u/Deep-Application8289

I recently moved to Bangalore for the job and I have realized one thing every plan that happens in the office or outside the office is around liquor as the centre theme.

I personally don't enjoy drinking much, ocassionally it's fine.

What I have found strange is plans gets cancelled if they do not evolve around drinking (either in house parties or office get together)

While nobody forces me to drink, opting out often would mean opting out from the group and the event itself.

I am genuinely curious whether other non drinkers here have felt this.

I'm not from Mumbai, so maybe this is obvious to everyone who grew up here.

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A few months ago, I went on a date with a girl and things were going well. At some point I asked what she was doing over the weekend and she started listing plans. Friday with school friends. Saturday brunch with college friends. Saturday evening birthday with another group. Sunday football screening with office friends.

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What stood out wasn't that she had plans. It was that every plan involved a different gang that had apparently existed for years.

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A few weeks later, I went on a date with someone else.

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At one point she was showing me pictures from a recent trip and I noticed every photo had pretty much the same people in it. Then she showed me pictures from a concert. Same people. New Year's. Same people. Birthday. Same people.

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I jokingly asked if Mumbai had a rule against making new friends after college.

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She laughed, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I'd seen the same pattern twice.

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People here seem to build these incredibly strong social circles and then keep them running for years, sometimes decades.

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Which is actually kind of admirable.

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But it also made me realize why dating here can feel strange.

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In a lot of cities, it feels like you're getting to know a person.

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In Mumbai, it sometimes feels like you're getting introduced to an entire ecosystem that was functioning perfectly well before you arrived.

I've dated in a couple of cities, and nowhere has confused me quite like Pune.

A few months ago, I went on a date with a girl I met on Hinge. She was nice, the date was decent, but there wasn't enough chemistry to take things further. We wished each other well and that was the end of it.

A month later, I matched with someone else. Things were going well until she mentioned a birthday party she'd attended recently and showed me a few pictures from the night. Standing right there in the photos was the girl from my previous date.

We laughed about it and moved on because Pune is not exactly a small city.

Then a few weeks later, I matched with another woman.

At some point she asked whether I ever spent time around Baner and Balewadi because she thought she'd seen me before. After a bit of back and forth, it turned out she knew the second girl. Not casually. Properly knew her.

By this point I started feeling like I wasn't meeting new people anymore. I was just being introduced to different members of the same extended social ecosystem.

What makes it funnier is that none of them found this unusual. Every time I brought it up, the reaction was basically that Pune works like this and everyone eventually overlaps with everyone else.

I moved from Pune to Delhi last year and started seeing a girl I met on Hinge. A few weeks later she invited me to a house party, and I expected the usual setup I was used to back home where a bunch of friends gather, eat, drink, and spend the evening catching up.

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Instead, I spent most of the night listening to people explain how they knew other people.

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Every conversation somehow revolved around mutuals, schools, companies, ex-colleagues, old flatmates, or somebody's cousin who apparently knew everybody in the room. The girl I was dating seemed to know half the party, but when I asked how she knew the host, she casually admitted she'd only met him once before.

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That answer led me to ask a few more people, and I discovered that a surprising number of guests barely knew the host either.

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That's when I realized something that felt very different from Pune. Back home, people attend parties because they're friends. In Delhi, people seem to become friends because they keep attending the same parties.

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The girl and I didn't work out, but I still have a couple of contacts from that night.

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I'm genuinely curious whether this is a Delhi thing or whether I just happened to walk into the city's most efficient networking event.

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Matched with a girl on Hinge. We talked for a week, met once, and honestly it was one of the better dates I've had in Bangalore.

No games. No weirdness.

A few days later she texted saying her flatmate was moving out unexpectedly and she was desperately looking for a replacement because rent in her society was ridiculous.

I mentioned that a friend of mine was looking for a place.

I connected them.

Within 48 hours they finalized everything.

Security deposit paid.

Rental agreement signed.

Everyone happy.

The next day she stopped replying.

Not slower replies.

Not busy replies.

Nothing.

Completely disappeared.

At first I thought maybe she lost interest after the date. Fair enough.

But then my friend moved into the flat.

And now every weekend he sends me pictures of house parties, game nights, society events, brewery outings, etc.

Apparently she's become one of his closest friends.

Meanwhile, I haven't heard from her in 4 months.