The Joys of Subtle Curry Dating

Janhavi Gosavi | She/Her

To date an Indian boy, or to not date an Indian boy? That is the question. 

This dilemma had plagued Tanya and I for all our lives. We were both born in India but brought up in New Zealand, and the cultural blend was difficult to navigate. After finishing our first year at university, we reunited at a puja over the summer, only to discover we had also successfully remained single for this entire time.

Tanya grabbed us a plate of food, and we sat cross-legged on the floor, out of earshot of prying aunties. Lamenting over the fact that Wellington contains very few God-tier Indian men was a hobby of ours. I was listing how many Indian boys I knew who thought liking Drake was a personality trait, when Tanya interrupted me. 

“You could always widen your horizons by going on Subtle Curry Dating.” 

I choked on my paneer. “Subtle...Curry...what?” She handed me her phone, and my mind was blown. 

Subtle. Curry. Dating. Or SCD for short. A global facebook group, boasting nearly 200,000 members, where young South Asians are auctioned off for prospective dating. 

Most people get their mates to ‘auction’ them off by posting their bio data, a pro/con list about the person, and a collection of insta-worthy pictures. Pros may include: is able to roll round rotis, can speak multiple languages, and has a good halal:haram ratio. Cons may include: is whitewashed, doesn’t watch many Bollywood films, and can’t handle spicy food. 

Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. So, I reached out to the admins of the group, who said they “want SCD to be a place where all desis (and non-desis, but mostly desis) can connect on a personal level and find a significant other in a supportive community”. 

Subtlety; it's the name of the game. In our own bubbles, us curries will be loud and proud about who we are and where we come from. But that level of pride gets you ‘othered’ in the real world. Our appearance is already an automatic identifier that we’re different. Anything we say on top of that to reference our culture is deemed as pushing it. My Tinder bio won’t tell you I can make a mean biryani, nor will I wear a bindi to a first date. 

The vernacular spoken in this space is unique to our culture. On SCD, we call each other ‘curry’. It's funny as fuck, and less wordy than saying “person belonging to the South Asian diaspora”. ‘Desi’ is another umbrella term we use;  referring to anyone from the Indian sub-continent. 

The admins explained that SCD is special because mainstream dating apps are too generic. “The shared experiences desis have translate themselves into SCD’s posts, as well as the surrounding comments, creating a sense of community,” they said. On SCD, our culture morphs from being a facet of our identity we lock away, to becoming a commonality that attracts others to us.

The page gives desis the agency to (jokingly) arrange our own marriages, instead of leaving it up to nosy family members. Governed by admins who enforce guidelines and approve posts before they appear on the page, SCD is a safe space where curry kids can find curry love.

The admins commented that “a large appeal of SCD is that there are so many attractive and high quality desi people that everyone has access to”. And boy were they right. Scrolling through the posts, I quickly realised this page was heaven dipped in melanin and coated in garam masala. Every second person on here seems to be an Ivy League university student, an up-and-coming entrepreneur, or a social media influencer. With beauty and brains galore, the curries being auctioned off ticked every possible flavour combination. 

Before I found this page, dating another Indian just didn’t seem feasible to me. 

Theoretically, I would love to date an Indian man. However, my own experience is that the desi boys I’ve encountered lack emotional intelligence, are dry conversationalists, dress head to toe in Nike, and have identical fades. They get treated like kings by their mothers, and expect the same from me (who hurt you, Janhavi?).

Furthermore, Indian men seeking me out because I fit their racial requirements makes me feel icky. I’ve been in a multitude of social situations where a desi man has approached me purely because I was the only Indian woman in the room. While I understand the logic, it seems foolish to assume this is anything other than surface level attraction.

Once, a curry boy who fancied me told me to swear less. “That's not what I like in a nice Indian girl,” he said. Thinking about it always makes me grit my teeth. 

It became abundantly clear my personality had little to do with his attraction towards me. He didn't know me, nor did he want to get to know me. He saw what he wanted to see—a ‘nice’ girl he could bring home to his family and not get grounded for. Experiences like these have led me to believe attraction based off of race creates inorganic relationships. 

