If you’ve watched any of Netflix’s new reality dating series Indian Matchmaking, you’re probably aware that matchmaking hopeful and breakout star Aparna Shewakramani can be a little, well, picky. Throughout the episodes, we follow Aparna as she goes on a series of first dates, set up by the impeccably dressed matchmaker Sima Auntie, with varying degrees of success — due to her (how do we put this kindly?) demanding personality. Look, the woman likes things the way she likes them, and you’d better believe she knows exactly what she likes and what she doesn’t. It just so happens that she doesn’t like much.
We decided to round up everything Aparna has said she simply can’t stand, from comedy to lawyers to first dances at weddings. Sure, the astrologer on the show calls Aparna “fickle minded” and “rude in speech,” but we think she’s just a polarizing woman who isn’t afraid to go after the things she wants in this world and to avoid the things she doesn’t care for — which, again, are many, including:
• Football
“You do you, boo.”
Photo: Netflix
• Watching football (live or on television)
She is nothing if not clear.
Photo: Netflix
• Seeing someone all the time
Her logic scans.
• Seeing her future husband all the time
Points were made.
Photo: Netflix
• Having been to only 40 countries
• Three-hour dates
• People who need to be the funniest guy in the room
Finally someone says it.
• People who don’t know Bolivia has salt flats
Oh yeah? Oh no.
Photo: Netflix
• Lawyers
• People who want the same things she does
• Changing herself for others
To be fair, she said she was sorry.
Photo: Netflix
• Cooking
The “or ever” is really sending me.
• The outdoors
We stan an indoor queen.
• Comedy
Okay, this I deeply understand.
• This man she called “the funny man,” whom she dated once
• People who are seven years older than she is
• The food at Rice University
• Not being good at ax-throwing
Who among us has not felt this way?
• Red wine that isn’t Cabernet
Why do I feel like it actually won’t do?
• Men without a clear career path, even if they have written three books
Sorry Srini 🙁
• Men who want to live near the ocean
• Norway (only five hours of sunlight a day)
• Beaches
But she did live on a boat once for 100 days.
• Lying on a beach for more than two or three hours
Don’t make her do it.
Photo: Netflix
• Relaxing for ten days
It’s weird.
Photo: Netflix
• A mountain she climbed in Patagonia
• Dubai
“Really?”
• Disney World
Subtext: I don’t like Disney World.
• Being a lawyer (technically different than “Lawyers”)
Aparna’s response to the question “Do you like being a lawyer?”
• South Africa and other “weirdly touristy places”
Okay, that explains why she doesn’t like Disney World.
• Cuba (felt unsafe/sex tourism)
“Randomly.”
• Most of her first dates
• Chicago (the city, not the musical)
• When she’s on a date and the guy talks to other people
• Lawyers, again
She really hates lawyers.
Photo: Netflix
• Jupiter driving her astrological bus for 16 years
• The 5K she has to run for her friend’s bachelorette party in NYC
• Passionately romantic men
• Looking inward at why she is so demanding
• Being a lawyer for ten years
• This one goat in her goat-yoga class
Her face says it all.
• Cakes at weddings
• Flowers at weddings
• First dances at weddings
She doesn’t need any of that stuff.
• Children at weddings
Did you hear that, kids? Never!
• Seeing a child at her wedding
“I don’t want to SEE that,” Valerie Cherish but also Aparna re: children at her wedding.
• Waiting for people to begin eating
• Los Angeles (went once for a weekend, left early)
Neither are we.
Sima Auntie, trying to find a match for Aparna.