Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match!
Meet the Aunties who haven't been ousted by the apps yet.
Welcome to Boys & Girls, an absurd, burlesque, cringey take on love and marriage the Indian way. Radhika delves into the highs and lows of being on the arranged marriage carousel all in the pursuit of forever love.
Congratulations! Your family has convinced, coerced, threatened or emotionally blackmailed you into giving the old arranged marriage thing a go. Your biodata has been made. Some photos of you have been taken, where you look like a suitable boy or girl.
Now what?
Well, a net must be cast wide. Usually, a matrimonial ad is placed in the newspaper. Perhaps a profile is created on one of the innumerable websites out there - one for every caste, class, religion, region, community and educational qualification possible (IIT/IIM Matrimony is a real thing people!)
And, just in case the nation’s most widely read newspapers, and AI-powered algorithms can’t find you a life match, well, you know it’s time to call the heavyweights in.
The Matchmaking Aunties.
No, not this Aunty.
Think of someone a little closer home.
Because the best matchmakers - the ones with the highest strike rate - are often deeply embedded inside communities, and are better networked than that LinkedIn bro you know. They are privy to information that no AI-powered app can find - they’ll be able to tell you everything from a potential matches past love failures to what kind of property they stand to inherit, to how much they have invested in mutual funds. And what they can’t find, they are willing to go and dig up. Matchmaking Aunties are nothing if not committed.
After all, they are part of the system that wants to ensure that caste and community stay intact through arranged marriage. Because really, matchmaking aunties might be smart and shrewd, but no way are they going to propose anything as cosmopolitan as an inter-caste marriage.
While Matchmaking Aunties might seem like they’re on your side, in reality they are working for whoever has the fastest finger and clicks on ‘yes’ first! Radhika discovered this the hard way when a promising alliance slipped through her fingers because her family didn’t respond quickly enough.
But then, there are those matchmakers who genuinely want to help the boys and girls who for a variety of reasons are still on the shelf, but want to get married the correct Indian way. They believe they’re performing a social good in helping bring people together. People like Janhavi’s kaki and bua, two women so intelligent, they could have been rocket scientists. But they focused their smarts on the far more complex problems of finding a life partner for those who were a little too old, didn’t have the right family connections, or had no one to advocate for them on the marriage mart.
In the latest episode of Boys & Girls podcast, we hear of these smart and shrewd women, and the lengths they are willing to go to, to find the perfect match.
Listen to Aunty Love, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the iHeartRadio App and wherever else podcasts can be found!