Kriti Mehrotra
With Netflix’s ‘Indian Matchmaking‘ season 3 living up to its title and its previous installments in every way imaginable, we get a true insight into what dating is like within the Indian community. After all, it essentially revolves around Mumbai, India-based premier matchmaker Sima Taparia as she strives to help lovelorn singles from across the world find their perfect, forever partners. Amongst them was actually Miamian Arti Lalwani — so now, if you simply wish to learn more about her, her romance with Jamal, as well as their current standing, we’ve got the details for you.
Arti and Jamal’s Indian Matchmaking Journey
From the moment Arti Lalwani first came across our screens, she made it perfectly evident that she is a strong, independent, and ambitious woman who technically doesn’t really need a man. However, since it was her father’s wish to see her happily settled down, and he sadly passed away on July 23, 2021, she decided to begin looking into it as it personally felt like the right time too. She admittedly was not ready to have a full-fledged family, yet she did genuinely desire someone with whom she could share not just her deepest, truest self but also her every life experience.
That’s when Sima Taparia came into the picture, only for Arti to make it clear her potential hubby should have a good, familial upbringing and be at least as motivated in his entire lifestyle as her. As for her other criteria, they were for him to be raised in America yet with a similar cultural base so as to have a better understanding of who she is while also being caring as well as confident. There was also the fact her jeweler father wanted a male from the Sindi community to be her love due to their own roots, but she felt as if an Indian is an Indian and wasn’t too picky on this matter.
Arti was thus presented with New Yorker Avinash Shingwani and Californian Ashman Murti as suitors, but the distance alongside the dry conversations made it utterly clear it wouldn’t work out. It was actually so bad she began contemplating leaving the experiment to focus solely on her career in compliance at a cyber-security firm, just to then suddenly come across Jamal on her own. “I think I joined it [a dating app] on a Thursday,” she candidly admitted in the Netflix original production before revealing she met Jamal right there on the ensuing Tuesday, merely five days later.
Arti continued, “Literally, [Jamal] had this kickboxing picture and I used to kickbox, so that was one of the things that really attracted me to him… I liked him back. At the end of the day, he’s cute.” However, her most significant reason for initially chatting him up was actually the fact she’d been looking for a coach to get back into the sport for a while, unaware it would lead to much more. In fact, since the duo lived merely four blocks apart, they met that night itself at a local Costco, where the former helped him shop for groceries and bought pizza — her ideal date as a Costco fanatic.
Arti and Jamal Are Proudly Still Engaged
If we’re being honest, things weren’t exactly easy for Arti and Jamal despite the fact they seemed perfectly compatible at every step of the way since the latter is a Muslim hailing from Pakistan. They did think they wouldn’t face much internal adversity as her elder sister had married a Muslim too, but this wasn’t the case — though she especially struggled with what her father would think. Nevertheless, the couple was eventually able to move on from this as Arti realized her father would definitely come around within a few weeks because he’d notice Jamal made her truly happy.
“[Jamal] makes me laugh,” Arti conceded at one point. “Sometimes, he puts up with my stuff. Sometimes, he doesn’t. Most of the time, he doesn’t. He’s like super attentive. Anytime I’m even a little bit agitated with him, he’s like, ‘Oh, you’re hangry. Let me bring you some food.’… When he’s not around, I kind of miss where he is… He gets what I want in our future, and everything matches up. We spend so much time together that some days he’s just super annoying, but I really like him, and I really can see it.”
It thus comes as no surprise Arti and Jamal’s families soon accepted them as well, driving the latter to finally make a move on what he knew he wanted almost from the get-go — a marriage with her. The fact he designed her ring himself because he knew her father had promised to do so and couldn’t is honestly just a bare example of how much he cared, making things all the more incredible. Therefore, he got down on one knee by the pier roughly a year after they first got involved, and she obviously said yes!
In fact, from what we can tell through Arti and Jamal’s social media platforms, it appears as if the couple is still blissfully engaged — she can actually often be seen wearing her ring in tagged posts. Moreover, not only have they been present on one another’s Instagram feed since early 2022, but they even celebrated the festival of Holi together alongside Shital Patel and Niraj Mehta this past March. But alas, any updates regarding their wedding is unfortunately unclear at the moment; whenever the compliance officer or the personal trainer shares information regarding the same, we’ll let you know.
Read More: Are Shital and Niraj From Indian Matchmaking Still Together?
