In this op-ed, writer Vandana Pawa analyzes Bridgerton season 2 and how the impactful moments of intimacy between the Sharmas are informed by cultural traditions.
In Bridgerton season 2, newcomer and diamond of the season Edwina Sharma refers to her sister Kate as “didi,” the Hindi word for “older sister,” and the only thing I’ve ever called my own sister since I learned how to talk. The first time Edwina uttered it on screen, casually sprinkled within a conversation otherwise spoken in English, I gasped. Despite being an honorific of sorts, in my experience, “didi” implies a connection that can only come with the intimacy of sisterhood. I immediately jumped to tell my sister and best friends (who have didis of their own) what I had just noticed, a moment of intimacy in the group chat.
Elder Kate (played by Simone Ashley) returns this intimacy in her own ways, massaging oil into her younger sister’s hair to bring the comforts of home during a moment of broken-heartedness – an act of intimacy that South Asian mothers and grandmothers have been sharing with young ones for centuries. “In moments of deep sadness, and in moments of jubilation, you see them reverting back to their culture," actress Charithra Chandran, who plays Edwina, shared in a press conference.
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The Sharmas are the focal point of Bridgerton season 2, with British Indian actresses Simone and Charithra at the helm. Where exactly in India the Sharma family hails from originally is unclear — their last name points to one region of the subcontinent while their linguistic mannerisms indicate another — but they take the ton by storm as soon as they arrive in London from Bombay. Edwina joins the marriage circuit, and she’s quickly named the Queen’s “diamond” of the courting season, causing her to become highly desired among the city’s most eligible bachelors.
Many will claim this a win for representation, but it’s not the idea that Indianness can be desirable that I find worth celebrating — being desired by white people isn’t the win we’re socialized to believe it is — but rather the ways Kate, Edwina, and their mother embody forms of intimacy beyond the romantic through acts of cultural tradition. These moments were minimal on screen in the larger context of the season’s story, not defining the women entirely, but the joy with which they’ll be received by the millions of viewers who practice similar forms of intimacy in their own cultures will be especially significant.
Romantic couplehood has long been the hegemonic ideal of intimacy. In Western contexts, since a higher value is placed on the self and the individual nuclear family unit, intimacy is conceptualized as something reserved strictly for amorous relationships. It results from intentional self-disclosure – that is, revealing one’s personal feelings and thoughts to another. In contrast to the individualistic manners of the West, intimacy as a by-product of familial and friendly closeness is common in Eastern cultures, namely in India. A collective history, shared memories, assumed trust, and definitive safety; intimacy stems from all of these. When isolated from an environment that fosters these things, in the way an immigrant often is, intimacy can reveal itself through cultural traditions. Despite having little value in the West, it’s this intimacy that can feel like a life-raft when you’re cast out to sea, as the Sharma family illustrates across the season.
Perhaps the most memorable example of the intimacy in tradition is Bridgerton’s haldi ceremony scene, where Edwina Sharma is preparing for her wedding. In Hindu practice, the haldi ceremony is meant to be held the morning of one’s wedding day. It marks the beginning of a long set of marriage rituals and involves a paste made from turmeric (haldi), sandalwood, and rose water being applied on the face, arms, hands, knees, and feet of the bride and groom to bless the couple before their nuptials. The bright yellow color of the paste is considered auspicious and believed to ward off evil spirits, and the medicinal properties of haldi is said to bring a healthy glow to the wearer in preparation for the upcoming occasion. Nowadays, haldi ceremonies are celebratory, filled with music and pomp and crowds of loved ones showering well wishes upon those soon to be wed.
Bridgerton shares with us a different version of the event. In a breathtaking, dreamy scene where garlands of orange marigolds are strung throughout the room, Edwina’s mother mixes the haldi paste, and her sister spreads it across her arms as the three women dressed in similar shades of the aforementioned auspicious yellow muse on her future as a bride, a Viscountess. Edwina has been dreaming of this day, the exact moment where haldi would be smeared across her face in preparation for the marriage she has been well-groomed for her entire life. There is no pageantry or spectacle, as there would be if you were to attend a haldi ceremony today, but there is intimacy. In the throes of a cultural tradition that is commonplace back home, three women who are outsiders in the society they have been thrust into have only each other to celebrate the passing of a major milestone. While isolated, the collective experience they share is enough. It’s about more than the superficial beauty of the scene, it’s the promise that when all else feels foreign, the comforts of our history can be there to ground us.
Simone shared in a press conference that she remembers filming the haldi scene well. “I never really imagined we would be on the set one day performing a scene like that,” she said. The emotions surrounding it may have been heightened by the background music, an instrumental of the Bollywood classic “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham,” a timely inclusion of a song by Lata Mangeshkar, the recently passed Indian music icon that many are still mourning. Charithra shared that the string composition brought tears to her eyes the first time she heard it. “That movie and that song is a Bollywood staple, everyone’s raised with it,” she explained during a press conference. “It’s such a family song and it’s got great meaning behind it that makes sense so it was indicative of my identity and I love that.” I’ll admit, I cried a little during the scene, too.
The ugly truth of white supremacy is that representation in Western media will not save us. Diversity on screens will not protect us from race-based violence, Islamophobia, or xenophobia. You cannot cast a few brown people in a television show and expect them to bear the burden of representing the billion other people on Earth who look like them (despite many producers and consumers of television and film expecting exactly that). Representation also doesn’t mean that we have to share all of us, as it would be impossible to even try – we are so much more than our marigold-laden wedding rituals, more than the coconut oil in our hair. But it feels safe here. We share mason jars of freshly ground haldi with our friends, listen to our favorite songs by Lata-ji with our parents, and experience belonging.
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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: “Bridgerton” Season 2 Cast: Meet the Characters and Where They Are After Season 1
