What started as a dating app hookup in July 2016 the day I arrived in Paris on an onsite long term assignment culminated in our wedding in Dec 2018. Who knew that the City of Love would actually live up to its name.
Vincent and I met in person in the first week after I had moved to Paris. We met twice in that week and my heart was already lost to him. I longed to see him again and again and so we kept meeting up, hanging out for drinks, meals, movies etc.
But, it was in April 2017, when he went off on a 3 week holiday to Thailand, did we really miss each other, because before that, we kept seeing each other so oftentimes a week, we hardly knew there would be pain in separation. Also, we knew that my assignment would end in Dec 2017 and my employer may or may not renew it. So, Vincent left a request on a prayer tile in a temple in Thailand. Little did we realise that the universe was also in favour of our love and therefore blessed it with a shorter renewal of my work contract. In the meantime, we travelled a lot around Europe and I met his family for many little get-togethers and for an Easter weekend.
Later in Jan 2018, it was time to bring Vincent to India. It was his first trip and he loved it. He met and stayed with my parents, met my extended family too and many of our friends in Mumbai from the Rainbow Voices and Chennai.
This was just meant-to-be. We came back and decided that the only next thing we needed to do was to get married. So, after an ordeal with the Indian Administration to get attestations and apostille stamps on my birth certificate and a certificate of bachelorhood, we finally got the date for our wedding.
It was wonderful that our wedding was presided over by a woman who was deputy mayor of the arrondissement we were living in. Such an apt person to preside over a gay wedding ceremony. She added not only a stately elegance to the ceremony but shed a very friendly and warm aura over the proceedings.
Later, little did we know that ours was the first marriage reception to be conducted in India after the decriminalisation of Sec 377. Indeed, it was a blessing and we are humbled to be part of this history of the LGBTQ movement in India.
We do hope and pray that we would see same-sex marriages become a reality in India, in our life-time.