Along with setting our screens on fire with Jalan, Minal Khan is also teasing fans by sharing glimpses of her personal life (read: love life) on social media. Though the actor has not officially confirmed her relationship, rumours are rife that she is in a relationship with budding actor Ahsan Mohsin Ikram.
The two have been posting loved-up pictures of their hangouts on social media without sharing any details. They have also been leaving cute comments on each other’s Instagram posts only to delete them later.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGNSgKylY3X/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDB0DIBFLfg/
All this has given rise to speculations that Minal and Ahsan will soon be tying the knot. However, Minal while replying to a follower clarified that she is not getting married.
She also said that she aspires to be “a woman who wakes up and loves what she does for a living everyday, travels often, spiritually secured and mentally and financially stable”.
Singer Umair Jaswal and actor Sana Javed, who recently got married in a private ceremony, are grateful to everyone who sent the couple love and prayers to bless their union.
Sammi Singer shared a picture of the love birds in which he thanked everyone for the kind wishes: “Thank you so very much for all the warmth, love, and the heartfelt blessings. We are blessed to have so many loved ones around us. Means the world to us, we wish we could thank each and every single one of you individually,” Jaswal said, asking people to remember them in prayers.
Their picture went viral and this news spread like fire in the forest on social media since then in-numerous messages of prayers, love and wishes from friends, family and fans were sent to the newly wed ‘Jorri’.
Shahid Afridi and his wife Nadia are celebrating 20 years of marital bliss.
Posting pictures from the celebrations, Afridi, affectionately known as Lala shared that he forgot their anniversary but his wife still forgave him.
“Today marks 20 years of marital bliss. Alhamdulillah blessed to have a life partner so caring, understanding, and a wonderful mother to our children,” wrote Afridi. “Despite me forgetting our anniversary today she still forgave me; another one of her beautiful qualities.”
Pictures from their anniversary celebrations viral on social media.
Meanwhile, Nadia pulled her husband’s leg for forgetting their anniversary and wrote: “With the passage of time one has to remind you of things”.
She then went on to wish Lala, saying that she feels blessed to have found “a good husband, a best friend and a confidante” in him.
With the passage of time one has to remind you of things Alhamdulillah I’m blessed to have a good husband, a best friend and a confidante in you; somebody who’s a wonderful human being as a whole. Happy Anniversary! Here’s to many more, InshaAllah❤️ https://t.co/1aGvSdSa6G
Hamza Ali Abbasi and Naimal Khawar are celebrating their first wedding anniversary with their bundle of joy Muhammad Mustafa Abbasi.
The happy couple shared pictures of their family celebrations on social media and thanked Allah for His blessings.
“And one of his signs is that he created for you spouses from among yourselves so that you may take comfort in them and he placed between you Love & Mercy. In this there is surely evidence of Truth for those who ponder.” Quran 30:21..1st Anniversary❤ Thankyou Allah! pic.twitter.com/cu9DfOwZ4r
Hamza and Naimal, who are currently residing in Dallas, Texas as Hamza studies religion at the Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning, announced the birth of their child on August 3. Naimal later shared that Mustafa was born on July 30.
The couple tied the knot on August 25, 2019 in a simple and intimate ceremony with only their closest friends and family present.
In November 2019, Hamza had announced that he was quitting acting to focus on his spiritual journey. He was last seen in the drama serial Alif opposite Sajal Aly. Meanwhile, his upcoming film The Legend of Maula Jatt is expected to release sometime this year.
“I had this divine revelation some time back, that all that I am doing in this world will end the moment I die,” Hamza had said in a video message, adding that death is inevitable.
“All these trophies, all these accolades will not bring me any good on the day of judgment when I meet my Maker. I have decided that I want to leave everything that might be a hurdle when it comes to making my matters easier on the day of Judgment.”
Hamza later clarified that he will not be quitting but will instead focus on making videos to spread the message of Islam and inspire others to undertake this spiritual journey.
After confusing fans with a cryptic picture of rings with no caption, Aamina Sheikh has confirmed that she has indeed tied the knot. The actor shared a picture of herself with her husband and daughter. According to reports, Aamina’s husband is a computer engineer based in Dubai.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDqFkANB4eo/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDqFxAxB_6h/
Earlier, Aamina had shared the picture of the rings in a grid form with ‘Bismillah’ hinting that she has tied the knot or has gotten engaged.
When Nashra Balagamwala’s Pakistani family started pressuring her into an arranged marriage, she decided to get creative to avoid the myriad of suitors being foisted upon her.
Nashra Balagamwala
Like many young women in South Asia, she was targeted by older women, nicknamed ‘Rishta aunties’, who wanted to pair her up with eligible men. Arranged marriages — where a couple are matched by family members — are common in South Asia. Netflix’s recent series Indian Matchmaking shed light on the topic and became an instant hit trending in both Pakistan and India.
