Kochi Is changing the way it dates, talks about sex and relationships

There is something amusing about the fact that a city famous for Chinese fishing nets, churches, synagogues and the occasional wholesome family lunch is also becoming a surprisingly interesting place to talk about sex.In Kochi, the conversation is increasingly moving beyond the old binary of sex as either something that happens after marriage or something that happens in whispers. Dating apps have given young Malayalis a new vocabulary for meeting people; words such as “breadcrumbing”, “ghosting” and “situationship” have entered the local lexicon, while platforms built specifically around Malayali identity are offering an alternative to the generic swipe. Representative image | Photo Credit: The League India Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are being used alongside more localised platforms such as Arike, Mizhi and Hridhayam. Arike, developed by Aisle, is built around Malayali cultural familiarity and long-term dating and has crossed one million downloads on Google Play. Mizhi, developed by Kerala-based Auglin Solutions, offers Malayali singles location-based discovery, messaging and the option of conversing in Malayalam.However, there is a tension that runs through almost every conversation I have had about dating and intimacy in Kochi. The city is not necessarily becoming less traditional, but more articulate about negotiating tradition alongside the newer ways in which people meet.Soumya Rajendran, 35, moved from Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi in 2016 and began using dating apps in the city in 2019. She remembers how different the mechanics of approaching someone could be before dating apps became commonplace. Men would notice a woman’s vehicle registration number, look up her name, find her on Facebook or another social-media platform and send her a request. “It was basically stalking,” she says.Dating apps offered something that was both technologically simple and socially significant: a context in which two people had, at least ostensibly, opted into the possibility of meeting one another.For Soumya, however, the more significant change was not the technology but the vocabulary that came along with it. Representative image | Photo Credit: The League India “Consent was being discussed at that time,” she says. But she also noticed how easily the terminology could be misunderstood. Some men, she felt, understood consent as a woman eventually saying yes, without considering the circumstances in which that yes had been produced.Soumya has also watched people learn the language of contemporary dating in real time. “Friends with benefits”, for instance, can be understood as getting the privileges of a relationship without the commitment, including emotional privileges. Relationships are still sometimes described simply as “affairs”, while a declaration of romantic interest can still be called a “proposal”. The terminology may have changed faster than the social meanings attached to it.She has had two relationships through dating apps herself, neither of which worked out, but says her experience has nevertheless been overwhelmingly positive. “I have met 90% good people,” she says.That is perhaps another useful correction to the usual narrative around dating apps. They have not just imported hookup culture into Kochi. They have created a new social space in which people are learning — sometimes awkwardly — how to approach one another, negotiate boundaries and figure out what they actually mean when they say they want a relationship.But not everyone is encountering Kochi’s dating scene through the apps.All’s fairA Mumbai-based queer man who runs a cloud kitchen has spent close to six months in Kochi, where his sister lives and runs a patisserie. Over that time, he says, he has explored the city’s dating and social scene extensively, meeting men through friends, parties and introductions. His sister eventually introduced him to what he describes as the “1%” of Kochi’s cool crowd — a small, tightly connected social circle where, in his telling, everyone knows everyone, everyone seems to hang out together and money and political connections are not unusual. Representative image | Photo Credit: Getty Images What surprised him was how sexually fluid some people in this circle appeared to be.He describes meeting men who were remarkably open about swapping partners and seeing other people, and a social world in which the boundaries between friendship, sex and relationships could become surprisingly porous. His impression was almost that “everyone has been with everyone”, with an underlying understanding that this is simply how the social scene works.His account is one person’s experience of a very particular social network, rather than a description of Kochi’s queer community as a whole. But it adds another layer to the city’s apparent contradiction: sexual experimentation can coexist comfortably with discretion, secrecy and the need to keep certain parts of one’s life compartmentalised.Sandhya Verghese, a digital strategist who was born and raised in Mumbai before moving to Kochi about four years ago, says one of the city’s more interesting changes is that people are becoming tired of meeting one another through the formal architecture of dating apps. After enough swiping, matching and messaging, the city can begin to feel very small.Her response has been to create spaces where meeting people is not