From street food to forever

Grace was a young accountant in Juba, excellent with numbers and hopelessly romantic in private. When she matched with Arjun, a financier from Mumbai who traveled East Africa for work, he asked a strange first question: "What did you eat that made you happiest as a child?" She said fried dough from the market, sweet and hot. He said he would find the closest thing to it.

Their first date was a wander through the market, because Arjun believed first dates should have no walls. They ate from three stalls, talked about their grandmothers, and ended up at a rooftop where he told her India's best stories. Grace, who usually scheduled everything, forgot to check her phone.

He visited Juba every couple of months, and each visit was a food journey — the Pyramid, karaoke nights, garden lunches, and finally a private chef who taught her to cook the curry he had promised her since his first message.

Arjun proposed at the rooftop where their first market date had ended, with the same street-food vendor making fried dough fresh for the occasion. Their wedding served two menus, one from each country, and guests argued for years over which was better.

"He never played the rich card," Grace says. "He opened my world with a market stroll. Arjun takes care of me like a quiet habit — steady, daily, and so reliable that I stopped looking for flaws and started looking forward to our next table for two."