This Hyderabadi wedding in Rajasthan was made special by a son from the bride’s previous marriage

Where do we find love? On dating apps, where most conversations fizzle out, and even ChatGPT seems clearer about its intentions than some humans? Or on matrimonial websites, where caste and purity dictate the rules, leaving little room for nuance or stepping beyond society’s sanctioned limits?

Chitralekha Pasupuleti and Holm-Ingolf Hamann, born worlds apart, met in Seattle through a dating app—at an Indian restaurant called Moksha, now replaced by another.

“She had a puffy jacket on because it was November,” says Ingolf Hamann. “I hugged her and she was this fluffy cloud of puffiness. I didn’t even know the human was in here. It was so darling. She is a petite person and the puffy jacket made her look much bigger.”

When he hugged Pasupuleti, walking towards her all blue-eyed, in a straight woolen jacket, hair almost tousled, for her, the “hug felt as if he knew me, didn’t feel uncomfortable at all but very caring and loving.”

In the first meeting, both of them weren’t there to impress the other. They had been in enough relationships to know that the whole impression business only lasts so long and that it takes more than just grand illusions to see a relationship through.

“I also liked her independence,” he says. “I was raised with the idea that men and women should be independent, self-sufficient, and no one has to rely on the other. But it is comforting to know that you can do that when tough times come. So, there was no red flag. I was wondering, what am I missing? Is the shoe dropping somewhere? Where is the skeleton in the closet? I didn’t know. And it turned out there wasn’t any.”

They fell in love quickly—between grocery lines and Crate & Barrel aisles in Washington before heading to an Indian restaurant. Things became clear when Ingolf Hamann, newly a US citizen, planned to celebrate in Paris during winter. They had never been professionally photographed together, and Paris in winter felt perfect. Braving subzero temperatures, they woke early for a photographer’s only available slot.

“He was very nervous and I was like, why is he this, you know, stressed out about a photo shoot? It’s just a photo shoot,” she says. “I wondered if maybe we should not have done this. Then the photographer said why don’t you two just talk to each other. So we both did and (Ingolf Hamann) would just not stop talking. And I was thinking, oh my God, the photos are going to come out really terrible because he is talking. Suddenly, I started hearing words like marriage, love and life and I realized, oh, this is a proposal speech. He went down on one knee and people around were clapping and I was just very emotional, he said how having me in his life was like Diwali, tears were streaming down my face.”