There is a lot of glitter in this show about ostentatious Indian weddings, and notes of a commentary on social and political issues, but the show’s treatment of some of these issues is itself problematic, writes Khushbu Sharma.
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THE much anticipated second season of Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s smash-hit over-the-top (OTT) series Made in Heaven is out now.
Carrying forward the massively successful legacy of the first season, the recently released deck of episodes have inspired lively debates, some on threads carrying on from the first season and some brand new.
The obsession of South Asians with marriage is well documented. The show banks on this passionate interest.
Through the show, Akhtar and Kagti tap into the populous South Asian middle class segment, which is enamoured of and awed by the pomp and show of lavish wedding ceremonies of the rich and powerful.
The duo also successfully captures the attention of those outside the subcontinent who have heard enigmatic tales of the ‘Great Indian Weddings’, making it one of the trending shows on its hosting platform Amazon Prime.
Made in Heaven is clearly a world of the rich and affluent, also known as upper class and upper caste folks in India, as your quintessential Khannas and Mehras dominate the screen and aesthetics of this show as well.
Since the show was released on August 10, a lot has already been written about it and my intent is not to repeat the points already made elsewhere in the popular discourse.
What I seek to do is point out some very specific aspects of the show which go in its favour and many which go against it.
For me, the second season, just like its precursor, is an interesting case of hits and misses.
The show
Made in Heaven is clearly a world of the rich and affluent, also known as upper class and upper caste folks in India, as your quintessential Khannas and Mehras dominate the screen and aesthetics of this show as well.
The male and female lead, Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) and Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala) respectively, together run Made in Heaven, a wedding planning agency in south Delhi.
In the first episode, after breaking-up with her husband Adil Khanna (Jim Sarbh), Tara is seen struggling to secure a ‘decent’ alimony as she navigates through troubling divorce proceedings.
Karan continues to be vulnerable yet steadfast as he carries on with his everyday battles against the heteronormative socio-legal order, most noticeably the ‘to and fro’ with his craving to be accepted as a gay person by his mother who is suffering from small-cell carcinoma.
In season one, Mehra petitions the Supreme Court against Section 377 of Indian Penal Code and wins the battle.
As the second season begins, Made in Heaven is in ruins— starved of funds and without an office.
The situation compels Tara and Karan to sell a substantial stake in their firm to Ramesh Jauhari (Vijay Raaz), a fascinating investor.
Enter a new auditor to handle their messed up financial situation, Bulbul Jauhari (Mona Singh), who also happens to be the wife of Ramesh Jauhari, intentionally so.
On her (Meher) journey to find ‘love’, she confronts the transphobia prevalent in the society and does not shy away from calling out even her bosses for their undue privilege.
The other people working in the firm continue to figure out the complexities of their own lives. Kabir Basri (Shashank Arora), the in-house photographer, finds it difficult to tell his parents and girlfriend that he does not want to go to New York to study filmmaking.
Rather, he wants to stay and work on his documentary on Indian weddings that Amazon Prime Video has offered finance and host.
Jaspreet Kaur (Shivani Raghuvanshi), the ‘typical’ Dwarka girl continues to be mind-boggled by the elite-class tantrums and hypocrisy, her baffling ‘open’ relationship with Kabir and the painful drug problem that her brother goes on to battle with.
Meher (Trinetra Haldar), a transwoman, is the new production head at Made in Heaven and is one of the most outspoken members of the team, with a clear vision of her future, and one of the likeable characters of the season.
On her journey to find ‘love’, she confronts the transphobia prevalent in the society and does not shy away from calling out even her bosses for their undue privilege. The team is chasing elite weddings, some of them lucrative enough to change their financial fortunes.
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Behind the curtains
The show takes us into the world of lavish Indian weddings with exquisite decor, gourmet cuisine and designer outfits like no other.
But its novelty value lies in the way it takes its audience behind the curtains, as Akhtar and Kagti reveal the shenanigans behind the great Indian wedding.
