Can you believe in this day and age two modern young people pledging their love and agreeing to tie the knot without ever actually seeing each other?
Sneha Chaudhary from Mumbai and Harsh Mehta from Adelaide fell madly in love within 15 days of chatting with one another on Facebook and Skype. SBS Hindi spoke with this bright young couple about their amazing romance that reads like a fairytale.
Sneha was one day surprised to receive a “hello” in her inbox on Facebook. She looked at the profile and wondered who it was. It was a young man called Harsh Mehta who she did not know. Harsh owned a recently opened café in Adelaide which was not too busy; he was getting bored so he scrolled on Facebook and found her display picture quite attractive and sent her a “hello.”
Sneha decided not to respond but Harsh then wrote to her, “do we know each other?” he wrote. Sneha responded in the negative. Harsh wrote back, “Do you want to be friends?” Sneha liked this direct no beating around the bush approach. They subsequently discovered they had a lot of common friends.
SBS Hindi asked whether Sneha was not a bit doubtful about a sudden hello because sometimes people stick the photo of an actor like Dharmendra on their display picture to fool others. Harsh burst out laughing to say, “I don’t need to put someone else’s photo, I am too self-obsessed.”
Well, the first hello began on 18th December 2014 and by the 6th of January 2015 Harsh knew he loved her. Their common friends were a topic of their chats and both being foodies, they spoke a lot about food!
How long was your longest chat we ask? They both burst out laughing and say, “18 hours!” Didn't your throat dry out we ask incredulously, Harsh says, “No, the phone batteries dried out but not our throats.”
Source: Supplied
The proposal
They had never seen each other personally so how did they decide to get married?
The marriage proposal was on three pebbles! That was truly strange. Harsh tells us that once during their chats Sneha mentioned that she loves penguins because they remain committed to one partner throughout their lives. A penguin picks up the most beautiful pebble on the beach and casts it in front of a female penguin to declare his 'love'. This story was stuck in Harsh’s mind.
Harsh gathered three beautiful pebbles - one from St Kilda Beach, one from Glenelg and one from Bondi beach. He put these in a beautiful box with a marriage proposal in the box and parcelled it to her. Sneha accepted and two days before their marriage Harsh flew to Mumbai from Adelaide - and that’s the first time they ever met.
Now married for the past three years they are still madly in love. Sneha says, “We want to extend people’s faith in love.”
Source: Supplied
