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Private Notes
Melbourne has by far the largest community of young Indians in Australia. Twenty-nine-year-old Dalvinder grew up in Australia with traditional Sikh parents. She’s now under pressure to get married before she turns 30. “In the Indian community, when you reach your late twenties, everyone’s like ‘Oh, when are you getting married? When’s your daughter getting married? When’s your sister getting married’... it’s like chicken going off.”
In order to please her dad she opens an account with the world’s largest matrimonial website, Shaadi.com. After a month of dating suitors that fail to impress, she takes matters into her own hands and looks for a partner on Tinder. There she meets 29-year-old tradie Shamsher – who is not the sort of man she was looking for at all. In fact he’s a traditional Sikh and a lot like her own father.
Tarun is also 29 and grew up in a middle class Hindu family in India. He’s been in Melbourne for a decade and has a good job in finance. But something’s missing. He’s lonely, and his parents back home are urging him to marry, or he will bring shame on the family. “I have to get married. If I do not get married by thirty, I will be considered as damaged goods.”
So Tarun embarks on a rollercoaster journey of speed dating, online searches, and even a trip to India in the hope of finding his perfect match. But as his 30th birthday looms, he realises he can’t do it alone – he must turn to his dad for help.
For Dalvinder and Tarun, the search for love is fraught with difficulty as they try to balance the expectations and beliefs of their Indian-born parents, who are increasingly at odds with the values of Australia and with their own hopes and dreams. Surprisingly, arranged marriage remains the preference for many young Indians who are now returning to the tried-and-true methods of the past, despite living in a culture obsessed with romantic love. But add the stress of class and caste barriers – and the
Norfolk Island is five miles long by three miles wide; or as some would say of this close-knit community, five minutes long and three minutes wide when it comes to gossip. As one of Australia’s most remote external territories, and with a local population descended from the legendary Bounty mutineers, it’s no surprise they have their own way of doing things. With their own language, a blend of old seafaring English and Tahitian, and their own hidden culture, many don’t see themselves as Australian – that it says so on their passport is merely ‘a technicality’. But recent hard times have forced the island to reach out to Australia for help, and with mainland help comes mainland rules. A modern day mutiny is brewing offshore.
For more than a year, TV cameras were given unique access into a secret subculture: the 200 families of the Adass Israel community, Australia’s most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, as they strive to maintain their ancient faith in the modern world. Though they themselves shun television and the seductive temptations and trappings of modernity, they agreed to go on camera for the very first time. But not everyone inside this ultra-strict, ultra-insular and virtually self-sufficient community approved: some members opposed the filming because they view exposure to the outside world as a challenge to their strictly Jewish way of life, which largely comprises of piety and prayer. Told through the eyes of three members – Raizel Fogel, Shlomo Abelesz and Rabbi Aryeh Goldman – Strictly Jewish lifts the lid on this closely guarded Jewish sect, revealing a community steeped in ancient rites and rituals, and managing to maintain an ancient faith more than 5000 years old.