Speaking of her own experience, Nashra said, “It truly started when I was 18, right as my sister got married … literally, the day of the wedding, all the aunties started coming up to me and saying, ‘You’re next, you’re next.”
“I’d wear the fake engagement rings, or whenever an auntie was looking I’d pour an extra helping of food on my plate,” she said, as the matchmakers considered women who didn’t watch their figure to be less desirable brides.
Those real-life strategies inspired her to create the board game “Arranged!” where players take the role of teenage girls trying to escape an ‘auntie’, which features in Gamemaster, a documentary about aspiring game designers released this month.
Wanting a different life, Balagamwala convinced her family to allow her to wait until she was 21 — and as she reached the deadline as a student at Rhode Island School of Design in the United States, she came up with the idea for the game.
“When I was going back for the winter break, my parents had a boy lined up for me to meet,” she said.
“So to de-stress from that I started creating this list of all the crazy things I used to do, or that my cousins used to do, to try to discourage the Rishta aunties.”
In “Arranged!,” the girls attempt to deter auntie by drawing cards with commands like getting a tattoo, wearing a sleeveless shirt, talking about pursuing a career, or being seen hugging a male friend.
But cards like being able to make a perfectly round roti flat bread, or having a sister who is known to be very obedient to her in-laws, move auntie closer to a player.
When the board game was released in 2017, it drew anger from some acquaintances in Pakistan — but the media attention also made Balagamwala an undesirable wife in the eyes of the aunties and convinced her family to stop pressing her to marry.
On the contrary, she was contacted by dozens of young women, mostly from India, who said the game helped them to start conversations with their families and opened their eyes to the stress they felt.
“Now they’re like, ‘You do you, find your own guy,” laughed Balagamwala, who is currently studying for a master’s degree exploring the links between design and social justice at Harvard University.
“There is still a little bit of that stress in their hearts and minds where they are like, ‘Oh my God, she’s 27 and there’s no boy on the horizon’ so I think that stresses them out,” she added.
Newlyweds Sarah Khan and Falak Shabir have been on a social media roll sharing gorgeous pictures and videos from their wedding.
A new video shared by the couple shows the bride ask her groom to think again just before she walks to stage for their nikkah.
“Mein keh rahe hoon souch lein abhi bhi,” an ecstatic Sarah is seen saying in the video.
Responding to Sarah, Falak says: “Ab time guzar gaya sochnay ka, ab qabool hai qabool hai bolnay ka time aagaya hai.”
“Bohat darr lag raha hai Falak,” continues Sarah.
“Mat darein aap, main aapkay saath hoon“, says Falak in response.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC6jlNsFMJ8/
Meanwhile, Falak while speaking to a local media outlet, revealed that he proposed to Sarah after their second meeting.
“It was at the 2019 Hum TV Bridal Couture Week where Sarah was a showstopper that we met properly,” said Shabbir. “Previously we had only met as acquaintances, but that day I was drinking tea at the hotel when Sarah and Noor were passing by. I asked them to join me and we had tea together. That was probably the first time we spoke to each other in detail.”
Their second meeting was at a restaurant in Lahore right after the show where the two talked a lot and when Falak was dropping Sarah home after dinner, he proposed to her.
“I didn’t say I love you or anything, I just directly said I want to do a nikkah with you, marry you, tell me how it can happen,” says Shabir.
Sharing further details, he said that Sarah told him to meet her father.
“She told me to meet her father. I went to her house from Karachi to Lahore. The first time I met her father, we spoke for about two hours. Sarah had told me, if Baba leaves in 15 minutes, it’s a no.”
Sarah and Falak tied the knot on July 16 in an intimate wedding ceremony. Sarah looked like a vision in a rose pink outfit by Nilofar Shahid.
Throwing light on the highly controversial Indian (and Pakistani) wedding and matchmaking culture, a new Netflix original reality series has stirred a debate online and received mixed reviews about the toxicity ingrained in the country’s age-old process of finding a life partner. The show is currently trending at number four on Netflix Pakistan.
The eight-part series Indian Matchmaking premiered on Netflix on Thursday and is currently among its top-ranked India shows. It features Sima Taparia, a real-life matchmaker from Mumbai, who offers her services to families within India and abroad. As the show gains traction, the one question which is crossing everyone’s mind is ‘Who really in Sima Taparia’?
In a recent interview, Taparia, who hails from a small town of Gulbarga in Karnataka, opened up about herself and revealed that she always wanted to be famous.
“I always had great ambition and wanted to make something of myself so people far and wide would know my name,” she says.
However, her marriage was arranged when she was just 19 and because her in-laws were from an orthodox family of Marwaris, she never really got a chance to work on her dreams.
But as fate would have had it, the small-town girl has become a sensation ever since her series streamed on Netflix.
On how she ended up in this business, Taparia said that she considers herself a natural born matchmaker.
“I am an extrovert and so I am very social and I love meeting new people, talking to them and finding out little details that I lock away in my brain,” says the 57-year-old.
