In 1971, my parents arrived in the United States from South Asia, reinventing themselves just as their homeland was reinventing itself as Bangladesh. They lived for a time in Texas, then in Kentucky, before settling in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Immigrant communities coalesce in even the most unlikely places, but I can’t imagine there were many South Asians in 1970s Kentucky. No matter: My parents came to this country intending to become Americans.
That was my upbringing: sitcoms, soccer teams, and sugar cereals. Thus I watched Netflix’s latest quarantine-ready confection, Indian Matchmaking, as doubtless many of my fellow Americans did, with a mix of puzzlement and delight. That’s what we mean by “exotic,” isn’t it?
Indian Matchmaking is that familiar animal, the reality dating show. It’s not a competition but proceeds documentary-style, its true star a woman named Sima Tiparia with Sally Field–level charisma and an Anglo-inflected, singsong way of speaking that’s the only good thing the British left behind when they quit the subcontinent in 1947. Tiparia introduces herself as “Sima from Mumbai” repeatedly throughout the show; I loved it every time.
Tiparia is a matchmaker, a lovable Auntie paid to meddle, and this show documents her efforts to find suitable partners for the lovelorn. Tiparia’s American clients include Aparna, a Texas lawyer obviously edited to be the show’s resident villain; Nadia, a New Jersey wedding planner with the nervous energy of a hummingbird; and Vyasar, a burly comic book nerd who is the series’ most endearing presence. Tiparia also works in India, where she’s charged with finding wives for Pradhyuman, a handsome himbo with a Mariah Carey–style closet filled with shoes (any prospective wife with any sense would run for the hills), and Akshay, a retiring mama’s boy. |
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It’s easy to imagine a show for American audiences playing another culture for laughs. I was pleased by how Indian Matchmaking simply documents a way of life that understands marriage less as a matter of romance than of family alliance, informed by questions of faith and also of money. Tiparia consults with all manner of kooks (an astrologer, a man who “reads faces,” a life coach) but then again, I know many brilliant people who hang on Susan Miller’s bullshit pronouncements, or collect crystals that claim to possess some kind of mystic power, or, well, consult life coaches. It’s a small world, after all.
There’s still a pall of the exotic (that word again) hanging over things, with Pradhyuman in particular offering a bit of Crazy Rich Asians bling. In all those establishing shots of Mumbai, glorious megalopolis, you can see skyscrapers but no dispossessed squatters. In the interest of cultural sensitivity, perhaps, the show doesn’t interrogate the many things it could: a toxic belief that “fair” skin is an imperative in a good match; the misogyny inherent in this approach to marriage; the role of money, class, and caste in the making of these matches.
It was gratifying when the show introduced two other clients: Rupam, an American Sikh divorcee with a child, and Ankita, a New Delhi–based fashion entrepreneur who is encouraged by her family to lose weight to attract a match. Rupam reminds us that sometimes marriages end, while Ankita’s commitment to her professional satisfaction reminds us that there’s more than one happy ending out there.
When I was a kid, I was baffled by the Bengali relatives who occasionally came to visit. Their foreignness affirmed my own Americanness, and a quintessential aspect of the latter is a belief in its superiority. I didn’t know, then, that I might someday feel, as I now do, a sense less of loss than of separation. I look Indian to most Americans, but I don’t speak Bengali or know the culture’s nuances and rules. Indian Matchmaking, a silly entertainment, made me think about my own distance from a whole way of being.
It’s only reality television. You’re supposed to be titillated by the very idea of an arranged marriage. Then your feelings of smug discomfort are meant to dissipate as you conclude that perhaps the brown people on screen are more like you than you’d have guessed. We all just want to be loved, or something along those lines. But what if Indian Matchmaking is more than that? What if in its own humble way this show gives the lie to so many of the myths we tell ourselves—about the exalted state of romance, about the importance of the individual, about the relationship between love and comfort (by which I mean money)? Maybe I’m overthinking things. |
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—Rumaan Alam, contributing editor |
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