A dusky bride fighting colourism, a lesbian couple battling homophobia and non-acceptance from families, an unapologetic Dalit bride firmly resisting the casteism of her Brahmin in-laws, a Bollywood actress finding no way out of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her to-be husband— these are the themes that different directors pick up, giving them a cinematic life through one or two weddings per episode.
Many of the weddings in the show are not the dominant Hindu Brahmanical saptapadi form of marriages.
Apart from the traditional Hindu religious marriage ceremonies, the team of Made in Heaven undertake the planning of a Buddhist, Christian and Muslim wedding and a vow exchange ceremony that seeks to change the visual palette of the audience.
There is not much else to write home about the second season, except for the fifth episode directed by Neeraj Ghaywan titled ‘The Heart Skipped a Beat’.
The Made in Heaven team is catering to a patrician Muslim client named Wasim (Parvin Dabas) who is all set to get himself a second wife.
Ghaywan actually made hearts skip a beat. But more on that later.
Muslim men with too many wives
Episode 6 titled ‘Warrior Princesses’ is directed by Alankrita Shrivastava.
The Made in Heaven team is catering to a patrician Muslim client named Wasim (Parvin Dabas) who is all set to get himself a second wife.
From linguistic mannerisms, costumes, food and decor— the entire episode feels like a script directly out of some stereotyping machine.
Wasim is a filthy rich man who does not even hesitate to spend lakhs of rupees over some “last minute changes” to the costume of his new bride Elmira (Kallirroi Tziafeta), a former air hostess.
Elmira is marrying Wasim mainly for his money. Elmira’s mother advises her to “get rid of” Wasim’s first wife Shehnaz (Dia Mirza) “as soon as possible”.
Shehnaz is the perfect specimen of that Muslim woman prototype that the whole world is trying to ‘save’ these days.
She is a ‘victim’ of polygamy. She is not able to take a khula from her husband, because Wasim would not let her take the custody of their sons.
She feels stuck and suffocated to the point where she attempts suicide and her ‘merciless’ husband despite being aware of her attempt carries on with the niqah ceremony with Elmira and unfalteringly utters qubool hai.
Our Savarna male lead, the wedding planner Karan Mehra, ‘saves’ her, giving her the confidence to stand up and make herself count. Shehnaz, lying on the hospital bed, resolves to file a legal challenge to the practice of polygamy.
The story of Wasim and Shehnaz did not go unnoticed in the real world.
Hindu right-wing handles used it as another opportunity to ‘demonstrate’ how Muslim men are indeed cruel and Indian Muslim women need saving from them.
Women across religious groups do face social and legal hurdles securing a divorce from their husbands and obtaining the custody of their children.
The only Muslim wedding taken up in the show and that too polygamous, essentialises the marital practices among Muslims and solidifies the much popularised image of Muslim men as ‘barbarous’ and Muslim women as being passive.
The feeble Muslim woman needs a defence from a man of the majority religion.
The feeble Muslim woman needs a defence from a man of the majority religion.
Interestingly, the National Family Health Survey 5 data (2019–20) shows that in India there is not much difference in the percentage of Muslim men and men from other religious groups practising polygyny.
While 1.9 percent of Muslim men have more than one wife, 1.3 percent Hindu men and 1.6 percent men practising other religions marry more than one woman.
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Commenting upon this episode, Fatima Khan, an award-winning journalist writes on her X account: “This is a show that works on a weird let’s-tackle-one-social-issue-per-episode-model. Diya Mirza’s character says: ‘I am not just a Muslim but also a citizen of this country.’ When anti-Muslim violence is no secret, THIS is the ‘one muslim issue’ the makers chose to tackle?”
Objections like these gain salience and rightly so in the socially and politically charged up environment when anti-Muslim hatred is at all-time high and the debate over the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is picking up.
