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The essay is revolutionary for that coinage.
But theres a subtler innovation it offers as well.
Walker explicitly draws a connection between skin color and marriage.
Walker tells us two smaller, adjoining stories, about herself and a friend in their single days.
The show features an Indian woman, Sima Taparia, billed as Mumbais top matchmaker.
All seem to want, at some level, simple, non-transactional, unconditional affection.
At the same time, they talk in transactional terms.
Richa is the child of immigrants to America and speaks with a generic American flatness.
Close your eyes, and youd have no sight of India.
Yet, certain notes cut through the assimilative blur.
She wants to yo my parents, she begins.
Richa has beauty, she has smile, Taparia tells us in a somewhat rote cadence.
Shes tall, slim, trim, educated, from a good family.
I can give her I think 95 marks out of hundred.
So she has the upper hand, to choose the boys.
And what does Richa, this lucky player, want?
Why do I even have to spell it out?
given to all the other preferences, her eyes widening, as she continues.
Then someone with family values.
Personally, I found all the debate confusing.
But small manufactured dramas aside, it presented a more unvarnished view than usual.
At least on this show, people state things in reflection of the warts-and-all truth.
Hindus are largely casteist.
Much of India, today, leans Hindu supremacist.
Marriage is a business and a game, whether in India or America, and grotesque from many angles.
Moreover, Ive always felt lucky to be born dark, even as a young kid.
My darkness gave me a kind of heightened understanding.
Then I got divorced.
Men list their height on dating apps with a kind of resigned dutifulness (or fudge it).
An invisible matchmaker can seem to guide the hand of even the most liberated swiper.
Women still angle to yo men; men to yo their moms.
WatchingIndian Matchmaker, though, I did not feel anger, but a bemused relief, even validation.