However, SCD has assured me there are curry men out there who I can relate to. Ones with pretentious-sounding BA degrees, who like to dissect tv shows, perform on stage, and engage in social justice. 

You might not want to hear this, but when white people close their eyes and imagine their ideal s/o, it tends to be another white person. 

Being raised in a colonial country where eurocentric beauty ideals reign supreme, ethnic minorities can have mixed feelings when it comes to dating. I spoke to Sophia Edwards, who did her PhD on Asian panethnicity and identity in Aotearoa, to gain an anthropological understanding on the topic of Asian dating. With profile-picture led dating apps rising in popularity, Sophia says that “non-white people are marked as different.” In her research, she found some of her participants had even come across racist bios like “No Rice, No Spice” and “No Asians, No Indians”. 

I know that when the blue-eyed boy standing next to the beer pong table closes his eyes, he doesn’t picture me. That knowledge alone is enough to stop anyone in their tracks. I like to think it keeps me humble. Mostly, though, it keeps me sad.

Fact of the matter is, I’ve been colonised so effectively that my ideal s/o is also a white person. Yuck. 

Sophia’s research found that some Asians actively avoid dating within their ethnicity because they subconsciously feel a sense of racial inferiority. She said that those who sought to distance themselves from their race “have since come to describe this as internalised racism”. This internal conflict could result in an attraction towards the ‘superior’ European race, as well as a deep desire to conform to eurocentric beauty ideals. 

“SCD’s most popular posts rarely go against eurocentric beauty standards when applied to desi aesthetics,” admit their admins. It’s not impossible to conform to western ideals of beauty when you’re desi—it’s just expensive, mentally exhausting, and involves a lot of shaving. 

Colourism feeds into eurocentric beauty and is deep-rooted within the desi community. Skin whitening products, like the popular cream ‘Fair and Lovely’, unfortunately remain a staple in many households. 

It puts a smile on my dial when I see the person being auctioned off isn't strategically using lighting and editing to make themselves look lighter skinned in their pictures. When the pressure of appealing to a white society is removed, we’re free to be our authentic brown selves. I could unapologetically post pictures of me decked out in my lehenga at Navratri, without needing to add a caption explaining what I’m wearing and why. 

I go on Subtle Curry Dating when I’m down and need beautiful brown faces to cheer me up. So it makes my heart twinge everytime I see a non-desi person being auctioned off, especially if they’re white. I feel uneasy because I fear that non-curries will grow to dominate SCD the same way they’ve dominated mainstream dating apps. 

I asked the SCD admins if they felt letting non-desis post was in any way violating the purpose of the page. They clarified that because SCD was an open and inclusive community, any non-desis interested in desi people were welcome to have their friends auction them off on the page. But the admins also assured me that “while we've seen a few non-desi posts get popular, group members still strongly prefer looking for a serious partner within their race.”

Sophia emphasised how cultural endogamy, the practice of marrying within an ethnic group, was important to South Asians. “It could make daily living more seamless; you are less likely to need to explain or justify your cultural practices,” she said. 

The South Asian community clings onto the concept of “settling down”, a.k.a. securing a stable job, getting married, and having children. To settle down with a non-curry poses many challenges. I’m sick of brushing religious and cultural events under a rug, telling my mates “I can’t come this time, I have ‘an Indian thing’ on.” 

Upholding familial expectations can play a large role in choosing a partner.  In desi culture, a relationship isn’t just a bond between individuals, it's a bond between families. It’s important to me that my parents and my partner respect and connect with one another. Sharing a culture may not bridge all the gaps between them, but it's a promising start.  But, because of SCD, it finally feels possible to find someone who ticks our boxes, as well as our parents’.

I want to raise kids who speak my mother tongue as fluently as I do. I want to have a duet partner for when I randomly burst into Bollywood songs. I want to talk shit about bland white-people food on the car ride home from dinner at our friends’ house. 

Maybe I’ve secretly always craved holding hands with someone whose knuckles are hairier than mine. Someone who instinctively takes his shoes off at the door and doesn’t say shit like ‘naan bread’ and ‘chai tea’. Maybe I just want brown boys to read this sad saga and slide into my DMs. 

Who knows. 

One thing’s for sure. 

It's a brave new dating world out there. And this little curry is just getting started.