SATIRE
How many ways do the royals dysfunctionally resemble a South Asian soap opera? Let us count the ways - five to be exact.
You marry an institution
Just like the Royals, you don’t just get married - you marry an institution. You marry 'The Family' and you’re stuck for life. How dare you think it’s about you? Loyalty, duty and sacrifice demands appropriate marriages to appropriate people (untick wrong religion, divorcees and ‘liberal’ women). As for gays? What gays. And love? There’s Bollywood for that (insert billion dollar industry dedicated to assuaging the romantic disappointment of an entire continent.) You know where love got the Royals right? An abdication and scandal. Love is just bad for business.
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The overbearing mother-in-law
The characters of the British Royal family are ripped straight from a desi soap. Central to the desi soap is the battle between the overbearing mother-in-law and the long-suffering daughter-in-law. Wedged between this is a hapless son who suffers as the women in his life seek to acquire power through him – resulting in him being torn between filial duty to the matriarch and loyalty to his wife.
Weddings with lots of bling
Desis and royals share ancient cultures with the same love of tradition and all things material. Having the right clothes, hair and bling is vital. For a people who decorate cars and every orifice with gold at month-long weddings, the British Royal predilection for bling, ritual, hierarchy and wedding ceremony is highly respected.
Desi elders look to the Queen matriarch, with her brood of ungrateful kids with broken marriages with a kind of reassurance and sympathy. “You give these kids everything! And they can’t even stay married!”
Family drama
Desis watch with fascination at the exploding marriages of the royals because the family drama matches their own. A lifetime of following rigid rules in an emotionally constipated stiff-upper-lip culture naturally leads to implosion – affairs, divorces, scandals, a double life. All that would be avoided if there was some humanity (and therapy) at the outset. Just like the characters in a desi drama, Royals have to learn the hard way.
Arranged marriages
After Charles and Diana - an arranged marriage in the classic sense , with Diana married at 19 in a deal for virginity and aristocratic family station - things needed to become more lax with William. He was allowed to marry for love, to a commoner at that.
And Harry well, he’s gone one further and is marrying a half-black woman! It’s the baby steps that build greater freedom for all of us. The Royal machinery is like the blob. Like a desi family, it can evolve grudgingly and opportunistically if forced to, for survival, but the blob will never die.
There will be tight smiles and forced greetings, but damn it, there will always be a zabardast wedding.
All the best Meghan and Harry – may the love between you be as beautiful as a Bollywood mountain serenade at sunset. You’ve earned it.
Royal Wedding LIVE will air live Saturday 19 May from 7:30pm AEST on SBS and . Coverage of The Royal Wedding will follow at 9pm AEST.
