When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon- A ‘Mismatch’ | Book Review

Published by Simon Pulse

Genre- Young Adult, Contemporary

Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?
Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.
The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?
Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.

My Review

I had seen a lot of hype over Sandhya Menon’s books and all of it being positive, I was looking forward to reading When Dimple Met Rishi and wanted to like it when I started reading it. Sadly, that did not happen. The new Netflix series inspired from the book, “Mismatched” also left me with mixed feelings which was actually an upgrade from what I felt about the book.

Fair warning- unpopular opinion coming up. This review is probably more of a rant than a review but I needed to vent and it feels good to let it all out. This review is my personal opinion based on my personal experiences and not everyone might feel the same.

When I read the book’s blurb, I interpreted it to imagine Dimple and Rishi as two working professionals in their mid-twenties going for a short term professional course. But they turned out to be teenagers and recent high school pass outs. And their parents were setting them up for marriage! I was pretty surprised at knowing their ages.

The representation of Indian families and parents made me feel very exasperated. Looking for brides and grooms for their children at the age of eighteen? Indian parents living in urban cities in today’s age DO NOT do that!! Seriously. even in my parents’ times, people did not start talking about marriage until after graduation, at about 21-23 years of age. It was all around very stereotypical.

My main issue with the whole setup was that orthodox thinking of their families have been attributed to them being Indian. We Indians are not living in the 19th or even 20th century. It would have been understandable if their parents were from a small town or village in India, where such practices admittedly still prevail. But they were shown to be originally from Mumbai, a metropolitan city and the business capital of the country and certainly very forward in people’s mindsets.

The fact about how excited Rishi was to meet his future wife? I am not a guy but most Indian males are not looking for brides at the age of 18.

I would like to say it once more, most Indian parents DO NOT start trying to get their children married at the age of 18.

And how adamant Dimple’s mother was about wearing Kajal, most Indian mothers know what eyeliner is and how to use it. They do not keep pushing their daughters to wear Kajal or any makeup for that matter, to look pretty for ‘catching a boy’s eye’.

In hindsight, I have come to realize that the representation in the book was not meant to be Indian but Indian-American and there is a big difference. I understood this after watching the Netflix series ‘Never Have I Ever’ (whose Indian representation also sadly made me cringe). People who have moved away from India still think of the country as India they or their parents left behind, with no advancement having occurred since the ’80s.

Secondly, Dimple repeatedly pronounced Hari’s name as ‘Hurry’ even when he corrected her and said that it’s pronounced as ‘Harry’. She claims that she’s pronouncing it correctly. First thing, Dimple didn’t see his name written down anywhere. And just because he was Indian does not mean that he can’t have a name like Harry. And even if his name was actually pronounced as Hurry and he had changed it to Harry for whatever reason, Dimple had no right to question how someone else chooses to pronounce their own name. As someone from India who has an American name, this one landed a little too close to home for me.

I thought about DNFing the book a couple of times but I wanted to give it a fair chance till the end because I really had looked forward to it and wanted to like the book. Maybe it was because I listened to the audiobook for the most part, but by the end, everything about it was beginning to make me roll my eyes in annoyance.

The Indian, Hindi and Bollywood references felt very forced to me.

Both of the main characters were shown to ‘flush’ a number of times or heat crept up their cheeks. The thing is, Indians, don’t flush or blush easily, if at all. So them flushing every two minutes was not very believable for me.

If I didn’t already know that Sandhya Menon was Indian American, I would have thought that the book was written by someone who knew very little about the Indian culture and had watched only a few Bollywood movies.

I would personally not recommend this book if you’re looking to read about South Asian or Indian characters and culture. I don’t think I will be reading any more of the books by the author, primarily because of the frustration they elicit in me.

Have you read When Dimple Met Rishi? Did you like it? Because I feel like I am the only one who didn’t and makes me wonder if I read(heard) the same book as everyone else.

 

My Rating-