“When people come to me saying they have a son, daughter, nephew, niece or a grandchild who is looking to get married, I immediately start thinking of all the people I know of who could be a good match,” she explains, adding that she is always mentally matching people. “I have found matches for people when I was on vacation in Zermatt and in Interlaken and even when we were in the Canadian Rockies, I was on duty matching people up. Hell, I have even matched people up while waiting at the luggage carousel at Mumbai airport.”
Ever since Taparia set up her matchmaking bureau ‘Suitable Rishta’, based out of her apartment in the midtown Mumbai neighbourhood of Worli, she has brought hundreds of couples together in India as well as in diaspora communities around the world.
Taparia follows a tried and tested approach that she has found success with. “I go and meet the boy and the family, see what their home is like, where they work, where they have been to school,” she explains. It’s not just the information the family provides but unsaid details she has learned to pick up over the years.
“This helps me assess their lifestyles so I can recommend a match that is on an even keel. This is where Tinder, Bumble and Shaadi.com can’t compete. I get to the bottom of things, finding out all the inside stories, the family’s values and other such details you would never get from looking at a person’s online profile,” says Taparia.
She further shared that she only works with “high-profile clients”.
“In India when I meet clients they usually have a working wedding budget in mind. So based on that golden number, I quote my price that I charge as a lump sum,” said the match-maker.
Following the series’ success, Taparia’s phone has not stopped ringing.
“Now young people who have seen the series have been getting in touch with me from all around the world and people in India are asking their parents to get in touch with me to find them partners like Nadia and Aparna,” she says.
Netflix’s ‘Indian Matchmaking’ divides the internet
Meanwhile, the show has the internet divided. The show has become a subject of memes and jokes, and criticism, on how individuals and their parents are picky and have a long list of demands that centre around factors like caste, height or skin colour.
The show “makes very clear how regressive Indian communities can be. Where sexism, casteism, and classism are a prevalent part of the process of finding a life partner,” wrote Twitter user Maunika Gowardhan.
Thousands of Twitter and Instagram posts echo that view. “The show is simply holding a mirror to the ugly society we are a part of,” Vishaka George, another Twitter user, wrote.
Created by Oscar-nominated director Smriti Mundhra, the show focuses on matchmaker Taparia’s visits to the homes of families who need her assistance. After hearing their demands, she presents résumés of prospective matches and then arranges meetings between them.
“The two families have their reputation and many millions of dollars at stake. So the parents guide their children,” Taparia says at one point in the show, referring to some of her wealthier clients.
In the first episode titled Slim, Trim and Educated, an Indian mother tells Taparia her son is getting a lot of marriage proposals but in most cases, the prospective bride’s education or height was not ideal.
Just as Taparia says: “So you want a smart, outgoing, height …” the mother interjects, “I won’t even consider (a girl) below 5 feet 3 inches.”
Some have praised the show for its honesty and treating its subjects respectfully.
“The hate against it is, frankly, baffling … Indian Matchmaking is well on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon,” a column in the Mint newspaper said.
Falak Shabir and Sarah Khan have legit been giving us couple goals ever since they announced their engagement. The couple has gone above and beyond to express their love for each other.
Whether it was having a fairy tale proposal and engagement, complete with fireworks
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCwkLbTpqRy/
According to the couple’s wedding photographer, Abdul Samad Zia, Falak arranged everything for Sarah.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCwG8HGp3C8/
Or it was Falak serenading his bride on their wedding day
Or when Sarah changed her name on Instagram to Mrs Falak
And when the two enjoyed their own ‘shaadi ka khana‘
To express his love even more, Falak has gotten Sarah’s name tattoed on his arm. The singer shared a picture of his tattoo on social media with the caption “She is my Queen”.
Later, the couple’s wedding photographer also shared an image of the tattoo.
On the other hand, Sarah wrote ‘Falak ki Dulhan‘ with mehndi on her palm.
Here’s wishing the newly weds a very happy married life.
Sarah Khan gave her fans a shock when she announced her engagement to singer Falak Shabir Wednesday evening. A few hours later, fans were in for another surprise after videos from their mehndi began to circulate on social media and everyone began to question when exactly the engagement happened.
While we wait for the couple to spill out the details, check out videos from their colourful mehndi night below:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCsbCMClt7j/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrGiaBlCI_/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrSfOYJXjb/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrhNSThRIr/
Falak also shared some snippets from their mehndi function on his Instagram stories.
According to details, the couple will be tying the knot officially today (Thursday).
While Sarah prefers to keep her private life under wraps, in an interviewdated October 2019, she had revealed that she will be tying the knot soon. At that time she had said that she will be opting for an arranged marriage.
“I have decided for an arranged marriage and will surprise my fans soon,” the actor had reportedly said. “I will marry a family man and settle down.”
However, later she had refuted the reports and said: “Do not believe anything unless I say it myself. Please respect my privacy and stop spreading false rumours. I ain’t getting married anytime soon.”
