Seema aunty : Guardian of the Indian aunty consciousness on the world stage
Seema aunty says more things wrong than right, according to my western educated mind. But as I started peeling the western layers off of my psyche, my neutral mind assess her as all right things said in a wrong or limited way.
When she said Priyanka Chopra’s marriage to Nick Jonas makes no sense because of the age gap — she is not wrong but she is making a rudimentary(if I may say, an unintelligent) assessment. She is applying the rules of the masses in the data set to the outliers . PC is an ultra successful global icon — nothing about her life is regular, let alone her love life. It takes a really masculine and secure man to make a woman like that be happily-sheepishly in love. That man happens to be Nick Jonas — who also is not regular and hence defies the immaturity that a man that age may possess relative to an older woman. Seema aunty is however more correct than wrong when she says — the woman being much older than the man might not work in the arranged marriage market.
The bottom line is Seema aunty is successful — the show wouldn’t be getting season after season if Seema aunty was not up to the mark. Most importantly she doesn’t look or sound like someone the westernized Indian mind would think constitutes a successful person. Not only is she a woman of color, she is a ‘quintessential aunty’ — the last person on Indian minds to be seen as a commercial success. She speaks broken English, she has a heavy Gujarti accent, she tries to boss her ‘western’ Indian clients into her idea of sanskariness. While all this is true, so is the following: she is as confident as confident can be, she is unabashed about bringing her theplas with her to every country she goes, she is unaffected by her apparent lack of western appeal- be it her clothes, her language, her mannerisms. Here is the interesting bit- She is strongly rooted in what she thinks is right but like most Indian aunties today she is making space (albeit with great difficulty) to allow change even if she doesn’t understand it or agree with it. Most importantly she is allowing change for the sake of change not because she is acquiescing to the norms of western culture. In being open to change she represents modernisation of Indian culture as it is, especially being a respresentative of the guardians of Indian culture- the aunty.
Have you noticed how she owns every room she is in, be it in Mumbai or Miami — she doesn’t relegate herself to a corner or to the kitchen. She sits at the most important chair at the table and she dictates the conversation on the table. What better inspiration for Indian aunties all over the world as to where they belong in a house? What better representation? Accurate and competent. This is subtle yet profound empowerment of women through the smart medium of entertainment.
While we need business leaders, politicians, doctors and engineers ; we also need folks at the grassroots to be empowered to change India from inside out - cover all bases. In that regard so much if not all power lies in the hands of our aunties. If we give them a chance they might just change the face of the nation.