With all due consideration to the rights of women against oppressive religious and customary practices, making the practice of polygamy, which is almost non-existent even among Muslims, a cinematic gimmick to claim a badge of ‘progressiveness’ is counterproductive.
By fair or foul means, ‘immoral’ women snatch alimony
The female lead, Tara, is already struggling to secure a decent alimony from her husband Adil. Adil had an affair with Faiza (Kalki Koechlin) while being married to Tara. Faiza is now pregnant and Adil just wants “to get done with” the divorce.
Initially, Tara was content with the alimony offered by Adil’s lawyer. However, it is only when her mother made her realise that it was “too less” for her that Tara came up with a new offer and asked for a considerable share in Adil’s company.
Disgruntled, Adil spies on Tara to find out that she is dating someone while still being married.
The terms of the settlement change and Adil forces Tara to settle for less.
So far so good.
You can see a young woman wrestling with her financially powerful husband to acquire adequate alimony for herself.
However, the manner in which the narrative is knitted is itself dubious. Both Tara and her mother are shown to be extremely money-minded.
This entire narrative is counterproductive as it shifts the discourse on women’s inheritance, alimony and maintenance from a rights-based framework to a bargain that only ‘smarter’ and ‘sharper’ women can negotiate.
Tara used to work at Adil’s office and managed to marry him by leaking CCTV footage of their sexual encounter in the office.
As Tara can be seen repeatedly saying stuff like “it is not just money, it is fortune”, her battle for a fair alimony is itself weakened by the makers when they show her to be greedy.
Tara calls Adil once again while the divorce proceedings are underway and after some emotional string-pulling they end up having a sexual encounter.
While Adil thinks it is genuine on both sides, Tara weaponises this to demand the Khanna House— the ‘dream’ house of Adil’s father— as alimony.
This entire narrative is counterproductive as it shifts the discourse on women’s inheritance, alimony and maintenance from a rights-based framework to a bargain that only ‘smarter’ and ‘sharper’ women can negotiate.
However, irrespective of whether the woman is avarice-driven or not, women across classes, religions, castes, educational and age groups have a legal and moral right to decent alimony in matters of separation from husband.
A 2013 study, which forms a part of the book Separated and Divorced Women in India: Economic Rights and Entitlements, written by lawyer Kirti Singh, reveals that 50 percent of women respondents did not embark upon the path of claiming alimony from their husbands because they did not have the initial resources or the requisite knowledge to do so.
A recent book by two French scholars, Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, titled The Gender of Capital, shows how the practice of the law itself in matters of settling divorce cases by default favours men, and women across classes just end up more impoverished after divorce than their male counterparts.
A non-cooperative legal system, a hostile social milieu and rampant misogyny already discourages women from claiming what is rightfully theirs.
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In such a context, shows like Made in Heaven, which show alimony as a greed-generated ambition, are the last thing we need.
Made in Heaven could have handled the issue more sensitively and sensibly.
The Buddhist wedding as the ‘saving grace’
The best thing about this season has to be Neeraj Ghaywan’s directorial Episode 5.
After a heated argument between Karan and Tara, the divided Made in Heaven team(s) take up two different weddings.
Probably the rarest of occasions when ‘mainstream’ cinema, otherwise obsessed with Brahmanical aesthetics and sensibilities, gives centrestage to the pictures of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the Buddha under whose auspices the Buddhist wedding is solemnised.
Tara and Meher start working on Pallavi Menke (Radhika Apte) and Vikram Sharma’s inter-caste marriage.
Pallavi is a Dalit woman who studied law at Columbia University, has authored two books and is soon going to be an Ivy League professor. Pallavi owns up to her identity, speaks her mind and does not take any nonsense.
Vikram is a lawyer and comes from a muddled Brahmin family that is trying very hard to appear modern.
As the episode progresses, you can see Pallavi being visibly uncomfortable with the mind games that Vikram’s family is trying to play to get her to agree for a traditional Hindu saptapadi wedding in addition to court-mediated marriage.
