The third season of Indian Matchmaking—Netflix’s docu-series that places arranged marriage on a pedestal for global consumption—steps it up a notch with clients across three countries: the United States, India and for the first time ever, the United Kingdom. Like past iterations, each episode sees Sima Taparia, fondly known as Sima Aunty, interact with Indian and diaspora singles on the prowl not just for love but also for sealed-and-signed marriage.
As usual, the chosen ones did not disappoint: we have Maths-whizz rap god Bobby Seagull who was swiftly and sadly friend-zoned by London-based supper club host Priya Ashra. There’s also Miami-based, dripping in diamonds Arti Lalwani, yes the same one who sits pretty on her body-builder fiancé, grinning as he does press pull-ups in a park. The standout villain of the season is self-proclaimed Vivacious Vikash, who works as an ER doctor in California and wants someone who is possibly a Brahmin, definitely speaks Hindi, solo dances at weddings and understands Indian culture without being “too Indian.” The 40-year-old’s checklist sums up everything that is wrong with Indian Matchmaking as an uncritical show.
Since its debut in 2020, the series has shown women coerced into compromise, family decisions reign over those of the couple and misogyny, fat shaming and casteism wreak havoc. While Sima Aunty is widely mocked for her hellish ways and for playing into this patriarchal system, the show remains an arguably authentic primer on how traditional arranged marriages work for millions of Indians across the world.
Despite this honesty, the series makes a scathing error in its restrictive visual portrayal of India, especially when placed in contrast to the rose-tinted skyscapes of the featured Western cities. Each episode shifts between Taparia’s hopeful clients in New Delhi, Mumbai, New York, California, Austin, and now even London, using a time-worn filming technique of inserting location-specific montages that prepare viewers for the upcoming shot.
Season 3 opens with a glorified celebration of all things London: the magnanimity of the Tower Bridge, the posh streets of Westminster, a couple dancing under the glistening yellow lights of Southbank, distance shots of the Shard, walls full of artistic graffiti and the symbolic red doubledecker buses and phone booths. Sima Aunty’s opening line in the show captures the essence well, “I love London, good cars, good social life and a huge Indian community,” she says.
Halfway through the first episode, we move to New York to revisit Viral and Aashay, a happy couple from the last season. Once again, to prepare viewers for this shift across the Atlantic, a video montage cues in teasing New York’s impressive skyline, the towering Empire State Building, facades of luxury stores and shots of expensive cars whizzing past the street. Here, the background music is also carefully chosen to strengthen the aspirational value, “Bright lights in the big city, big dreams in the big city,” prefaces the introduction to the couple.
Undoubtedly, both of these portrayals are terribly clichéd but continue to paint the famed cities in a romanticised gleam with nothing insulting in sight. This stands in wild contradiction to Indian Matchmaking’s montages for its home country. When Sima Aunty meets Rushali Rai and her mother in New Delhi, a metropolis in every right and the burgeoning capital of India, the visuals that precede it are shockingly limiting and one-dimensional.
Top shots of semi-constructed houses stuck close to each other and peppered with exposed wires, monkeys crossing roads over poles, a man dangerously riding a scooter holding his infant with one hand, shirtless vendors selling vegetables and frying samosas in large pans, and labourers bending under the weight of cement bags make up the Indian scene. For background music, we have deafening traffic and people screaming on the roads. This portrayal of India as a painfully developing “third world” country isn’t isolated to one montage or season; it’s been a constant throughout the show and remains suspiciously unacknowledged.
Ishita Tiwary, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University in Canada, strongly believes that Indian Matchmaking spews hate by spotlighting regressive norms. “In not critiquing the casteist and sexist structure that supports the arranged marriage system, the show lacks real nuance,” she says. Tiwary also adds that the series, created by Indian American filmmaker Smrithi Mundhra, is clearly made for the diaspora and a clueless Western audience.
The scene-shifting montages are meant to evoke instant recognition in the minds of the viewers, most of whom have never been to India and have only consumed it via popular culture. In displaying overwhelmingly colourful, crowded and rural settings, it looks like the reality series borrowed its artistic vision from the 2008 Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire which glamorised Mumbai’s slums. Although the series puts questionable Indian customs on display and promises sincerity in doing so, it suddenly halts the candour when it comes to an earnest visual portrayal of what people can expect when they actually land in New Delhi or Mumbai.
Hardly necessary to mention this, but of course, both cities have towering high-rises, green scapes, modern spaces and architecture that represent the real lives of the clients that Sima Aunty invests in. The matchmaker’s fee is rumoured to start at ₹1,00,000, a hefty sum that few would choose to indulge in. Instead of zeroing in on the lifestyle of the largely upper-middle-class singles featured in the show, the makers feed into a unilateral definition of India that breeds poverty porn.
If Indian Matchmaking is to be believed, even today, Mumbai and New Delhi are rough-and-tough stepping stones on the way to dreamy London and aspirational New York, cities that sell ambition by the minute. Emmy-nominated and whatnot, the show’s camera work is a poignant reminder of how restrictive the representation is. It ticks the boxes of diversity by bringing India to a global stage but falls short by restricting it to a white-washed narrative that will always be lesser than.
Also read:
8 new movies and TV shows to watch this week on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar
Arranged marriages in Bollywood movies: Not a match made in heaven
Modern Love Mumbai: 4 real-life couples tell us how they found love in the city of dreams
