Director : Smriti Mundhra
The land of snake charmers, that’s the image India carried over its shoulders laboriously for a good amount of time in the west. In the 20th century Indians went afar for a better life, more opportunities & a certain sense of privilege that could be used to its best utility. We produced an assembly line of CEOs who studied abroad & remained there, gaining top spots in corporate corridors of the world. Despite all the progress, our sense of traditionalism & to a certain extent orthodoxic mentality hasn’t all but given up to modern values of humanity & acceptance.
Filters of caste & colour are frequent and fraught with a shrug of disdain under the garb of the right match. Indian matchmaking takes us into the world of “Arranged Marriages” that the country prizes itself upon. Relics of all dogmatism and obstinacy exist in 2020 with passion, fervour and a tinge of narcissism addressing the adage — We are like this only. The cupid in question — Sima Taparia enables wealthy Indians residing in Mumbai meet potential matches through the yesteryear Tinder — Photographs. The style of narration gives us a peeking neighbour view of the on-ground realities of weddings in India. Punctuated ideas of independence, equality, egalitarianism are shred into pieces one-by-one as we sit through a pot-boiler of known truths seldom talked about. Every participant comes from an extremely well-off family which is struggling with income disparity issues at every step of its existence. Just to give you an idea, 90% of India earns less than 200 USD ( Rs 12,000) a month to put bread on their table. Adults opining for a set of parameters like diamonds to be cut to perfection, a scratch here, a screech there is too much to budge for. Candidates flaking out on people, participants refusing to go out with divorcees without any visible differences during their meeting makes our stomach churn. Designed in a way to take you through the lives of the participants, the show tries to highlight their inclinations, idiosyncrasies while introducing the neighbours to their rich fat world of Sheesha, plush dining venues & perfectly alright careers.
The reality show makes scathing commentaries about the hideous predilections of fair skin, caste & the necessity of the line to be toed by the woman who is being married into the son’s family (not an equal status). It evokes pain but more so concern, of a society of a billion people which exists in all its glamorous idea of modernity however kowtows the age-old debauched practices.
Now Streaming on : Netflix
