The Bollywood movie, Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh (2005), follows the marital life of 34 years old Mithilesh Shukla, a librarian at Lucknow University. The movie opens with a scene in the university cafeteria where Saleem, Mithilesh’s best friend excitedly runs to hug Mithilesh. There is a photographic print the size of a postcard in his hand. Saleem holds it up and promptly asks his friend: ‘Kaisi lagi?’/How is she? Mithilesh, confused and hesitant, replies with ‘Kya matlab ki kaisi lagi?’/What do you mean by how is she?. As the narrator voices that Saleem’s mind has been preoccupied with marriage: ‘Yehi hain jinke saath humey zindagi guzarni pad sakti hai’ /She is the one I might have to spend my life with, it becomes clear that the photograph he’s holding is matrimonial.
As Saleem pesters on, Mithilesh shows no interest in seeing the photograph, implying that it is meant only for Saleem. He says that he must decide based on their compatibility and understanding instead of her looks. Saleem looks at the photograph once again, before he points to another woman in the distance in the cinematic frame and exclaims, ‘Isse fair toh wohi hai…kam se kam utni fair toh honi chahiye na!’ /She is fairer than her, one should at least be this fair, right!, turning a deaf ear to Mithilesh’s advice.
The photograph is handled, viewed, and critiqued in the minute-long scene. One sees an impression of a portrait of a woman in the pixelated movie print for a moment and learns only one thing about her: she is not as fair as Saleem would like. The photograph stands in for the absent woman, evoking desire and scrutiny at the same time. Its meaning rests in its function: an arranged marriage proposal.
Suryanandini Narain, in her essay Photographing the Feminine, writes, ‘The phenomenon of the matrimonial photograph is a necessary aid to the arranged marriage system where the bride and groom do not see each other in person until the families approve, and hence the image acts as a substitute for personal interaction. …It reaches destinations where a young woman of marriageable age would not have access to, either due to conservative social restrictions, or the unfamiliarity of the audience, or simply physical distance.’[1]
A printed matrimonial photograph is usually 4 by 6 inches in size, unframed, and constantly in transit along with other documents like the biodata and horoscope, which constitute a package sent to prospective brides and grooms in the modern arranged marriage market. Rochona Majumdar, in her book Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal, argues that arranged marriage is a modern practice because its performance from the late nineteenth century involves usage of institutions and ideas central to any understanding of modernity: urban life, Western education, the print media (the publishing of matrimonial advertisements seeking brides and grooms), monetisation of relationships (the escalation in the practice of dowry), and marriage laws—as a result creating new patriarchy under colonial rule in India.[2]
With the rise of matrimonial advertisements published in national dailies, a market for arranged marriage flourished over the years, where prospective brides and grooms sought their life partners. Within this market, the matrimonial photograph becomes a token of ‘visual currency’, in terms of John Tagg’s definition of ‘items produced by a certain elaborate mode of production… distributed, circulated, and consumed within a given set of social relations: pieces of paper that change hands, find use, meaning, and value in certain social rituals’.[3] Moving through the various stages of the arranged marriage market, the matrimonial photograph takes on various meanings, evoking aspiration, desire, and alliance—sometimes, all at once.