She’s smart, beautiful — and pursuing an arranged marriage.
“I always get, ‘You’re so pretty, how are you still single? Why are you still single?’ It’s not me! Maybe it is,” Nadia Christina Jagessar says in the first episode of Netflix’s new reality TV hit, “Indian Matchmaking.”
The 32-year-old from Morris Plains, NJ, has become a fan favorite after the show debuted Thursday, although many viewers were confused as to why the fragrance marketer and event planner needed to turn to a matchmaker to find love in the first place.
“I was on the apps, and I wasn’t finding anyone interesting or that I clicked with. My cousins tried to set me up. Nothing was really working,” Jagessar, who has been single for six years, told The Post of dating in the New York City area.
“I want to start this next phase of my life. I have my career. I have my friends and family. I have my hobbies, I have all these other things in my life that are in place and that I’m working towards, and I felt like there was no traction or movement in the relationship or love department.”
The binge-worthy show, which was filmed in 2019, follows “Auntie” Sima Taparia, a top matchmaker from Mumbai, India, as she travels around India and the US pairing singles for arranged marriages.
Jagessar — whose motto is, “I’ll try anything once” — was familiar with arranged marriages. Many of her relatives, including her parents, met that way. When she heard the show was casting and she would be set up with Taparia, Jagessar had to give it a try: “I have nothing to lose. I am looking for [love], and maybe this is the way,” she remembers thinking. (She did not have to pay for Taparia’s services, which included her traveling from India to New Jersey for in-person meetings.)
“I was like, ‘Is this going to be like a “Married At First Sight” type of deal?’ ” Jagessar said, referring to the popular TV show where couples first meet at the marriage altar. “[Taparia] assured me that I have the choice.”
Although Jagessar has Indian heritage, her family is from Guyana, and many of her past dates have struggled to appreciate that aspect of her life. “When I was out, I’d be like, ‘That guy is hot.’ But is he going to want to understand me? Is he going to want to learn about my culture?” she said.
Jagessar hoped that the men Taparia would introduce her to would be “more serious” than those she met on the apps. The matchmaker would compile “bio-data” on each potential suitor, a résumé of sorts describing each one’s job, personality and family life, which was a game-changer for Jagessar.
“It takes a lot to even have a conversation about someone’s family. And that’s not something you learn about on Minute One after meeting someone,” she said.
She thought she had met her match when she was paired with Vinay Chadha. “I thought it was going great. We had hung out so many times. He told me he liked me, I had met his friends,” said Jagessar. And so fans were heartbroken watching Chadha stand his date up twice, once when he was about to meet the event planner’s friends for the first time.
On Instagram, Chadha sang a different tune. In a post, he claimed that the scene in which he stood up Jagessar and her friends was scripted — and that she was the one who ghosted him.
“I have some messages where I said I don’t wish to pursue anything further, and he did keep reaching out and I ignored him. So if he considers that ghosting, that’s fine,” she said of the claims. “Don’t be mad at me. I am not the producer or the person who created the show. I am a piece of this puzzle, just as you were.”
Viewers last saw Jagessar in Chicago with potential match Shekar. After filming, the two continued to see each other and even went on a trip together. But it didn’t work out. “‘The stars are not aligned,’ as Sima Auntie says,” Jagessar said.
Jagessar is currently single. “When I feel ready, maybe I’ll be calling Sima again, who knows? But right now I just kind of want to do my thing,” she said.
In the meantime, her DMs are open, and she’s slowly making her way through every message sent her way.
“Everything has been such an outpouring of love and support,” she said. “It’s been extremely overwhelming.”