After spending days watching marriages unravel in courtrooms, you would think a show celebrating arranged marriages would be the last thing a lawyer would enjoy. But despite being a divorce lawyer practising in India's tier-one cities, I am a fan of the celebrity socialite Sima Taparia and her reality show, Indian Matchmaking. The irony of it isn't lost on me but I am invested in it not because it romanticises arranged marriages, but because it offers an unfiltered glimpse into how Indian families negotiate marriage, consent, compromise and control.
Through the show, 'Sima Aunty' has (in)famously made comments like "You have to compromise”, “You'll never get 100 percent; if you get 60-70 percent, proceed,” “She doesn’t have to marry a poet; she can always read a book," in her bid to get her clients the best match.
This isn't merely relationship advice; it reflects an entire social philosophy, something that fuels India's booming wedding industry and helps explain why the country continues to report one of the world's lowest divorce rates, officially estimated at around 1 to 1.3 percent.
Marriage is celebrated not simply as a union between two individuals, but as an institution sustained by compromise, family involvement and the expectation that relationships are preserved rather than abandoned. And it is this philosophy that came back to me while reading about the Siya Goyal and Sonam Raghuvanshi cases.