Lots of adjustments, and one adoption
They went to the same Mumbai school, but he was a year senior and they never interacted. When Conroy D’costa and Joshna Joseph did connect, it was on Instagram, more than a decade later, in January 2020.
“For months we chatted continuously over text, and we finally met in June, a few months into the lockdown,” says Joseph. To make that meeting happen, D’costa got on his bike and rode 60 km to Badlapur, on the outskirts of Mumbai, where Joseph lived.
“There were still a lot of restrictions, but I picked her up and we ended up spending the whole day together. We talked about our lives and careers,” says D’costa, a business development manager. “On that first day, we decided it would be good if we could find a place in the city together.”
His parents were on board, hers took a little convincing. But the two were so convinced of it themselves that “we made a compelling case,” says D’costa.
A month later, after many 120-km bike rides to and fro, they moved into a flat in the western suburbs. “I had found a new job close by,” says Joseph, a quality assurance manager with an F&B company.
Adjusting to each other’s quirks took a while. Joseph, an only child, was disorganised and unused to chores. D’costa is a neatness freak. “He helped me become a bit more disciplined,” Joseph says, smiling.
Conroy, she adds, is caring and patient.
He even got her a Rottweiler after she showed him a picture of one that she saw. They’ve named him Bob.
“Even though it’s quite a bit of work cleaning up after him, and most of our fights are over him, I wouldn’t replace him with any other dog,” laughs Joseph.
Any second thoughts? “It’s going to be a year soon and I think we’re doing okay,” says D’costa. Joseph concurs. “Everything happened so fast and with such ease, it’s all a bit of a blur now,” she says
They matched on Tinder in March and seemed to like all the same things — art, bookstores, long walks. But Priya Dali, a freelance illustrator, was in Mumbai, Meera K, a Teach for India fellow, was at least 100 km away in Pune, and a nationwide lockdown was about to be enforced.
It would be six “excruciating” months before they actually met. In the lonely meanwhile, they bonded over hours-long Zoom calls in which they “really talked”, got to know one another, complained about work and just kept each other company.
They found in each other, they say, just the thing each needed in her life. In Dali, Meera found a patient listener and a veteran worker-fromhome with helpful tips to offer. In Meera, Dali found an A+ motivator. “If you need a pep talk, she can totally bring it,” Meera says.
Once restrictions eased, Dali took a trip to Pune and they met, for the first time, in September. “It didn’t feel like I was meeting a new person, since we’d had all sorts of conversations by then,” Dali says.
She stayed for two weeks, time they spent cooking, geeking out over children’s books, visiting cafes and bookstores, and going on long walks.
Dali and Meera have visited each other several times over the last few months. The night-long Zoom calls will continue, though, since they’re going to be in separate cities for the foreseeable future.