![]() At least two of Taparia’s clients (both the sons of wealthy businessmen) frequently cite the number of women they’ve rejected (50, 100, sometimes more). We’re in a pandemic, we can (hate)watch whatever we want and nobody is obligated to sugarcoat Indian elitism, but the show glosses over the mental scars that come with being treated like chattel. Practicing hyper-individuality to stand out on dating apps is disenchanting, having your personhood disregarded completely is no better. It’s tempting to think of arranged marriage as a no-bullshit approach to modern relationships (“human Tinder”) but as Taparia demonstrates repeatedly, in this system you’re only as good as your worst “quality” – being divorced makes you undesirable, being Guyanese makes you unsuitable, having a criminal and absent father makes you a poor prospect. So to seek out an arranged marriage is to tell the world that you don’t want to leave even the possibility of straying out of your privilege. In other words, the metrics of compatibility all conspire towards upholding oppressive structures. Stagnant social mobility, casteist educational institutions and economic inequality glom together to create families, neighbourhoods, schools, colleges and work places where everyone has similar incomes and wealth, lifestyles, intellectual interests and ambitions. Marrying within your caste and class is already shockingly easy in India, and you’re likely to end up in a socially respectable marriage without ever acknowledging the existence of either criteria. Taparia knows her clients are after status and respectability, that’s why she dismisses the suggestion that she ask her clients why they want to get married. Your spouse is just a set of qualifications to finally one-up your neighbours or your rival at work. At the end of this process, you’re left with a complete jigsaw puzzle that announces your superiority to the world. Nadia and Vinay from ‘Indian Matchmaking’ on a date.Įverybody has parts they shave down or empty spaces they learn to fill themselves, but the thing that makes arranged marriage inherently sinister (and different from “human Tinder” as it’s described in the show) is that this particular resizing is meant to leave behind only caste and class (sometimes even just caste). Or, if you’re a puzzle piece with six pointy-bits, best to snap a couple of them off. If you’re holding out for a puzzle piece with six pointy-bits, you’re going to have to leave two or three of them empty. Nadia, an event planner whose Indian ancestors settled in Guyana in the 1800s, is told that finding a match for “a Guyanese” is not going to be easy. Rupam, a divorced single mom, is effectively told her child (the very daughter she wants to provide a family for) is a liability for Taparia’s usual clientele. Then Taparia tells us exactly which quality of her client’s is going to reduce their bargaining power in this market place, effectively preparing the client to shove the wrong jigsaw piece into the space they’ve been saving. First Taparia and her clients chop people down to a set of euphemistic adjectives together, creating a specific hole in the client’s jigsaw-life that Taparia will sift through hundreds of pieces to find a perfect fit for. The show is stressful because it confronts us with our own loneliness, presents marriage as a solution and accomplishment, but then reveals the process of getting there to be an exercise in self-erasure – sorry, “compromise”. It’s everything we pretend marriage isn’t about, presented baldly through people we (many Netflix-subscribing urban Indians) can’t help but see ourselves in.Īlso read: Review: ‘Breathe’ Is Strong on the Drama, But Over Ambitious as a Thriller ![]() Instead, Taparia makes the stakes of this show infuriatingly clear in the introduction itself – marriage is about families, millions of dollars are at stake, caste is important and “adjustment” is required. Indian Matchmaking is not like Love Is Blind or Too Hot To Handle because it doesn’t present love as a deep connection disconnected from superficiality (the first) or liberate sex from the consequences of love and marriage (the second). It’s hard not to think of Jo’s confused anger while watching Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking as people – some agreeable, some not – turn to Sima Taparia (“from Mumbai”) to find a “life partner”. And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. And they’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. ![]() Towards the end of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, standing in the attic, stuttering with frustration, Jo March tells her mother, “Women… They have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts.
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