Why Indian Matchmaking on Netflix is a takedown of India’s most antiquated institution

A young friend showed me what is called a pre-wedding video—a couple in their mid-twenties sashayed around a dance studio doing an elaborate waltz. Set to a sappy, romantic number the couple looked faintly ludicrous but deliriously in love as they gazed into each other’s eyes. I then found out that the couple had been set up by their families just a couple of months back and had then obediently fallen in love. The friend informed me it was arranged love. Or as Ankita on Netflix’s much talked about reality show, Indian Matchmaking says about arranged marriages: “It is like Tinder Premium. Your families also right-swipe each other.” 

Not everyone watching Indian Matchmaking was quite that pragmatic. The show follows the journey of Sima Taparia, a matchmaker from Mumbai who describes herself as a facilitator of pre-ordained marriages. Pre-ordained by God. No. Really. Through the eight episodes, Sima Aunty gets us to meet Indian men and women looking to get married. A majority of them are people in their thirties (some of them NRIs) looking to find a made-to-order happily ever after. Some of them have tried and failed at romantic love and are now turning to tradition and Sima Aunty to find a companion. The wants are clinical and clear-headed—like shopping lists usually are. Sima Aunty is as clinical and clear-headed—she tells a divorcee with a child that her options are very limited, and routinely sends the hopefuls off to face readers, astrologers and life coaches to make them more “flexible”. 

Ever since the show hit Netflix, I have waded through a deluge of tweets, memes and outrage posts on how problematic the show is. People on Twitter said it was a show which was regressive, casteist and thought little of reinforcing colour biases among other things. They binge-watched and suffered through eight episodes only to tell you not to do the same. There is a lot of nobility on Twitter that doesn’t get enough credit.

I, on the other hand, have loved it for everything it is. It is, of course, an exceedingly well-produced reality show which ticks all the boxes. Great cast, hook points and Sima Aunty—a character completely and totally unaware of how politically incorrect and therefore meme-worthy she is. But beyond that, Indian Matchmaking is a subversive, funny and clever takedown of India’s most revered institution—the arranged marriage. And it does it by simply documenting it as it happens. 

Let me build the case further. Our films and our television glorify socially sanctioned love and marriage, romanticise it and bling the hell out of it. We have marriage celebrations running into days with multiple ostentatious ceremonies—nobody particularly cares about the bride and the groom, we are here for the fun and games. So much so that in one episode of Indian Matchmaking, the rather formidable Preeti tells her reluctant younger son, Akshay, that his elder brother has had to put off fatherhood because Akshay’s marriage is so delayed.  Akshay protests weakly, “But what does that have to do with me?” His mother tells him sternly, “They have to first enjoy at your wedding, no”. Point. Indian marriages are not about individuals—they are about families and we constantly spin rosy notions of why being rooted in tradition has helped keep marriages intact in our part of the world. 

And then comes along Indian Matchmaking, a show that strips arranged marriages of all pretence and tells you upfront what it is—a vetted alliance between people who are almost exactly like each other right down to their skin colour. It hasn’t got the memo on diversity yet and is unlikely to. Arranged marriages are a hard-nosed transaction between people—it is awkward, it can be cruel and romantic love is expendable. There are certain givens—boys will always have the right to be pickier than the girls—both the Mumbai based boys, Pradyumann and Akshay reject 400 proposals between them. To be fair, the girls on the show also turn down proposals but it is nowhere close to what the boys do. Girls like Aparna with strong preferences are “adamant and not flexible”, while the equally finicky Pradyumann is just indecisive. 

Arranged marriages, as Sima Aunty says over and over again, are about adjustment and compromise. Once you get that in your head, you have a reasonable shot at happiness. If that makes you uncomfortable, you could choose to be Ankita, who realises that her career fulfils her currently, more than a potential marriage. Sima Aunty, who was married off at 19 gets that, “I see a lot of myself in Ankita. We are both into our careers”. She is not being ironic. But the show definitely is—there is no overt mockery, but Indian Matchmaking is both a fly on the wall observation and a satirical comment. There is no judgement in the narrative but it knows exactly what story it wants to tell. And it is not a pretty one.  

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