I love that neither Indian traditions, nor American ones are framed as the “one true way.” And I love that American ideals aren’t framed as freeing either. I shall accept sly references to Bobby and phrases like “What Dimple” as compensation.)īetween Dimple and Rishi, the novel also presents a much more interesting conversation about hyphenated identities than most books I’ve read with that exact theme. And the book manages to accomplish all of this without having to cater to the white gaze. A lot of the book-like Dimple’s honest conversations with her parents about marriage and the fact that her parents actually listen to her, because Desi parents are not unfeeling robots who want to make us miserable in order to check some kind of “good Indian” box-is a careful reframing of what romantic comedies present to white and Desi audiences alike when a romance involves India/Indians. No, what makes the book magical is that, at its core, When Dimple Met Rishi is a joyful romance in addition to being a thoughtful reclamation of the arranged marriage narrative.

There is nothing terribly mysterious about the story: Dimple and Rishi have a terrible meet-up they start off as friends, agree to a non-date (clueless talk for a hell-yes-this-is-a-date), fall in love, have an epic argument, and eventually reconcile. Point is, the novel is about passions of more than one kind and this already serves to set the story apart from other rom-com styled YA novels.

It seems the only thing destined to be between them is a stream of iced coffee, as pictured on the back cover. Only problem? Dimple has no idea who Rishi is, let alone that her parents and the Patels know each other. The Patels and the Shahs hope that something will bloom between Rishi and Dimple when their kids meet for the first time at a summer camp for web development in San Francisco.

Nothing is fated, of course, but what Rishi does know about his future is that he’ll be meeting Dimple very soon.

Maybe meeting “the one” can take his mind off the fact that he’s ignoring his own passion for creating comics in order to study engineering at MIT. Rishi Patel, on the other hand, hoped to be matched to the girl of his dreams. Everyone has their own idea of what makes an ideal romantic relationship, but at the start of Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi, Dimple Shah’s idea of romance probably involved passionately poring over the plans for an award-winning app.

When rishi met dimple story