Valentine’s Day Special: Love 2.0

Love at first sight, arranged marriages, feelings of butterflies in the stomach,  meeting at a university campus… all these seem less likely nowadays! Facebook, Twitter or even Instagram are the new matchmakers. A picture, a comment, a Tweet or a “like” can trigger off romance. Numerous persons have met their soulmate through social media. Meet four couples who started dating on Facebook and who are still going strong. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"10332","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft wp-image-17904 size-medium","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"287","alt":"Amar and Tatyana"}}]]Amar and Tatyana: “We used Google translate to communicate” Love knows no boundaries. Amar (49) has found his Russian love Tatyana through Facebook. A sweet love story that began three years ago and it is still going strong. “It was a mere coincidence that I added her as a friend and we started chatting. We had a communication gap as she only speaks Russian and I could communicate only in English. We started to use Google translate to communicate. Strange but true. We would chat almost everyday and this how we fell in love. I went to visit her in Russia and in turn, she came to Mauritius. Even when we met each other, we had to use Google translate,” he shares. For Amar, language issues and distance do not matter. “We use the internet, Viber and Whatsapp to communicate almost every single day. We are miles apart but we feel close. We appreciate and understand each other. We do not mix love with sex. She is currently learning English. Soon she will be in Mauritius and we will plan our future together,” he reveals. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"10333","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-medium wp-image-17905 alignright","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"278","alt":"Stephanie Mavac and Rajiv Callatchan"}}]]Stephanie Mavac and Rajiv Callatchan: “I initially found it difficult to trust somebody I met online” Love has no barrier and one can fall in love anywhere at any time. This is the story of Stephanie and Rajiv, a happy young couple who met on Facebook in 2012. Rajiv fell in love with Stephanie but this was not the case for her. “He was just a friend for me. I still remember how he kept asking for my phone number all the time. However, I initially found it difficult to trust somebody I had met online because so many people flirt a lot on social media. It was difficult to know whether he was really interested or not. After about 18 months, I finally gave him my number and we started to talk everyday. After two or three weeks, we started to date in 2014,” she reveals. Still together, they are both happy and believe that Facebook has a great hand in uniting them. “We did not have any common friends. So meeting would have been difficult. Like every couple, we do have our small tiffs but we do patch up afterwards,” she states. They are both ready to take their relationship to the next level and soon they will be meeting with their respective parents. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"10334","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-medium wp-image-17906 alignleft","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"286","alt":"Bhavna and Vimal"}}]]Bhavna and Vimal: “He liked my posts” We all have read about stories that end with a happy ending. The love stories of Bhavna and Vimal, which started on Facebook, ended in marriage. It all started in December 2009 when Bhavna was still a university student and was busy with her final year project. “One day, when I checked my Facebook account, I saw a friend request from Vimal, so I accepted but did not really have the time to chat with him. However, he liked my posts and started to comment on them. It was only in January 2010 that I sent him a message asking him if he was a Mauritian as he looked more like an Indian. My cousin was a mutual friend and she confirmed that Vimal was studying Hindi. We exchanged numbers on the eve of my birthday,” she says. In March 2010, they finally met. “We used to communicate through texts. We were always fighting but never stopped talking. I found him childish and I was more focussed on my career. The first time I realised that I had feelings for him was at the wedding of my elder brother. But I did not express my feelings for fear of ruining our friendship. We remained good friends. In 2012, my father advised me to go for an arranged marriage. On hearing that, Vimal told me to turn down the proposal, as he wanted to marry me. I had to convince my father and we got married on 9 November 2014,” she avers. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"10335","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-medium wp-image-17907 alignright","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"260","height":"300","alt":"Aleesha and Yovan"}}]]Aleesha and Yovan: “From conversation to love” Aleesha (22) and Yovan (24) are on cloud nine, as they recently got engaged. For them, it is unbelievable how a friend request on Facebook changed their lives. When Aleesha joined university, Yovan already left the same university after his studies. “Yovan sent me a friend request. We started to chat and it used to be more about student unions talks. Since Yovan was in the Student Union, he used to tell me how things are. I had an interest to be in the union as well. From serious conversations, it soon developed into love. We then started dating,” she confides. They have been together for three years now. “Like every relation, a balance is needed to maintain a healthy relationship,” she says.