Where my mother grew up, in a traditional Sikh-Indian community in Manchester, it was a fact that she would get an arranged marriage. The process began when she was 19 years old, when the area’s best couples of couples, older twin sisters, brought the first candidate, a misogynist gynecologist, to her family’s home. They talked in the kitchen, her mother pretended to do the dishes in the back and her brother hiding in a closet, eavesdropping. In the first few minutes, gynecomastia told her that she would give up her nursing career to take care of her permanently bedridden mother, and my mother told her to get lost. Therefore, the beginning of their pairing experience ended almost as soon as it started.
In other more conservative Indian families, my mother’s contribution would not have mattered; her attitude would have been suppressed, and she would have been caught by the end of the week. This was over 30 years ago, and she said it was strange to see something that resembled her own experience in Indian matchmaking, Netflix’s new reality-show-cum-docuseries about the Indian marriage machine. Produced by Smriti Mundhra, it follows Sima Taparia, a Mumbai-based matchmaker Mundhra met when her own mother requested matching services for her a decade ago. “There was pressure,” Mundhra told me by phone earlier this week. “Everything was wrapped up in this idea of ’We want the best for you. We want you to be happy, ‘but it was still pressure. ”
Mundhra, who grew up in the United States and eventually married outside of the matchmaking system, was fascinated by arranged marriages and how tradition suited, and did not suit, a generation of Indians who had more education, money, and agency. That your parents. and grandparents, but did not want to abandon their customs and family expectations. She made a documentary on the subject in 2017, A suitable girl, A broad and sour portrait of traditional pairing in India. He follows three women until their wedding days, documenting their loss of independence and observing the severe social and family pressures they face throughout the process.
Its success gave Mundhra a meeting on Netflix, where he released Indian matchmaking. The program follows Sima and six of its clients, all American Indians and middle and upper class Indians. Sima reaches them armed with lots of “biodata,” a sort of Tinder-LinkedIn profile with a photo, biography, and lists of details like height and family history. He also asks clients (and sometimes their families) what they are looking for in a partner. Often factors include job stability, hobbies, and education, and sometimes they are qualities that people can look for in an app or in a bar, but they don’t say it out loud: are they handsome, tall, and in good shape? shape? Other times, the criterion ventures into the openly discriminatory: clients want someone with light skin or a certain caste. Sima consults astrologers to make sure horoscopes are compatible, and occasionally sends clients to “life advisers” and other matchmakers; Their goal, in a long-standing approach to Indian pairing, is to pair both couples and their families.
Since its launch last Friday, Indian matchmaking It has remained among the top ten most watched on Netflix, but the reaction has also been quick and intense, and most of it comes from people in the desi community. For one thing, it’s been called a cringey, which it is, but some comments have been more derogatory, with a desi woman describing the “full-body mortification” she had while looking at him and questioning why there could be “embarrassing” arranged marriages / embarrassing. ” be brought to television. Others said it simply confirmed what they already knew about the casteism, sexism and classism of the process.
Taking on this theme, in the service of this audience, was never going to be easy. “We are a billion and a half people around the world, there are so many different languages, communities and religions, that we couldn’t include all of that in one program,” says Mundhra. Also, South Asians have had so little popular culture to address our experiences, let alone this specific one: the two that have entered Western discourse in the 21st century are the 2014 romantic comedy documentary Know the hostels, about the experience of the actor Ravi Patel being a party, and from Amazon Made in heaven, a reality web series that follows two Delhi-based wedding planners. This is after decades of shows like The Bachelor and the formation of entire networks dedicated to the white experience of finding love.
Indian matchmaking It does not offer much context or even question the type of discriminatory criteria and attitudes that mark the matchmaking business that Sima runs, which has disturbed some critics. Others have said that the program supports these practices without analyzing their complications, and many of their stories end with the implication that things between couples will work (neither of them does).
There’s also the show’s failure to portray other more seedy experiences: the exorbitant dowry demands that accompany many traditional arranged marriages in India, and the often painful experiences of people, like my mother, getting married not just outside the system. but also outside the system. Her race In India and its diaspora, leaving this institution and its limited standards breeds everything from social outrage to violence.
But Indian matchmaking I wasn’t trying to argue for or against arranged marriage, or even question its problems, and maybe that feels like a missed opportunity. “He wanted a great dating show for people in South Asia, “Mundhra explains,” he wanted something South Asians could see themselves in, “and when it comes to the tradition of arranged marriage, Mundhra says he just wanted to expose everything. , to “put it up for debate”.
Does Indian matchmaking Do that? I’m not sure it is, and many of the reviews and desis I have come across don’t seem to think so either. And as Nehmat Kaur points out in The Wire, Some people, especially those who have had bad experiences with mating, will not even be able to bear this program like a hate watch: “It confronts us with our own loneliness, presents marriage as a solution and an achievement, but then reveals the process of getting there to be a self-erasing exercise, sorry, ‘engagement’. ”
However, it is an accurate description of what someone like Sima does with clients like his, and the kinds of pressures this generation of Indian people may face when it comes to marriage. But all of these criticisms are welcomed by Mundhra, he says, recalling the troubled character of Apu, the Indian owner of a convenience store he was seeing. the The Simpsons growing: “We don’t think, Is it troublesome? Who do you represent? We were grateful for it and excited … Now we are at a point where we can keep representation to a higher level and push for better and more nuanced stories. me want take responsibility. Push me so I can push too. “
There have been some recent productions: I have never, Nora of queens – that they are innovative simply because they are led by non-white creators who did something about their own lived experience. And the calculation they have faced has been similar to the type Indian matchmaking You are having right now: that these shows reinforce stereotypes, cast their subjects in the negative light and do not represent, or even misrepresent, certain communities.
But much of the reaction is not critical for the sake of criticism: it is public opinion in action, it is how it improves the following. For her part, my mother says she wished the show had featured a more diverse representative sample of Indian people, or what happens when things don’t work out between couples or their families, which has been the story with today’s generation of our own family as they continue to practice arranged marriages. Despite that, she is still dizzy from the fact that Indian matchmaking exists and that people are watching and talking about it.
And I think it makes sense when people discourage others from watching shows like this: Desis is scared when things like Indian matchmaking going out because there is nothing else, what if this is what people judge us when they meet us? Because it doesn’t matter if Judd Apatow makes a bad movie about a white man who finds love, because he will always make another one. When it comes to something about the non-white experience, the stakes are higher: it has to be correct, but it will only be correct if these shows and movies continue to be made. “It is a system and it is working as it should, and I am happy with that,” says Mundhra. “That, for me, is progress.”
