What does it take to find your soulmate after the age of 50?

At Madhav Damle’s ‘Happy Seniors’, a one-time membership fee of Rs 4,000 to Rs 7,500 is a small price to pay for love.

Through the agency, 81 people have found companionship. Madhav, a service engineer from Pune who plays ‘Cupid’, smiles as he shares these stories.

Ask him how he ventured into this unusual profession and he credits it to all the time he spent volunteering at various social organisations.

“Most of the events I was a part of were at old age homes. It was sad to watch the loneliness that senior citizens face,” he says.

It also alerted him to how all senior citizens are not privileged enough to have children who will be by their side.

Madhav began speaking to some of the seniors about the concept of companionship. While initially they were dismissive about it, they saw truth in what he was suggesting.

Thus, Happy Seniors was born in Pune in 2012 with one goal — to help people find love in their old age.

Explaining why ‘live-in’ relationships work out in this age bracket, he says, “The main reason why these kinds of relationships are frowned upon among youngsters is because of the possibility of children. Whose responsibility will the children be if there is no marriage in place?”

“But in the case of the senior citizens, there isn’t [much] scope for this problem to arise. Their children are settled in life,” he says.

He adds that all the senior citizens he has assisted in finding the right partner are financially stable.

In addition to this, property disputes do not arise as there is no legal binding between the couple.

Madhav, the proud matchmaker, says he has “81 people in live-in relationships”; some of them even got married.

They have some criteria for the membership: – Every male member being onboarded must have an average income of Rs 35,000 a month. – Both parties must open individual bank accounts when they enter the live-in relationship. – They must deposit a fixed amount of money in it. – The first holder will be the person who deposits the money. – The second holder will be their partner. – If something goes wrong, the innocent partner will get all the money as compensation.

Even as Madhav scripts love stories by the day, it is a beautiful realisation that love indeed has no boundaries. People age; love does not.