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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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