Marriages in India are breaking like biscuits!

Marriages in India are breaking like biscuits!

To those who have watched Netflix Original 'Indian Matchmaking', this line will seem quite familiar. Well, hate it, love it, detest it, enjoy it, say what you may, but the series 'Indian Matchmaking' does manage to stir up several emotions in one! 

This show has been taking the internet by storm and after listening to multiple references and not relating to any of them, I eventually succumbed to the temptation of watching it. Imagining it to be some fiction series, I sat down to watch it and it was only then that I realized that it was what you supposedly call a 'Reality Show'!

I'm not a fan of these reality shows at all. I mean how can one be their true self in front of a camera if its not a home video of course! So true to its name, the show is about a matchmaker from Mumbai, Sima Aunty, as she's referred to, who travels across the world searching prospective brides and grooms for her clients. Her clients are usually NRIs and also few stinking rich Indians.

The people who've been introduced in the show as looking forward to getting married are so diversely weird that you end up feeling sick at how they are! Of course, there are a few bearable ones, and one genuinely nice man, Vyasar, who's seems to be an amiable person but people like Aparna and Akshay ended up scaring the living daylights out of me! 

Aparna, for instance, thinks she's absolutely perfect in every sense and dismisses people in such a diminutive manner, that you start detesting her. Having to stay with her husband all the time is a repulsive thought for her and she feels that humour in a man is certainly not a good trait. Then go marry a machine, I’d say! Who doesn’t like some humour? What finally seals the deal is that she’s an intelligent, strong headed and independent woman but she too falls into the trap of astrology and gemstones!

Then comes the cringeworthy Akshay. His interactions with his mom and family make you feel like saying, “Be a man! Just don’t get married if you don’t want to.” His mom is going crazy as her younger son, Akshay hasn’t got married even at the RIPE age of 25!!!!!!!!!!! Can you beat that! She behaves like a maniac, blaming him for turning down proposals, thereby raising her BP levels. She has collected expensive clothes and jewelry for her daughter-in-law, who’s nowhere in sight. Even the prospect of her elder son not going ahead for a baby, is stuck because Akshay is not getting married. Such a control freak, this woman is! How can anyone not asphyxiate in such an environment?

It reminded me of an interview of Jaya Bachchan in which she said that Aishwarya is a nice daughter in law, she stays behind, keeps low-key and just listens. Think about it! You feel a daughter in law is nice if she keeps quiet. Seriously! Go get a pet for yourself. You can’t be treating girls like commodities.

Then comes another character Rupam, a very sweet woman and a devout Sikhni who’s a divorcee and a mother to a girl. Her father, turns down a proposal, just considering the fact that the prospective groom was an Indian who’d divorced his American wife. So, since there was an American woman in his life earlier, the old fella judges him basis that. What kind of racism is that? Come to think of it, her daughter’s ex-husband whom she divorced after eight years of marriage was a Sikh and the reason for the divorce was that he was an infidel! So, what makes a person from the same ethnicity any better than the other?

Over to the famous woman, Sima aunty. Her constant statements like women need to compromise, you’re a divorcee and its difficult to find a match for one, a woman entrepreneur is  a strong headed independent woman for whom finding a match is almost impossible, make you wince at the kind of thought process, people still have.

She goes around to face readers, astrologers, gemstone experts, sends her clients to life coaches, I mean just look at that! People in the 21^st century are still believing in all this? People do have a vision for the kind of life partner they would want in life but the way they’ve depicted it on the show is surely not quite tasteful. The show definitely must be serving as a big promotion for the already booming business of this woman, but it does give us a reality check as to how the mindsets of people still work in India.

For me, this show was pathetic, regressive, repulsive and portrayed Indian culture in very poor light.

The only thing I liked about the show was the appearance of endearing old couples at the beginning of every episode, sharing their stories and the one thing that I related to, was spoken by one of them, who said that, ‘There’s someone for everyone but somebody has to get them introduced.’

Isn’t that true? That somebody could be friends, cousins, colleagues, Tinder, Bumble and even our parents. Marriage is beautiful and when you come across the one, do not hesitate, just take the plunge!