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Thursday, May 28, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

‘Never Have I Ever’ gone 
into an introspective spiral

SUNITHA PALAT
MiC Staff Writer

Recently, I binged Season 1 of Mindy 
Kaling’s “Never Have I Ever,” a classic com-
ing-of-age teen rom-com revolving around 
the life of a 15-year old Indian American, 
Devi Vishwakumar. At first I was uninter-
ested in another heartfelt yet cringey Netflix 
series, but the show’s mixed reviews sparked 
my curiosity: While a few of my friends 
told me the show perpetuated stereotypical 
tropes of South Asian Americans — a sight 
I did not need to see — “NHIE” has also 
been acclaimed as “a watershed moment for 
the representation of South Asians in Hol-
lywood.” Curious, but more so bored out of 
my mind during quarantine, I gave the ten-
episode show a try.
In summary, the plot revolves around 
Devi’s standard trials and tribulations as a 
15-year-old girl. She navigates the ups and 
downs of relationships with her best friends, 
her mother and of course, the boy she’s been 
crushing on. Yet, her adolescence and search 
for a different, newer and cooler identity is 
what made it a bit more complex when she 
loses her father to cardiac arrest. The show — 
as expected — is heartfelt, cringey and cute, 
but is also filled with vulnerable moments 
relating to her grief and her Indian heritage. 
Among all of these, my favorite trait of the 
show was that it made me feel represented. 
When I think of Indian Americans in 
the shows I watched growing up, I think of 
Ravi from “Jessie,” Baljeet from “Phineas 
and Ferb,” Raj from “The Big Bang Theory” 
and a few other often socially awkward, 
teased, overly studious characters who did 
not represent me. Devi, on the other hand, 
does. She has a full American accent, cares 
about school while also caring about social 
goals (popularity, her crush, fitting in) like 
any normal teenager, hangs out with white 
friends, likes cheeseburgers and doesn’t 
outwardly exert her Indian identity. Watch-
ing her character — particularly how she 

Immigrant Parents: An 
unspoken love language

AAKASH RAY
MiC Staff Writer

ANURIMA KUMAR

My mother called me to her room late at 
night. The house was eerily quiet as it was 
every night, my father already fast asleep 
downstairs and the rest of the house void of 
sound except for the dripping of a leaky fau-
cet. I sighed as I climbed down from my bed 
and shuffled towards her room, predicting 
that the subsequent conversation would be of 
little significance. I knew she noticed I was 
upset earlier today and would ask if anything 
happened, and I would of course deflect and 
tell her everything was okay. It was difficult 
for me to express my concerns with either 
of my parents, as it often resulted in me 
explaining my worries with little applicable, 
almost surface level feedback. Perhaps it was 
the language barrier. While we both speak 
our mother tongue, Bangla, my thoughts and 
ideas were always expressed better in Eng-
lish. This was how it had always been. 
Yet, tonight seemed a little different. I 
sat down on her bed, and my mother didn’t 
say a word. Time seemed to stand still for a 
moment. Mother and son just waiting for one 
another to speak. 
Impatiently I asked, “What?”
My mother just shook her head and said, 
“Nothing,” in Bangla.
For a few more seconds, I sat down and 
then slowly, as if there was a gravitational 
force pulling me towards her, I rested my 
head next to her. I felt a weight off my shoul-
ders retract and my muscles began to relax as 
I let my body go. I felt my mother’s hand on 
my head, small but strong. My ever present 
headache gradually receded as she massaged 
my head, and I felt a small bit of relief after 
a long day. No more words were spoken that 
night.
And so, this slowly became a part of my 
interaction with my mother. Rather than 
speaking about what happened throughout 

the day, good or bad, we would sit in silence 
together, her often watching a movie on Net-
flix, and I scrolling on my phone. Some days 
I would watch a movie by her side and other 
days we would both read next to each other. 
This became our time together.
It’s commonly known that there are five 
main “love languages,” five ways to express 
and experience love: words of affirmation, 
quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service 
and physical touch, as described by Gary 
Chapman in his book The Five Love Lan-
guages. Quality time refers to time set aside 
for paying full and undivided attention to a 
person or matter at hand. While I can make 
a case that my interactions with my mother 
are quality time or physical touch, I believe 
that there is an unspoken love language that 
many parents utilize. One where our worlds 
are different but unwavering faith and sup-
port are never absent.
Often at the dinner tables of my Cauca-
sian friends, I would see their parents light 
up about the stories they told from their col-
lege days. They spoke endlessly about “how 
it was back in the day,” and my friends would 
spoon it up with the rest of their meal with 
the utter satisfaction of truly getting to know 
their parents even more. It all came full cir-
cle for them as they now find themselves in 
the same position their parents were in 25 
years ago. In my case, it’s different. My par-
ents don’t go into the details of their teenage 
years. It’s sometimes frustrating since I feel 
my relationship with my parents will never 
be as strong because the lives they led back 
home are too foreign for me to ever connect 
with. As I grew older, I realized my parents 
showed their love and enthusiasm in other 
ways. 
Although not so evident, the feeling of 
faith endowed upon another can be one of 
the most heartfelt yet subtle in nature.

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navigates her heritage — reminded me of my 
young self. The painfully honest and genuine 
depiction of her uncomfortableness, slight 
disdain and forced acceptance of her Indian-
ness triggered some unexpected introspec-
tion within myself while watching the show, 
especially during episode 4, “Never Have I 
Ever...Felt Super Indian.”
A hit Hindi song from the 1970s, “Dum 
Maro Dum,” kicks this episode off while 
Devi is being dressed up by her cousin. She is 
adorned with jhumka earrings, a thick set of 
gold necklaces and a bright blue and gold half 
sari. The look on her face is so recognizable; 
it’s a sense of claustrophobia in a seemingly 
foreign (and itchy) outfit, an expression I’ve 
held every time my mom gets me ready for 
an Indian wedding, religious event or family 
party. In this episode, Devi attends Ganesh 
Puja (a Hindu holiday) put on by the Hindu 
Association of Southern California. I smiled 
as I saw my own personal experiences in 
many parts of the show, like weird conver-
sations with Aunties. But a huge moment of 
truth came out when Devi interacted with 
Harish, a family friend who came back from 
Stanford to attend the event. After asking 
why he would ever come to this “lame fest,” 
he replies:
“My roommate Nick is Native American, 
and he’s so into being Native American. 
At first, I was like, ‘You’re away from your 
parents. You don’t have to pretend to care 
about your ancestry or whatever.’ But then 
he took me to their campus powwow. No one 
was standing in the corner making fun of it. 
They were dancing and chanting, and having 
a great time, and it made me think, why do 
I think it’s so weird and embarrassing to be 
Indian?”
The juxtaposition of the two characters on 
my screen represented the chasm I’ve been 
stuck between for the past five years of my 
life. 

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