Pallavi agrees to it but she also wishes to have a wedding with Buddhist rituals which irks her upper-caste in-laws and they try their best to make sure that it gets cancelled.
They change Pallavi and her families’ surname to Kumar in the wedding cards, despite her having reclaimed her caste-connotative name Menke.
All this so that her in-laws can take pride and boast the achievements of their daughter-in-law without having to reveal her social origins.
This leads to a heated argument between Pallavi and Vikram.
Here lies the genius of director Neeraj Ghaywan, whose lens beautifully captures Pallavi’s vulnerability, anguish, anger, strength and conviction.
On being taunted by Vikram for “doing politics” in matters of marriage, Pallavi emphatically says: “Of course, this is about my politics. Everything is about politics. If it was not for what I have achieved, would your parents even approve of this marriage?”
This entire sequence speaks volumes.
Whether a Dalit studies at an Ivy League university or is working in a field as a landless labourer, there is no escape from caste.
Theirs is a constant struggle to be recognised as equal beings, as humans, breathing the same air as everyone else.
They are longing for the basic humanity that caste-mediated patriarchal order has denied them for centuries and continues to deprive them of till now.
As Vikram comes to know about his parents’ intentions, he decides to go ahead with the Buddhist wedding as the ‘main’ wedding.
Pallavi’s emotions on the day of the wedding are beautifully captured. The hierarchical caste and patriarchal social order psychologically guilt trips the oppressed for demanding the bare minimum.
With tears in her eyes, Pallavi asks Tara: “You think I pushed it? I feel I went too far.”
Then comes the wedding scene.
Probably the rarest of occasions when ‘mainstream’ cinema, otherwise obsessed with Brahmanical aesthetics and sensibilities, gives centrestage to the pictures of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the Buddha under whose auspices the Buddhist wedding is solemnised.
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Ghaywan is receiving a lot of appreciation for the episode and rightly so. But certain questions are being asked about Ghaywan’s casting choices. Why did they not cast a Dalit to play the role of the Dalit character Pallavi Menke?
Yashica Dutt, a journalist who studied at Columbia University and the author of award-winning book Coming Out As a Dalit, has demanded a credit from the filmmakers for fashioning Pallavi Menke’s character in her life.
There are clear markers in Pallavi’s character— from her opening speech at Columbia University to the references of ‘coming out’— which clearly indicate that Dutt is an inspiration to Pallavi.
Yet, Dutt says that except for an acknowledgement by Ghaywan, no formal credit was given to her by the show makers.
In her Instagram post, she writes: “Dalits have a long history of being taken from, erased, ignored [and] obliterated from our own stories. Dalit women, in particular, are the easiest to take from, what is the worth of the labour they have created anyway?It is for everybody to claim.
“Except this time, I am reclaiming my work, my worth and my contribution to the discourse and history, defying the order of what is expected of me as a woman who is always supposed to fine-tune the ‘register of her rage’. The Made in Heaven episode is stunning in its portrayal of a Dalit woman and her Buddhist inter-caste wedding. It also unfortunately erases my contribution to my own ideas.”
The hypocrisy of the makers is too blatant to be ignored. We cannot serve the purpose of showing unapologetic marginalised characters on-screen while off-screen we continue to deny them what is rightfully theirs.
Made in Heaven is a grand show. Even with all its ‘progressive’ posturing, it could not hit many of its targets.
Or perhaps, as you go up the scale of production costs and fancy sets, you keep on losing the sense of genuineness and relatability with the audience.
Audience then sees you as an aspiration, not as a story of their own.
I hope the show makers will ponder over all the feedback that is coming their way and come up with a more grounded and researched season, which does not indulge in easy stereotypes and addresses the concerns of representation and appropriation from the ‘oppressed’ more seriously.
We cannot change heaven, but we can surely make Earth a more equitable place.
