The second season of Made in Heaven, Prime Video’s wedding drama, has released to acclaim this past week. The show, created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, has often been praised for taking up social issues and presenting them in the narrative. Episode 5 of the second season sees a Dalit bride opt for a Buddhist wedding to reassert her caste identity and pride. While the episode has been praised for its sensitivity, Dalit author Yashica Dutt has now criticised the show and the makers for using her life story and work without permission.
The episode in question is titled The Heart Skipped a Beat is directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and stars Radhika Apte as the bride, a Dalit author credited with coining/popularising the phrase ‘coming out as a Dalit’. In reality, the phrase is the title of a book written by Yashica Dutt, based on experiences of her own life, something Ghaywan acknowledged in a social media post after the show’s release. The show, itself, however, makes no mention of Dutt or her book while referencing it freely.
On Monday, Dutt took to Instagram to share a long note about the show, where she criticised the makers but also thaked them. “The Heart Skipped a Beat, the fifth episode of Amazon Prime's Made in Heaven is no less than a cinematic triumph when it comes to showcasing what it truly looks like for a Dalit woman to take her power back in this casteist society. The scene where the Dalit author who is from Columbia, has written a book about 'Coming Out', and talks about how her grandmother 'manually cleaned toilets' (while wearing all blue as an homage to Ambedkar), asserts her selfhood with her life partner to-be, gave me chills. It was surreal to see a version of my life on screen that wasn't but yet was still me. But soon the heartbreak set in. They were my words but my name was nowhere. What could have been a celebration of our collective ideas was now tinged with sadness. The ideas I cultivated, that are my life's work, that I continue to receive immense hate still for just speaking, were taken without permission or credit,” she wrote.
While praising the episode and the director Neeraj Ghaywan, Dutt criticised the show for erasing her contribution. “The Made in Heaven episode is stunning in its portrayal of a Dalit woman and her Buddhist inter-caste wedding. It also unfortunately erases my contribution to my own ideas. I immensely appreciate Neeraj Ghaywan's public Instagram where he acknowledges my work and contribution to the show. But it also came AFTER hundreds of viewers questioned about my missing credentials, not before. And does very little for the millions of the global viewers of this Amazon Prime show. The Hindi Film/TV space has a notorious and historic pattern of taking anything from everywhere to create its narratives. Dalit thought, ideas and labor have always been consumed and up for the taking. Now, when are showing more Dalits on screen, let's also duly acknowledge those of us who contributed to creating those ideas,” her note further read.
Concluding her note, the author and activist requested Ghaywan and Made in Heaven’s makers to formally acknowledge her work and its role in the making of the episode. She added, “I request Neeraj Ghaywan, and the show creators Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti to formally acknowledge my life's work and ideas that contributed to this episode, which is among the most talked in the entire series, beyond a post on social media and within the show's credits. So that the millions of its viewers know one its central ideas was not created out of ether, but out of the blood, sweat and a lifetime of tears of a Dalit woman that the world had decided to cast aside.”
The author has received a lot of support on her post with many commenters sympathising with her for not receiving credit and criticising the show. So far, the show’s makers or the platform streaming it – Amazon Prime Video – has not commented on the matter.
Made in Heaven is the story of the titular wedding planning company from Delhi, led by Tara and Karan (Sobhita Dhulipala and Arjun Mathur). The critically-acclaimed show also stars Shivani Raghuvanshi, Shashank Arora, Mona Singh, Trinetra Haldar, Jim Sarbh, and Kalki Koechlin, along with a long line up of guest stars.
