Shaadi ke pressure ke side-effects

A still from the documentary series Wedding.con

Ever since I watched the hugely entertaining documentary, Tinder Swindler (2022; Netflix) - about an Israeli conman, Simon Leviev, pretending to be a diamond tycoon's son on a dating app; attracting women for his wealth, but making them part with theirs - I've always wondered around those who follow crime (i.e., cops, journalists), if they know an Indian equivalent.

I've heard a suggestion or two, read some news pieces. None come close. Why? Because dating app, still a cosmopolitan niche in India, largely operates on involuntary, low-stake reflexes of left-right swipes, with mainly independent, single women, in far greater control of emotional impulses. Surely many on it seek something "long-term" - wish them luck.

But they're hardly pressured enough to fall for a long-term scam, that a voluntary ghosting will not instantly dissolve. It's only once I watched Tanuja Chandra's Wedding.con (on Prime Video) that, I figured, I was looking the wrong way.

In a country obsessed with marriage, no matter your age/stage of life - the playground for fraudsters/fraud stars, to suitably profit from consequent societal vulnerabilities isn't the dating app, designed around casual meets/conversations, likely friendships, maybe love, even lust.

Director Tanuja Chandra

But the matrimonial app, where you're potentially okay with lots to lose, on the presumption that there's a lifetime to gain! "While I consider myself well-aware, I was shocked to discover what was going on here," Chandra, director of Wedding.con, tells me.

What exactly is a matrimonial site/app besides, according to the five-part documentary series, a $292.1 million industry, with 21.5 million Indian users?

As I see it, mainly an online mart for matching men, women, seeking endogamous marriages (within caste, class, language, religion), without location of suitors being a limitation.

What does it replace? The family friend/aunt/priest, surely. What does it replace them with? Technically, more freedom for couples to connect, away from prying eyes of parents and assorted relatives, in the preliminary rounds, anyway.

Which is obviously a liberating game-changer for a culture, where arranged marriages, at over 90 per cent, is the norm - familiarity of common familial backgrounds promising a potentially safe space online.

Consider the Malayali lady in Wedding.con, who zeroes in on a guy, because his native village falls around hers, in Kerala. How far could you go wrong from that?

She's been married once. A better husband would be the victory of hope over experience. It's not like she harbours huge hopes either.

She says, "Society pressured Lord Ram to give up his wife, Sita. Lord Krishna and Radha could never marry. On Earth, even the Gods struggled with [matrimonial] love. I'm a mere mortal!"

Only, that fellow turns out to be a suave swindler siphoning R1.5 crore off her! She gets interviewed under a silhouette. As do many others.

When Chandra got on board the documentary project, she says the producers, BBC Studios, had already longlisted several stories. To protect their identities, she's even changed names, voices, of her subjects.

Many, especially from North India, she recalls, backed out still. The burden of guilt/shame rests on victims, rather than serial scamsters.

While all the five women profiled in the series had men eyeing their money - this isn't about money alone. "The toll [this duplicity] takes on mental health is way deeper," Chandra tells me. BBC had a therapist on set while the interviews were being shot.

Physical distance and relative anonymity, that online exchanges guarantee, explains the ease with which cyber frauds get attempted, of course. There is also something to be said for multiple personalities you can create, through social media that, on the spectrum, can go anywhere between awry and Orry, #iykyk.

What evidently separates predators on matrimonial apps from chindi chors, phishing on your phone from Jamtara, Jharkhand, however, is how patiently they mess with heads, playing with deepest, most intimate emotions. In the sense of earning trust, professing marriage/love/companionship, before going for the kill.

"Sociopaths," as Chandra rightly points out. Except, along with their stories, they're out in the open. Untouched, like the Israeli Tinder Swindler, Simon Leviev.

I reckon it's not the laws that are so much the issue. As it is, the Indian state is obsessed with making, remaking, renaming laws. The execution is the constraint.

Have you ever filed a complaint at the Mumbai cyber police station? I have, once - over an online stalker. The cops were clear.

They didn't have enough personnel to exclusively investigate the case, which could take days of instant work and travel. No FIR then. They stamped me a letter taking cognisance of the alleged crime, instead - that I could return with, if it got worse.

Many others may not even lodge a complaint. The case load is only likely to rise still. You're often on your own. Chandra tells me, "In a more equal world, I would have also explored stories similar to Wedding.con among men [for victims]." I totally get that.

Either way, gender is not the point. Chandra directed Sangharsh (1999), based on The Silence of the Lambs (1991). What could have been more inventive than Shonda Rhimes's nine-part, true crime series, Inventing Anna (2022; Netflix) - about the girl Anna, "switching between Hannibal Lecter, and the average twenty-something."

Haven't seen? Oh, Inventing Anna, Tinder Swindler, Wedding.con - make that your triple-bill then. Be safe. Very safe!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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