When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Seventeen-year-old Dimple Shah lives to code.And she fully intends to go to Insomnia Con 2017 on the San Francisco State University campus during the summer.  Participants must design a ground-breaking app. Dimple hopes to meet Jenny Lindt, a famous web developer.The only catch is the program costs a thousand dollars.  Dimple has already convinced her parents to allow her to attend Stanford, likely because they hope she "will meet the I.I.H. (Ideal Indian Husband) of her, no, their -- dreams at the prestigious school."

During a visit by Ritu auntie and her daughter-in-law, Seema, Dimple brings up her idea to attend Insomnia Con. To her utter shock, her parents agree to send her to the summer program.

Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Rishi Patel isn't too impressed with the photograph of Dimple Shah. For one thing, she doesn't look too happy. His parents have known Dimple's parents, Leena and Vijay Shah for decades. Their families are from the same part of Mumbai. Rishi has agreed to attend the web development program in San Francisco to meet Dimple.  Rishi believes that since she's attending, she must be agreeable to meeting him as their families are interested in arranging a marriage between the two. Rishi will be attending M.I.T. in the fall but he's certain that despite the distance, they can work things out.

Dimple arrives in San Francisco early , too early to meet her roommate Celia so she heads to the coffee shop to get an iced coffee. It's there that she is approached by Rishi who greets her with "Hello, future wire...I cant' wait to get started on the rest of our lives!"  Completely unnerved, Dimple flings her coffee at him and runs away. They end up meeting later on in the main lobby of their dorm and Dimple is puzzled that this boy knows her name. When Rishi explains that their parents know one another and that they have shared pictures, Dimple can't believe it. But fate seems to intervene when she and Rishi are partnered for the Insomnia Con. Forced to work together, Dimple finds herself falling for the honourable, sweet Rishi. But can they really forge a lasting relationship when they are so different and when they will be attending schools on opposite coasts?


Discussion

When Dimple Met Rishi starts out as a cute romance involving two young Indian teens, eighteen-year-old Rishi Patel and seventeen-year-old Dimple Shah whose parents are hoping to eventually set up an arranged marriage. Rishi signs up for Insomnia Con knowing he's attending to meet Dimple, but she has no knowledge of the arrangements their parents have made. Dimple is there to code and advance her career. Their paths cross and a strained relationship quickly develops into a love affair as they are partnered at the coding course both are attending. Up to this point, the novel is funny and sweet as Rishi tries to whoo the "spirited" Dimple first into friendship and then into dating.

However, the story falls into the typical modern teen drama/romance trope and loses its way. The story devolves into sexual escapades and a talent show involving bhangra dancing. Dimple and Rishi eventually have sex (it is Dimple who badgers Rishi into relenting despite his concern for tradition and wanting to wait), and Dimple's roommate, Celia hooks up with not only her coding team partner and but also with Rishi's younger brother, a rebellious sixteen-year-old who shows up unexpectedly at SFSU. Their antics seemed befitting for a slightly older crowd and feel out of place in this novel. Although the inclusion of a tidbit of Indian culture - the popular Krrish superhero movies is interesting, it too feels out of place. All of this causes the story to temporarily veer away from some of the issues hinted at and that both Dimple and Rishi are dealing with in the first half of the novel.

Those issues revolve around the responsibilities and expectations young Indian teens face from parents and their culture. Menon uses the character of Rishi to highlight these pressures. Rishi is a gifted artist who over the last three years has created and developed his own character, Aditya the Sun God/superhero. However, Rishi keeps his talent hidden and considers it something that will always be a hobby in his life. When Rishi attends the Little Comic Con at SFSU and meets his hero Leo Tilden a famous graphic novelist, he decides against showing him his sketches. To Rishi, doing so feels like betraying his parents who believe he is at SFSU for the coding course and to meet Dimple. Rishi tells Dimple, "...I know what's important to me -- I want a life. I want to get married and have a family. I can't support a family working as a waiter and hoping to break out as a comic book artist." When Dimple encourages him to "Do what you love, what you're passionate about. So what if it's not the most practical thing? You're eighteen, you don't have to be practical for a long, long time..." But Rishi tells her he has made promises to his parents and that he has duties and obligations.

It isn't until Dimple tells him she can't be with someone who doesn't have the courage to follow through on the own dreams, that Rishi decides to reconsider. But Rishi who respects his parents, talks things out with his father, telling him, "Pappa, I was...engineering doesn't feel right for me. It feels right for you. I'm an artist in my soul. Not an engineer. Not a corporate machine."  In the end, his Pappa relents and Rishi is able to get accepted and enroll at SFSU. Rishi's conflict with his parents over a choice of career is a common one for older teens. However, in certain cultures  a strong preference is often placed on certain professions such as medicine, law and engineering over other  occupations such art or teaching which are considered lower class.

Dimple too struggles with expectations but as a young woman,  her issue is much different. She believes her mother wants her life to revolve around marriage and family, something Dimple is not sure she will ever want. At seventeen, not surprisingly, Dimple doesn't want a boyfriend and she doesn't want to marry. Yet she finds herself  doing exactly what she never intended to do, have a serious boyfriend who is "trustworthy and practical and stable." Instead Dimple wants "adventure and spontaneity and travel" and she feels she needs "to make a few bad decisions and have a few boys break her heart." Her aspirations sound decidedly trite. Is this the message that Sandhya Menon wants to send young women? People make bad decisions all the time, but it isn't usually something one plans on or looks forward to doing.

However, Dimple experiences a serious crisis when she loses the main prize at Insomnia Con to a team consisting of Evan Grant, Hari Mehta and Isabelle Ryland. Winning was central to Dimple's idea of advancing her career and she behaves badly, sulking and is not a gracious loser. She blames her relationship with Rishi for the loss; "There was no doubt about it -- if they hadn't been going out, she would've spent almost all of her free time working on her prototype. Tweaking it. Making it better. And maybe one of those tweaks would've sent her over the edge..." And so she quite unkindly dumps Rishi. Yet only later back at home, in the presence of her Mamma, does Dimple admit that she loves Rishi. But her fear is that she will lose herself. "But there's no way to make it work without one of us sacrificing something big. And you know how it is. It's usually the woman who ends up sacrificing. And I can't do that. I won't."  Dimple's mother points out that in rejecting Rishi, she is already sacrificing something - love.

One last point and it is about a question that Dimple asks herself not long after she and Rishi have met. Dimple questions Rishi's reference to the Indian gods and he responds that this is his way of trying to educate people about his Hindu faith. Dimple asks herself "Why was Christianity always the default?"  The answer to this question of course is that the United States was founded by Christians and so the vast majority of people in the country are Christians which is why it is the default belief. Even in the post-modern era, our laws, our codes of behaviour and our civic life are based on the default belief of Christianity. In India, the vast majority of people there are Hindus and thus the country is considered a Hindu nation. Young readers may wonder at this, and in this novel unfortunately, Menon offers no answer.

Menon ends her novel happily with all the current conflicts resolved. When Dimple Met Rishi is a suitable exploration of the pressures teens from certain ethnic backgrounds can experience but loses its way in the middle of the story. There are better written YA contemporary romance novels to be read.

Book Details:

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
New York: Simon Pulse         2017
378 pp.