TV Series Review: Made in Heaven (Seasons 1 and 2)
How Matrimony and its surrounding rituals define and expose South Asian society
I’m currently reading Rosita Armytage’s book on how the 1% lives in Pakistan (Big Capital in an Unequal World: The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan) and she dedicates one chapter to marriages and how the elite cement their power, consolidate their wealth and use marriage as a political tool. This was not news to me. Even among the non-elite circles, where I’ve spent my whole life, marriages have always meant more than just a union between two people. I have a lot of opinions about Pakistani marriages and weddings, and watching ‘Made in Heaven’ was painfully ‘real’ for me.
When I tell people that I was “engaged” twice when I was in Pakistan, they look at me funny. I then have to explain that it was not an “engagement” as is thought of in the US or places outside South Asia. On both occasions, my parents met her parents and they agreed to get us married. In both cases, I did not meet the girl before she became my fiancee. In both cases, our families had known each other beforehand. Both engagements happened (and broke off) under dramatic circumstances.
The first one happened when I was in my final year of medical school. I was burnt out and depressed, mostly because of medical school but partially because I had fallen in love with a girl that my parents did not approve of and I had to end it. As a coping mechanism, I had busied myself in extracurricular activities, I was in-charge of the med school quiz society and the debating society. We used to have a week dedicated to dramatics, debate and quiz and on the last day, there was prize distribution ceremony. I got a call from my parents the day before last of the week summoning me back home. They didn’t tell me why but the urgency meant that something big was happening. I resisted at first because I wanted to get my prize for organizing the whole damn thing. However, I relented to the emotional blackmail and took a bus home.
That evening, I got engaged to a girl who was also a medical student, at a different medical school, still in her second year of training. The plan was for her to finish her studies in three years and to then tie the knot. I went along with it. I had not even seen this girl and initially tried to avoid any contact with her, not because I didn’t want to, but because I had seen long engagements fall through (at least two in my immediate family) when the two parties got too close. I had her number and her pictures, I didn’t look at them for almost a year. I made contact with her just before my final exams. I was really down and had moved into an empty house out of the dorm I had lived in previously. We started texting and then would talk on the phone occasionally.
She came from a religious family, her father was an active member of a religious political party and her mother was also active in the party. I don't think we were really very compatible. We fought often, mostly because I made fun of religious dogma, which she took as a personal attack on her and her parents. I thought things would smooth over with time. On my birthday, she sent me a huge box of personalized gifts including handwritten cards, pencil drawings, a collage of my photos, and some poetry that she had written for me. In hindsight, maybe that is what love bombing is (and I'm very familiar with that because of my mother). For her birthday, I surprise her with a visit to her medical school, which was two hours away from the hospital where I was doing my internship. I took a cake and some brownies and flowers with me. She was pleased to see me and we went to a nearby cafe to celebrate. The night before I was leaving for the United States, she called me in tears, and begged me to promise her that I will come back. I had no intention of staying over anyway. I brought a few gifts for her from the U.S. We had our on and off long distance relationship, until I went to Turkey in 2013.
She had made a fake profile on Facebook so that we could chat without involving her real profile (it was a bit cloak and dagger but this kind of thing happens when normal human interaction is prohibited before marriage). When I came back from Turkey, I saw that she had posted two of my photos as her profile picture and background picture. Both of them were cropped photos of me, and girls that were standing next to me. I had gone there for an international conference and there had been hundreds of photos that were taken by different people and some of them had tagged me so they showed up on my wall without my consent. When I first saw that profile I was alarmed, and confused. In those photos I wasn't doing anything unethical or immoral, even by Pakistani standards. The first photo was of me in a business suit standing next to a blonde Azerbaijani girl. The other one was a group photo of six people in which I was on one side of the group, and there was a girl standing next to me. A week after my return, her mother came to our house and broke off the engagement.
There was some introspection and debriefing with my parents afterwards. My mom was told that I was not ‘romantic’ enough, or did not give enough time to my fiancee and this lack of interest led to breaking off the engagement.
Almost a year or so later, my parents did it again, this time even more sneakily. The second engagement lasted for a shorter period time. It started in November and we were supposed to get married in March the next year. This girl was also a doctor. When my parents told me that they had already said “yes” without consulting me, I got upset and I yelled at them. They assured me that I can meet the girl, but from what I understood there was no going back on this arrangement. Once again, I tried my best. I texted the girl, I met her multiple times, but I didn't feel like we were very compatible in terms of how we wanted to live our lives. I did not want to deceive her, so I confess to her that I was not interested in religion anymore. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She promptly conveyed this information to her father who conveyed to my uncle who had introduced my parents to her parents. What followed was an inquisition that I had to sit through, in which I had to reaffirm my belief in religion, and to apologize to the girl’s father. Suffice to say, none of that appeased her parents. Later that day, her mother called my mother and told her that it was over. That was the day that I decided that I was not gonna live in Pakistan anymore. My mom sneakily hired a matchmaker (who I despised) and tried to do it the traditional way but I had had enough of that.
Coming back to the “Made in Heaven” series. The TV show had elements of palace intrigue, jealousy, upward mobility, middle class travails, backroom deals, infidelity, misogyny, staying in the closet, and much more. I found the pace to be breathless. I felt that there was a lot happening in each episode, there wasn't just A and B storylines, there were also C, D, E stories, which in my opinion diluted the overall effect. I also felt that the show was preoccupied with rich people and their petty problems. Many other people have commented on the moralizing tone of “Kabeer” which gives the TV show an appearance of a documentary. I found the moral center of the show to be Jaspreet or “Jazz”, a Sikh girl from an underprivileged background whose brother is addicted to drugs, and parents who scheme to keep her unmarried. The protagonists keep making mistakes without facing consequences, partially because of their class status or because they're meant to be infallible? On the other hand Jazz cannot put a foot wrong without getting reprimanded. The show purports to highlight the hypocrisy behind matchmaking in India, however, this is frequently done as to obvious, in-your-face style. Overall I did not find much nuance in the series. It reminded me off Freddy deBoer’s review of “The Bear”:
Every time the creators of the show have a chance to go bigger or smaller, they choose bigger. Every time they face a decision about being more subdued or more overwrought, they veer directly towards the later. This show never met a grand sweeping gesture it didn't like and never met a quiet character moment it did.
The show reminded me of both “Ozark” and “Flacks”. The first season felt subversive when it came out, but by the time of the second season it was all performative, an effort to check all boxes for representation. Outside of “Jazz”, the only other character that stands out is that of ‘Bulbul Johari’. She sees right through the façade created by Tara and Karan. I was also perplexed that almost every wedding that we should see on the show has a Qawalli night. I'm not sure how accurate that is. As somewhat of an Urdu purist, I also didn't like when some characters pronounced things incorrectly. There are multiple deaths on the show, and somehow people who were affected by those deaths never recovered from the trauma. We see people compromising, but compromises are a part of life, and of marriage. However, many of the conflicting parties end up with nothing, nobody wins. No one is clean in the “Made in Heaven” universe, everybody lies and tried to manipulate people around them, which is a very accurate description of middle- and upperclass desi society.
There were very few stereotypes that show did not use; Punjabis with their drug problems and drinking, Muslims with polygamy, gay men and their promiscuity, low-wage workers with misogyny and powerful people with immunity from law or consequences. There is spectacle, there is drama, and despite all the shortcomings, it is still quite watchable. People enjoy watching rich people make fools of themselves (e.g. Succession) and ‘Made in Heaven’ has plenty of that.
It was fun read. Enjoyed reading it.