makes the city feel softer and less exhausting.

And that is why, despite the chaos, despite the tiredness, despite the countless “heyyy” conversations that go nowhere, I will keep trying.

Because somewhere in this chaotic, overcrowded, humid, heartbreak-heavy city… there has to be someone who actually wants to show up.