If you’re Indian, please swipe left

He was a thirdgeneration Thai of Indian origin This meant that though his ancestors were Indianmdashin this case Punjabimdashhe thought and spoke in Thai though he knew enough Punjabi and Hindi to converse with his parents If you met him on the street you might think he was Indian until he opened his mouth to speakHis Indianstyle birth name was Rajveer Sethi but he soon declared himself Ratchaphon The Sethi was localised to Sethichaiyen loosely translated as Coolheaded Sethi Needless to add the name is fictitious for this column and any resemblance to any person living or dead is entirely unintentionalBeing 32 Ratchaphon and his several siblings had created their profiles on the dating apps most popular in that part of the world Tinder Bumble Coffee Meets Bagel Badoo OKCupid Thai Lovelines Asiavibe and so on ldquoNone of us believes wersquoll find the loves of our lives hererdquo he told me ldquoBut sometimes you meet someone you get along with well enough to go on a few datesrdquoMost dating apps follow a Rolodex approach to matchmaking Profiles of persons of the gender you prefer to date will be shown to you as though they were cards Each card contains photos selfdescriptions keywords likes and dislikes and so onTo dismiss an unsuitable profile you merely swipe left while a right swipe signals interest in a person If two people swipe right on each other it is joyously declared a lsquomatchrsquo accompanied by sound effects digital bells and confetti You will be free to start a conversation nowThe other day swiping through the profiles in Thai Lovelines or one of the other dating sites Ratchaphon saw a line he had never encountered on a dating profile Indians and Muslims please swipe left It is baffling because one is a religion and the other a nationalityldquoSpecifying your preferred ethnicity religion country language and other metrics is standard practice on dating sitesrdquo he said ldquoBut this one went beyond that I felt like someone had spat in my facerdquoThe disturbing and embarrassing invitation for Indians to leave the party seems to be becoming commoner especially going eastward to countries like Thailand Indonesia Singapore and Malaysia I have no comment on the religion but as an Indian I have a single question how do Indian men behave with fareastern women to provoke such strong antipathyItrsquos easy to be a scoundrel when your victim canrsquot see you or get back at you Dating apps set the stage for misdemeanours in many other blatant ways The speed with which you can browse through profiles creates the ethos of a marketplace where you can inspect as many designs as you like before choosing one or none A profile with scanty cryptic information about the person encourages you to judge a book by its cover turning both men and women into commodities in the processDating apps enable duplicity a 2018 survey of 658 college students found that 73 per cent of them kept a few lsquobackburnersrsquomdashrelationships they could switch to if the current one became too boring or did not work outYour online dating profile can be an entirely fictitious persona replete with stunning AIgenerated photos You can fake your location age achievements hobbies and opinions With Google Translate you can discuss nihilism or cuisine with a Chinese man or woman in theirown languageMore than anything you can be obnoxious and disgusting online You can get away with gutterlevel statements knowing that you are untraceable unindictable and immuneHow do Indian men behave on online dating sites Irsquod have to be a Thai or other foreign woman to know the real answer but from conversations with Thais and forays into Reddit I have reason to believe that these sites bring out the worst in some of us Here are a few glimpses into what enough Eastern women have come to expect from enough Indian men to sound an alarmmdash Indian men assume the conversation is a prelude to sex They will ask for Xrated photos within a few sentences and offer to sharetheir ownmdash They show little interest in the other personrsquos life and times Between themselves I have heard them openly denigrate citizens of their host country describing them as inferior and stupid A woman can soon figure out if a man respects her or notmdash They will not hesitate to ask intimate disrespectful or sexually tinged questions to a woman they barely knowmdash If a date ensues they will go cheap picking some inexpensive average eatery to cut their losses in case things donrsquot go wellThe most cringeworthy tale I have heard is about three of my countrymen who decided to hit the redlight district of Bangkok once the dayrsquos sales conference ended Soon enough they found a sex worker and learnt her price for an hour ofher timeAfter a confabulation the leader of the group began bargaining Would she be open to taking three customers for the price of one he asked ldquoWe donrsquot need much timerdquo he saidldquoWersquoll pay for 60 minutes but each needs no more than 20 minutesrdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper