Can we afford to cancel Sima Taparia of Netflix's 'Indian Matchmaking'?

WHEN I’D BUMPED into Sima Aunty – of Netflix’s ‘Indian Matchmaking’ fame – at a soirée recently, she’d said something that stayed. After I praised her affable husband Anup Taparia for making her copious amounts of tea in the last season, she’d quipped that her show’s viewers didn’t seem to remember how much tea she’d made for him in the prior seasons. We all chuckled, but the wise woman had spoken. For chai pe charcha is never about the chai, is it? it all needs careful deliberation, doesn’t it?

While Sima Taparia may be the favourite punching bag for feminists, I adore and admire her. For me any woman who has broken the shackles of her upbringing, created a niche for herself, and been her most unapologetic self is the woman we should all aspire to. Isn’t that what leaning in is all about?

Plus, when our female icons don’t align to our sophomoric hyper-wokeism we tend to go cataclysmic on them, don’t we? So, when Sima Aunty, took a dig at ‘highly educated girls’ being the reason for high divorce rates we cancelled her, didn’t we? We’d had enough of her problematic hot takes, hadn’t we?

But is it fair to cancel her over speaking her truth? Can we even afford to cancel people whose world view is different from ours? Isn’t cancelling what we perceive as extremism of any kind, an extremism of its own? How can liberalism progress if it sequesters differing opinions, the very foundation it was built on?

You must be wondering by now, if you follow my work, why I am not the ‘most‘ affronted by these cromulent remarks. Not only am I highly educated, but I have also been divorced. Plus, my divorce had nothing to do with the presence of my many degrees. Or the lack of ‘patience’, ‘flexibility’, or ‘adjusting’.

Yet, frankly my dear, I don’t really care. Why? Because I’ve heard these Sima-fied statements a million times before and I know I will continue to hear them till the end of time.

I was divorced 10 years ago when divorce was still a stigma. I was broken by the physical, emotional and financial abuse I had suffered and tolerated over five years of marriage. When I finally found the courage to leave my perp, some of even the most “well-meaning” family members and acquaintances, found ways to blame and shame me. For example, I was told that I should have ‘adjusted’ to being hit because hitting happens in every marriage (apparently). I could have changed the boy if I had been more ‘patient’. I must have done something to provoke him i.e. not been ‘flexible’ enough, and therefore *deserved to get hit*. You know the drill.

A decade later, the stigma of divorce has gone from society, but the sting remains. That’s why millions of girls stay put in difficult, often abusive, marriages. Because they believe their love can change a man who refuses to change. Because they believe that their pain is a sign of strength. Because the human need to be loved is stronger than the need to be right.

And in the veritable Cowtown of Indian marriages, where the riveting arranged marriage world of Indian Matchmaking is as wildly popular as the brilliantly avant-garde Made In Heaven, who becomes the enfant terrible? Who wins in the battle of the archaic vs anarchic? The Sima Taparia vs the Tara Khanna? The divorced or the unhappily married? The ones who were lucky in love or the ones who got unlucky?

It really depends on which of the two India’s you belong to. But the time has come for these two India’s to align. Why? Because our movement of equality needs more allies. It needs to further the concept of sisterhood. Isn’t that what intersectionality is all about? We are all one people, right?

We’re all aware enough to have heard it all, but let’s not forget that not agreeing does not tantamount to not hearing. I heard the naysayers after my divorce. I did not agree. I did not blow up on them. Why? Because lions do not listen to the opinion of sheep. And the greatest strength is often in silence.

I refused to compromise on myself. Three years later, these same naysayers were praising me for my new successful marriage, my accolades, my books, my articles, my public appearances. My truth revealed itself with time. As did my happiness. For that’s the best revenge of our gender – the unleashing of the happy feminist. People can deal with a woman’s failure and her sadness, but if you want to confuse, confound, and change them – try doing it with your happiness. Channel your bitterness, anger, and mistreatment to construct something beautiful for yourself, and trust me, there is no better victory in the world than that.

Instead of preaching to the opposers, or rage-applying, try being solicitous. To others and, more so, to yourself. Let’s also not forget that the marriage market in the fantastically complicated cultural stratosphere of India is also its most hypocritical. Men, in particular, are told to sow their wild oats with whom they want, but they can only bring home ‘their own kind’. Behind closed doors, people say to Sima Aunty what they dare not voice in public. She, in turn, does not withhold this truth. Therefore, quite obviously, Sima from Mumbai is repeating what she’s heard thousands of women and men say to her. If she hears a thousand more saying that such conceptions must be made redundant, maybe she’ll change the way she thinks.

Or maybe she won’t. Sima Aunty is a happily married woman, one can see, so she has not experienced what havoc a bad marriage wrecks on a person. But, paraphrasing her own words, she must be ‘flexible’ enough to comprehend a differing point of view, ‘adjust’ to a new way of thinking, not let ‘ego’ dictate her future problematic hot takes, and have ‘patience’ with a new world that doesn’t necessarily think like her.

But till then–no! Instead of cancelling people for their opinions based on their life experiences, let’s meet this difference with the knowledge and decision we’ve been privileged to experience, and hope that even if the narrative doesn’t change for them, the narrative for society will change if told in a voice that is ‘patient’ and ‘flexible’, as all lasting evolution is.

Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning and bestselling author, screenwriter, columnist and speaker, whose upcoming novel THE MAN WHO LOST INDIA (Simon & Schuster) will be published in December 2023.

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