Why I’m obsessed with Indian Matchmaker
I must confess, I want to get married now because I want to meet Aunty Sima, or Sima Aunty, as she is known on the Netflix show, ‘Indian Matchmaking.’
I do Air Bnb in my house, I rent out up to four rooms at a time but the thing is, I really hate ironing. My laundry cupboard is like…Did you ever watch Labyrinth? Do you remember that part where Jennifer Connelly thinks she is back home in her bedroom for a moment, and then all of a sudden all these creepy goblins erupt from her bed and she realises she’s still in a parallel universe controlled by David Bowie in lycra? That’s my laundry cupboard. It sucks you in, it wants nothing less than your life. So sometimes on a day like today, I hire Barbara to do some ironing for me. Barbara is a no nonsense Lancashire lady. She has a police woman daughter that she would kill for. She has a husband that she married when she was fifty five — they got the bus into town, went to the registry office and then invited their closest friends to the pub, then got the bus home. Barbara has got a good sense of humour and boy, can she hustle. And when Barbara does my ironing I feel like there is order in the universe once more. And that’s how Sima Aunty makes me feel.
‘Everything nobody gets’
Sima Aunty’s approach to marriage-making bears little resemblance to the dried-flower draped, neon-lit Mr & Mrs signed, bouquet-as-baton wielding Instagrammed frenzy that is the UK wedding industry. Sima Aunty is all about can two people get on, in the long term. In the latest, third, series of Indian Matchmaker we see Sima Aunty on a work trip to the UK with her husband. They’ve rented a studio apartment and Sima Aunty is cooking up chai for the two of them with the spice blend she’s packed in sandwich bags in her suitcase. She’s not a gooey, gushy lady, but she knows what she and her husband like and she does her part in looking after the two of them.
When I meet a couple that I am going to officiate for, one of my first questions is usually,
So, why do you want to get married?
It’s a valid question. When my mum got married, in 1971, she couldn’t get a mortgage without my dad. It was only in 1975 that the Sex Discrimination Act permitted women to apply for and own property in their own names, in theory. I find it flabbergasting that I belong to the first generation of British women who was able to grow up to be completely financially independent of a man. This doesn’t negate a desire to get married, but it changes the reasons for which we marry drastically. It necessitates the question:
So, why do you want to get married?
Sima Aunty never really questions marriage as an institution, though she does question the young generation of daters’ desire to have it all. ‘You have to be little flexible,’ she famously tells her clients, ‘Everything nobody gets.’ Sima Aunty’s clients are typically in their late twenties or early thirties, if male sometimes even older. They are well educated professionals, established in their careers and chosen cities, sometimes so much so that it can be hard to make space to let someone else in. The intrigue of the programme lies in seeing whether these clients can change, whether they can be little bit flexible, especially when little bit turns out to be a lot.
I love working with couples who have complicated lives, for whom the path to true love has not been easy. If the wedding ceremony is to serve as a grand finale, it’s more satisfying when there have been some struggles across the way. Drama needs drama. But sometimes I meet couples whose lives just simply fit together very well. They live in the same town or have the same friends. And then the celebration is one of luck, and of their wisdom in knowing a good thing when it was right in front of them.
I would love to write a ceremony for a couple who have been matched by Sima Aunty, or for anyone who has had to be little bit flexible. There is beauty in bending, just as there is still beauty and hope in marriage.