Men demand, women compromise: Marriage according to Sima Taparia in Indian Matchmaking

This ponderous sequel to a very polarising first season showcases how marriage is – and has always been – an economic institution. Due to large-scale economic transformations or migration patterns, marriages can no longer be arranged the way they used to be and, yet, young women and men today have neither found alternatives to the institution nor adequately questioned the utility of marriage in their lives.

Having faced disappointments in their dating forays – another market where disillusionments are well documented – they seek to return, at least in some ways, to the world of arranged marriages that appears to offer more guarantees. In most of the narratives, however, the lines between dating and hunting for spouses are blurred. While this is a constant source of frustration for our matchmaker, Sima Taparia, who only deals with marriages, from the participants’ point of view it makes perfect sense. They believe they no longer have the luxury to date someone who does not also seek marriage (and children) at some point in the future, but closing the deal off quickly is not on their minds either. The women, in particular, have strong personalities and, having experienced personal freedom thanks to professional successes, they are unwilling to settle for a “compromise” marriage.

Dating and hunting for a spouse need not be a mutually exclusive process and the show manages to highlight that Taparia’s wisdom and experience may well come in handy in guiding young people through the stressful world of dating. In her old-fashioned way, Taparia warns Nadia, one of the more popular clients, that the young man she is dating will likely be too immature and is proved right. But Taparia does not see herself as a dating guru despite many of the participants treating her as one.

She has a unique, albeit cynical, view on how relationships are forged. It is far from romantic and ironically closer to the feminist critiques of Western romantic love than what some of wokish clients espouse. Romantic love gives women a semblance of control over their relationships – in consenting to or rejecting a proposal – but robs them of agency by promoting the idea that women need to passively wait for grand gestures from men. While Nadia waits to be swept off her feet by the stoic man Taparia has matched her with, the latter is more matter-of-fact about the fact women need to take initiative and generally be more clear-sighted about what they seek from life and life partners.

Our matchmaker undoubtedly subscribes to patriarchal scripts but she is also a professional working in a market that primarily caters to men, the prospective grooms. In India, where she purportedly did/does most of her work, the female employment rate is less than 20 per cent and, according to the latest CMIE data, only 16 per cent of adult women were employed in the last quarter of 2020. Whether or not Indian women hold views similar to their seemingly more confident and successful Indian-American counterparts from the show, Taparia’s advice to compromise and the watering down of preferences may play a larger role in Indian settings.

What this show then provides is a social experiment as well: If Indian women lived in a world where they were not forced to make choiceless decisions, would they take the same calls? More importantly, will they have the courage to make mistakes and bounce back with a little more than a bruised heart?

The only Indian client in India for this season is a 38-year-old man, who remains single despite seeming wealth and privilege. He blithely blames his city of residence for his predicament, a conceit in which Taparia indulges him. She even offers up a more juicy excuse — a curse of some kind. She does not ask him to compromise or call him superficial, which is part of her repertoire when it comes to handling women. She understands her job as one that caters to the man; difficult male clients are a professional challenge while difficult women are themselves the problem.

With the Indian-American women, she is visibly out of her depth. There is an uncomfortable gap that she seeks to fill with unhelpful lectures and meme-worthy eye rolls. As one of the former clients, Aparna, mentions in passing, you need to date the matchmaker as well as the match so they need to be your type. While clients like Nadia make the effort with Taparia, it is incredible that she herself has gone through several years with this set of clients without compromising and adjusting to their ways. Her patience for both the women and the men wears thin as the season plods on.

Taparia’s lack of success underlines the conflict between Neena and Masaba Gupta. Her approach is suited for a world where arrogant, self-centred men do not invest in personal growth because the women are guaranteed to make unfavourable choices. While the world has changed and so must our intimate relationships, how much has the world really changed? Men in this show often appear to be frozen in time while the women, even in their self-absorption, are refreshingly confident. As a recent Psychology Today article argued, dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing due to a rise in relationship standards and, if Indian Matchmaking is to be believed, not even the arranged marriage route is coming to their rescue.

The writer is an anthropologist and the author of Courting Desire: Litigating for Love in North India