Sima Taparia (from Mumbai) took the world by storm after she featured in Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking. While the younger lot who watched the show were mostly appalled at her belief system and how she expected female clients to be “adjusting” “flexible” and “compromising” in order to find decent life partners, the older lot seemed to have divided opinions, the majority inclined towards actually putting their trust in her. If you’re wondering how we know this, it’s because she admitted herself that business has picked up post the show going on air.
Image Credit: Netflix
Sima comes from the school of thought that everyone’s destiny is pre-set and everything depends on the alignment of the stars. She blatantly pedals the belief that the (not so) subtle power of modifying one’s expectations is the key to a happy relationship. Since her views are rather striking, it’s only natural for us to wonder just how much Sima herself had to fine-tune her requirements (if at all), in order to get a taste of marital bliss. Clearing all our doubts, the 57-year-old took to Instagram yesterday, sharing her own ‘love’ story for the very first time.
Image Credit: Netflix
“It was December of ’82 when we got engaged. Anup was still in his final year of graduation and I was residing with my family in Gulbarga, now Kalaburagi. Our families arranged for the match via a familial acquaintance and we met only once before saying yes to each other. It was only after the engagement that we began to have proper conversations on telephones,” she began.
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“In those days, you’d have to dial 180 to book a call out of the station. The operator would connect the line after a few hours only. We’d often stay around our telephones sneaking from our family’s forever teasing eyes, waiting for the call. However, in January 1983, our romance on telephonic calls was cut short owing to the huge fire in Malabar Telephone Exchange. PCOs would take hours of waiting to get on a call. And the telephone at Anup’s house was going to be dead for months until the line was fixed,” Sima said.
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So how was that going to be fixed? Well, Sima seemed to have found a way. She wrote, “So we came up with a solution that every one those days could go about in the absence of a telephone. Write Letters!! Anup and I used to exchange letters via post to make up for our calls. It used to take about 3 days for a letter to reach Gulbarga from Bombay and vice versa. And if our families would receive the letters instead of us, their teasing would never stop. Anup would often have to treat his siblings if they found my letters instead of him. But we never stopped writing.”
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She continued, “Soon after, our whirlwind romance took another turn when Anup wanted to meet me. I was visiting my aunt in Pune those days. He made an excuse at his house under the pretext of going on a college picnic and came over to see me. I was ecstatic. We sat over in one of those premium hotels by the station, probably Blue Diamond. We had our breakfast and spent some quality time together until the time came for him to leave. I was a bit teary-eyed to say goodbye to him.”
Image Credit: Netflix
On a closing note, Sima shared, “We continued exchanging letters until we got married later that summer. It has been 37 years since then but he still makes me feel as if we have just started all over again.”
Lead Image credit: Via Instagram @simatapariaofficial
