Sima Taparia

(Yash Ruparelia/Courtesy of Netflix)

At one point in the series, she’s dubbed the “human Tinder.” Taparia began her career in marriage consulting primarily focused in the Mumbai region, but has expanded her enterprise with clients in the U.K., Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, South Africa and Nigeria.

Taparia and Mundhra’s relationship goes back 15 years. The filmmaker enlisted Taparia’s services in her own quest to find a husband. (Mundhra ultimately met her now-husband in graduate school.) And Taparia later appeared in “A Suitable Girl” alongside her daughter, Ritu, who was one of the main subjects of the documentary.

“As a filmmaker, I was like: ‘When you see it, you know it,’” Mundhra says of Taparia’s persona. “You just meet somebody who is so charismatic and honest and straightforward and blunt, to the point where sometimes it’s horrifying. There was this refreshing honesty about her, and absolute passion for what she does.”

Taparia entered her own arranged marriage when she was 19 — and has been married for 37 years.

“Marriage means compromise and adjustment,” Taparia says over video conference from her home in Mumbai. “I’ve compromised and adjusted a lot in my married life.”

Even as dating sites such as shaadi.com and social media have proliferated in recent years to help modern Indian singles find life partners, Taparia says her personalized and extensive process remains a valuable asset. Viewers get a glimpse of that process, which includes an emphasis on horoscopes and astrology. She often consults with a face reader on the series, getting detailed reports of her clients based off their facial features assessed via their photos. She also assembles biodata for each client, which is essentially a marital resume, and conducts in-person consultations with her clients and their families.

“We tried to stay as authentic to her process as we possibly could and authentic to the journeys of our participants,” Mundhra says. “We didn’t just try to cram in everything, ’cause it would’ve just been impossible. There’s a lot left on the table and a lot that we can explore even more in subsequent seasons of the show, should we be lucky enough to continue.”

Taparia is still actively working with singles amid the COVID-19 pandemic, though she has limited her consultations to phone and video. She’s helped bring together two “big” matches in India recently, she says. She hopes to resume in-person visits with long-distance clients once she feels it’s safe to travel by plane.

“I’m very busy,” Taparia says. “Nothing has slowed down during this lockdown. I’m talking to you, but in my mind, matches are going on. I’m thinking about my clients. It goes on in my mind 24 hours.”