Our Story

“Marry an Indian, Akshay.” You’d think that would be coming from my mom, but no. My sister. My sister would always tell me I’d better marry an Indian or she wouldn’t come to my wedding. Which frankly, was incentive enough to ask every non-Indian woman I saw on a date. My mom always told me it didn’t matter who I married as long as I was happy, but let’s be real. She’s an Indian mom. She cared.

So I’m on OKCupid one day. (Yes, we met online. At least it wasn’t meetanindianbride.com or something.) I see that someone has “liked” my profile, which is understandable, given my profile picture was me in my amazing red pants. Oh, cool. It’s an Indian girl. Let me just look at her profile quickly, shoot her a message, so I can truthfully tell my mom and sister, “Sure, I’m totally messaging Indian women on dating sites.”

Obviously, the girl is Tika. We message back and forth. We eventually agree to meet up for a drink at Paul Martin’s at the Spectrum. It’s actually pretty fun. Good conversation. At this point in my “dating career”, I’ve been single for a while, and can read women well. She seems nervous, so I bluntly ask her if she is. “Yeah, I am a little bit nervous.” “Oh? How come?” “Because you’re hot…”

Now, Tika swears up and down she never said this. But we know she did because A) I remember every little detail about life (I like trivia for a reason). B) You’ve seen me. Come on.

We continue the date and decide to hang out at the beach after Paul Martin’s. On the drive, Taylor Swift comes on my iPod. I start singing the song, then realize there’s another human being in the car with me that I should be trying to impress. Instead, I’m wailing “TROUBLE, TROUBLE, TROUBLE” like I’m in the shower. By now, she probably thinks this is how her life ends because I’m some creep who’s about to take a detour from the beach to his secret puts-the-lotion-on-the-skin lair. We do, in fact, end up at the beach, we have fun…and the rest, as they say, is history.

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Tika will tell you she knew she loved me pretty early on. I was more cautious at that point in my life with stuff like that, but I could tell this one had a chance to stick. It has, and I can point to a few reasons. I think.

• I told Tika one of my goals in the relationship was to always make her laugh. She’s a super bubbly person, so I think it’s worked out okay so far. Yes, even the awful puns where she tells me to stop.
• We rarely actually fight. Whatever the reason is, I don’t know. Sure, we have our mini-annoyances (I need to put away my clothes as SOON as humanly possible or I incur her wrath. If she tries to make me watch TV I’ll end up complaining that I need to use my brain and TV doesn’t let me do that. The usual.) But the reality is, we get along really well.
• She’s a really positive person. She’s always smiling (I think something may be wrong with her mouth muscles?), but it gets contagious for someone who has a million things on their mind all the time.
• Really, the only downsides are that she tries to make me chug wine at her pace (spoiler: I can’t. Damn 20somethings.), that she wakes up too damn early (I’m nocturnal), and that she hasn’t tried modeling yet. Come on, gravy train!

Anyways, this is running long. (Akshay? Verbose? Shocking.) I eventually proposed, but I won’t go into detail on that because there’s a blog post about it. I think. I’m looking forward to the future. Our wedding (alcohol and dancing!), traveling with her (mainly because she’ll do all the planning), our future kids (probably clumsy and hairy), and tackling whatever else life throws our way. Thanks for reading.

Akshay