Indian Matchmaking
今ドキ! インド婚活事情
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Mumbai matchmaker Sima Taparia and the words 'flexible', 'adjust' and 'compromise'; adored and denounced in equal measure.
Sima Taparia is a marriage consultant from Mumbai, 'Sima Aunty' to her clients. In each eight-episode season she takes on a handful of South Asian singles in India, the United States and, later, Britain. She listens to what they and their parents want, consults face readers and astrologers, sends clients to life coaches and urges them to adjust and compromise. They go on dates; some turn down match after match; each season closes on whoever has found someone.
In the first season (2020), Aparna, a Houston lawyer, goes through a string of dates without finding the one. Nadia, an event planner in New Jersey, hits it off with Shekar, a Chicago lawyer; Vyasar, a college counsellor in Austin, bonds with Rashi; Ankita, a Delhi entrepreneur who wants an equal partnership, ends the season single. Akshay, in Mumbai, rejects more than seventy matches while his mother insists he marry within the year, and the season ends with his pre-engagement ceremony to Radhika from Udaipur.
In the second season (2022), Pradhyuman, the Mumbai jeweller who once turned everyone down, marries Ashima in a large ceremony. Aparna and Nadia date again without finding love. Viral, a pharmaceutical developer with a long list of requirements, falls for an optometrist, Aashay; Shital, afraid her pickiness has cost her a family, finds a doctor, Niraj, on her own; Arshneel, a cardiologist in Cleveland, goes out with a dentist, Rinkle; and Akshay Dhumal, from a small town outside Mumbai, has a priest perform a ceremony to clear the bad luck of a broken engagement.
In the third season (2023), Sima's work reaches London, where Priya, a chef starting again after a hard divorce, meets Vim. Viral meets Aashay's parents, and Shital and Niraj are still together. In Miami, Arti finds Jamal on a dating app rather than through Sima, and in the final episode he proposes.
Starring
Sima TapariaHerself
The Mumbai matchmaker, 'Sima Aunty', who takes on South Asian singles and their families in India, America and Britain.
Aparna ShewakramaniParticipant
A Houston lawyer with firm views who meets a string of Sima's matches in the first season and returns, still single, in the second.
Nadia JagessarParticipant
A Guyanese event planner in New Jersey, whose hopes with Shekar in the first season and Vishal in the second come to nothing.
Pradhyuman MalooParticipant
A Mumbai jewellery designer who turns down match after match in the first season and marries in the second.
Akshay JakheteParticipant
A Mumbai bachelor pressed by his mother to marry within the year, whose season ends in a pre-engagement ceremony.
Viral JoshiParticipant
A career-driven pharmaceutical developer with a long list of requirements, who falls for Aashay in the second season and meets his parents in the third.
Why it matters
Indian Matchmaking brought arranged marriage, as practised by prosperous South Asian families in India and the diaspora, to a worldwide streaming audience, and in 2020 it was among Netflix's most-watched series, followed as much in argument as in affection. Viewers and critics objected to the colourism, classism and gender stereotypes voiced on screen and to Sima Taparia's line that 'we have to see the caste, we have to see the height'; in The Atlantic, Yashica Dutt argued that the show makes caste invisible by coding it as 'similar backgrounds', and critics noted in 2020 that it showed no Muslim, Christian or Dalit couples. Its creator, Smriti Mundhra, said she hoped it would start conversations South Asian families needed to have. Seen now, it is most revealing about women: those urged to adjust, and those, like Aparna and Ankita, who refused.