Two years back, I signed up with Random House (now Penguin-Random) to write a book, tentatively titled The Closure Report, to study divorce in India. Is compatibility just about obvious aspects-me Tamilian, you Punjabi-or does it rise from reasons that we can be warned of in our cultural grid and, thus, avoid a potentially disastrous marriage? It is time a relationship writer from India invested serious research to write on incompatible marriages within our cultural specifics. Marital incompatibility is a relevant issue as more and more marriages run into trouble in India. What happens then? I can’t remember a Hindi film realistically dealing with the issue of disliking a partner’s body, though marriages of compromise were beautifully explored even 25 years back in films like the Amitabh-Rekha-Jaya Bachchan starrer Silsila or Ijaazat, in which Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha play an unwilling couple. The groom, played very well in this film by young actor Ayushmann Khurrana, dislikes “fat girls", so we get to justify the plus size theme but actually the problem is about a marriage without consent.Īnyone can have an inherent dislike for a certain kind of skin, body type, body language, even body odour. Even today, so many arranged marriages in India simply ignore or rule out issues of physical incompatibility that could lead to a breakdown of the partnership long before familiarity begins offering some comfort. In arranged marriages, where the groom or the bride’s likings are slapped aside by insistent, even if well-meaning, families, the frustrations emanating from a strong dislike for the wedded partner could be shattering. The reason to watch the sensitively made film is to see how some couples grapple with the frightening problem of marital incompatibility. A pretty young woman, the actress is neither obese nor ungainly in a manner that would give us sufficient reason to make a strong case against the thin-win favouritism in Indian cinema. He berates and insults her.īut when I watched the film last weekend, I didn’t find Pednekar’s plus size as the central point of the narrative. Being educated, with a potential to earn a living as a school teacher, she is thrust on a young, semi-educated and poorly employed husband, who finds her repugnant from the word go. Pednekar, who was asked to gain weight for the role-she reportedly put on 12 kilos-plays a girl caught in the trials of an arranged marriage in the temple town of Haridwar. Commentators wrote how, finally, Bollywood was battling its size zero obsession and how our extreme fascination for thin and tall leading ladies was wearing itself thin.
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