explicitly about meeting people.Sandhya runs the Mumbai Malayalee Supper Club, which began with her inviting 15 strangers into her Kochi home for a traditional Kerala meal. The premise was deliberately different from a singles event: put strangers around a table, give them food and something to talk about, and let whatever happens next happen naturally. The concept has since travelled beyond Kochi, including to Dubai, with some guests becoming friends, travelling together and even dating. After a Sofar Kochi gig | Photo Credit: Special arrangement “I don’t want to host a singles-only event,” she tells me. Instead, she likes the idea of people arriving because they share an interest.A supper club, a run, a music gathering or a fitness community gives people something to talk about before they have to figure out whether they are attracted to one another. Romance, if it happens, becomes a by-product rather than the stated objective.Kochi has plenty of these communities. Dawnage Run Club, founded by fitness coach Nipun Viju, began with four people meeting for a Saturday-morning run and has grown into a community of more than 50 members.Then there is Sofar Sounds Kochi, the local chapter of the global live-music network that stages intimate gigs in unexpected venues. The Kochi chapter dates back to 2017. It is not a matchmaking exercise, but it creates the kind of setting Sandhya is talking about: strangers brought together because they have something in common, with the possibility of friendship, conversation or something else left open.“It’s not dating anymore; it’s the runs, the fitness communities,” she says.It is a subtle but important distinction. The change may not be that Kochi has suddenly become more sexually permissive. It may simply be that people are becoming better at articulating the terms on which they want to date.But the story does not end with young singles, or even with dating apps.Kochi is also showing up on the other side of the dating economy, among people who are already married and are negotiating what monogamy means to them. Representative image | Photo Credit: Pinterest According to data from extramarital dating app Gleeden, 50,000 subscribers from Kochi registered on the platform in 2026, twice the number recorded in 2025. Gleeden’s survey data also puts Kochi in an interesting position. Among respondents surveyed in the city, 49% said they had cheated on a partner either physically or emotionally, compared with 64% nationally. The reasons respondents gave for cheating were led by a lack of attention, care or affection from a spouse, developing feelings for someone else and physical attraction towards another person, while a smaller proportion said they had cheated out of spite or in response to a partner’s betrayal.The numbers around open marriage are similarly revealing. Twenty-eight percent of Kochi respondents said they were currently considering opening their marriage, slightly above the national figure of 26%, while 29% said they had already done so, compared with 35% nationally.And that brings the conversation back to sexual wellness.Arun Das, co-founder of Kochi-based sexual-wellness brand Senseae, says the one-year-old company began with aphrodisiac chocolates before expanding into a broader catalogue of sexual-wellness products. He says Kochi now accounts for roughly 30% of the brand’s product share organically, and that demand has been strong enough for the company to offer three-hour delivery within the city.Senseae’s catalogue includes app-controlled products designed for couples, strokers, air-suction stimulators, blindfolds, dual-ended massagers, bullet vibrators and high-powered wands, among other products. Representative image | Photo Credit: Pinterest Arun recently launched Senseae Social, a platform for conversations around sexual wellness. Its first event, held in August, brought together gynaecologists, sexual-wellness experts and content creators. The idea, he says, came from recognising an appetite for conversations that people were already having privately but rarely had a public forum for.Because a city does not become more open simply because somebody can deliver a massager in three hours. What changes a culture is the ability to ask a question without immediately feeling that you have asked the wrong one.There is, however, a useful counterpoint to the idea that Kochi is suddenly overflowing with people eager to talk about sex.New conversationsMumbai-based intimacy coach and founder of Intimacy Curator, Aili Seghetti, has held intimacy and kink workshops and events in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Kochi, she tells me, is a city she has been hearing from, but one she has approached more cautiously.“I have many enquiries from Kochi and Trivandrum, but they are mostly men, so I have not ventured yet,” she says. Representative image | Photo Credit: Pinterest For Aili, the gender balance matters. She says she needs a healthy ratio of women to men to create the kind of environment she wants at her workshops and events; if an audience is overwhelmingly male, she would rather not host one.She is planning an event in Kochi in January, beginning with a panel discussion on sex work, followed by a workshop on figuring out one’s own erotic disposition.In Kochi, the conversation may be growing faster than the community around it. Perhaps that is the more useful way to understand what is happening here.A fortnightly guide to love in the age of bare minimum