Sumitra Singam
Dear Sir (there’s no way you’re a Madam),
I write to express my extreme discontentment with your product. I purchased it for INR599.64 via your website on 26 August 2024. Your software immediately attached itself to my Tinder profile via its many digital tentacles, just like the men you claim to detect and protect me from. It then, without so much as a by your leave, changed my profile picture to the one of me in my Paati’s flowered dress buttoned up to the neck, my hair done in a bun. That was a private photo, taken for a joke between me and my sister and I felt that you, or well, TAD™, violated my privacy. And before you ask, yes, I did see the pop up that said that was the strongest way of protecting me from Tinder Aresholes, but still. It’s the principle of it.
TAD™ then went through my matches, swiping right on all sorts of unlikely candidates, like Sunil who said he went to the temple every Friday evening, and Rishi who said he was proud to live with the strong women in his family.
Somehow, I ended up on dates with these extremely unlikely men all of whom had their hair severely parted to the left with Brylcreem, and their pants pulled up to their armpits. They talked solely of things like differential equations and the deeper meaning of the Chennai weather patterns.
It is entirely irrelevant that I am now engaged to one of them and he (Dharan) brings me my favourite laddoos every week, and our wedding is booked for December. Gone are my Fridays full of indecision about what to wear, how to do my hair, where to sit while waiting. Gone is the frisson of seeing a man who has no right to his supreme confidence stride in, sit down and explain to me in words of one syllable my own expert subject matter (Masters in Journalism, INR42,000 per month).
You have, through TAD™, deprived me of the irritation, disquiet and complaint that is the real spice of life. I am now content, and seem to spend all my time researching crockery patterns. My sister cannot stop laughing at me. I have a good mind to transfer my purchase to her.
Sir, if you have any integrity as a business person, I beg you to cease and desist immediately. Or at the very least give me a refund.
Yours in discontented happiness,
Soon-to-be Mrs Dharan Kumar
Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for Best Microfictions 2024. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com.
Featured photo by Barathan Amuthan (Pexels)
So funny! Love it.