It started with a kiss on the big screen, at a Coldplay concert. Astronomer’s CEO and his colleague got mushy under the stadium spotlight, completely unaware they were about to go viral for all the wrong reasons. The kicker? She wasn’t his wife. What followed was pure corporate carnage: memes, moral outrage, and an official investigation that probably ruined more than just the company’s Slack.
But this is not a one-off. As it turns out, the universe has a wicked sense of timing when it comes to exposing affairs. So, we pour some tea and share some real stories of people who got caught cheating in the most ridiculous ways. Spoiler: it’s never subtle, rarely graceful, and always unforgettable!
Roast and roastery
One of my school seniors had, what you may call, the sixth sense. Her boyfriend was seen playing footsie at Roastery Coffee House. Not with her, but with another girl.
And how did he get caught? Divine digital intervention. A friend of a friend casually posted an Instagram story showing off her cold brew. And lo, in the background sat the unholy duo, hand-in-hand. My senior didn’t even blink. Screenshot, send, silence. Coffee was not the only thing served cold that day.
Corn and karma at Citizen’s Park
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Then there’s the tale that deserves its own Ekta Kapoor treatment. One could call it Korn and Karma. A 60-year-old family friend, who was known as this grumpy, hypermasculine retired government officer, was infamous for his active side quests. Once he decided to have a romantic date with a much younger companion at Citizen’s Park. He was taking a bite of the bhutta held in the girl's hand.
All was going well until fate (and family) intervened. His sister-in-law, niece, her husband and their two children, basically a full six-member battalion, chose that exact day and spot for an evening stroll.
The kids saw him first. “Daduuuuu!” they screamed, running toward him with open arms. The young girlfriend bolted like she had seen a ghost, handing over the bhutta to him. The old man? Frozen mid-bite, trying to hide the bhutta and his shame behind a park bench. From hypermasculine babu to corn-munching cartoon, it was the ultimate revelation for the spectators.
Amen to chaos!
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This is the story of a young God-fearing chap who managed to two-time a mother and daughter from his parish. A man with so much audacity, it needed its own altar.
The routine was seamlessly coordinated: the daughter would bunk college to visit him at his house in the morning, and the mother would drop by in the afternoon once her darling girl had left. And every Sunday, he would brag about it in the youth circle, as if the Ten Commandments had been reduced to a Netflix plot twist.
It all came crashing down when the mother found a familiar satin underwear at his place, one she had bought, not for herself, but for her daughter. Suspicion turned into rage. The man tried to gaslight her, claiming it was hers. As if she had forgotten her own laundry basket. On demanding to check his phone, she found her daughter's number in the call log.
What followed was the mother summoning her daughter to the scene. A full-blown showdown took place, the daughter slapped him, the mother beat him, and both women cried, yelled and cursed. The cherry on this chaos cake? The mother lodged a complaint at the local police station. The only thing that saved him from a night in lock-up was the intervention of the parish priest, who came to bail him out.
Wet floor and broken vows (and a few bones)
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They say love makes you weak in the knees. But, in this case, it also slipped a man’s lumbar disc. In a Lake Town flat, a married woman had been seeing someone on the sly while her lawyer husband spent his days in the courtroom. She, meanwhile, was holding her own little hearing behind closed doors, with a much younger man.
One afternoon, while the husband was still out in court, she invited her secret lover home. Things escalated. Clothes were discarded. But just as the romance was reaching its peak, the lover (might have) strutted into the bathroom and slipped. The woman panicked. She tried to help him up, but he was deadweight and very much immobile. Worse, the lawyer husband was just minutes from returning. In desperation, the lover tried to crawl back to the bathroom to hide, but fate had other plans, and he slipped again. That’s when the husband walked in.
To his credit, the lawyer didn’t lose his cool. He assessed the situation, recognised the injured man as not a plumber, and did what any logical man would: helped him up, called an ambulance, and made mental notes for divorce. But this story had more twists.
Hours later, the lover’s wife showed up at the local thana and filed a complaint against the lawyer. Her claim? Her poor husband had been “lured” and then beaten up by the man whose home he had stumbled into. Ahem!
And then, of course, there is the legendary story of two high-profile television journalists caught snogging in, wait for it, an ATM in Delhi in the early 2000s. But that’s a story for and from another time!