Finally Seeing South Asian Media Representation

Thanks to an episode of Criminal Minds, I happen to know that your teenage years are some of your most formative when it comes to developing your individualized and eclectic taste in music. For me, this entails a little bit of everything: jazz, chill electronic, desi hip hop, classical piano, and some Tik Tok songs here and there. For my parents, both Indian immigrants, this means American icons like Elvis Presley, Elton John, and Michael Jackson, but also Hindustani music, a style of music frequently attributed to northern regions of India.

Before I developed my teenage audacity to talk back to my parents and my individualized taste in music, the soundtrack of our family car rides was composed by the musical tastes of my parents: a mix of my dad’s favorite rockstars and the Indian ragas my classically-trained mother used to sing as a child. 

I didn’t like my dad’s music until around age 10 when I started developing a taste for classic rock. Before then, I much preferred the melodic musings of the Bengali singers that my mom used to play during car rides. So when the time came in third grade for my honor as student-of-the-week, it wasn’t much of a question for me what music I would play for my class—I brought Indian music. 

In retrospect, 30 third graders cringing at my music as they noshed on store-bought brownies on a Friday afternoon of school is a trifling observation, but at that age, I thought it meant that my Indian heritage was weird. Thanks to my 8-year-old flair for the dramatic, I decided to actively make efforts to quash its presence in my identity from that moment on. By age 12, I had quit Kathak, the Indian classical dance I had been studying for the past six (maybe seven?) years, effectively stopped going to the Hindu temple my family used to frequent and successfully erased every so-called ‘Indian’ aspect of my identity. As much as I hate to admit it, I found a twisted sense of pride in calling myself a bad ‘Indian’ during my high school years, simply because I was so humiliated by the stereotypes and general assumptions that I thought people would make about me. I wanted to be one of the cool and popular girls I was used to seeing on TV, not the nerdy and awkward Indian girl I felt like I was during my teenage years. 

But pretending I wasn’t Indian didn’t get me any closer to being one of the girls I saw on the television screen, and it was never going to change the reality that no matter how much I denied it, I’m still a first-generation Indian-American. And being a first-generation with no regard for her culture is still an Indian identity— it’s just one that I’m ashamed of.

I was an Indian girl who paradoxically found pride in disrespecting her own family’s culture. As frustrating as it can be to tell the curious layperson that I don’t eat curry at home, there’s nothing that cut quite as deep as the realization that came to fruition for me during college: my juvenile obstinacy has left me with a long list of never-have-I-evers in regards to my Indian culture. Never have I ever celebrated Holi or Diwali with my family. Never have I ever held my head up high while wearing traditional Indian garb. Never have I ever been able to share my nationality with an established sense of pride. And deep down, I want all of these things. I always have. I may have turned my head to religion in hopes of assimilation and I may have quit dance, forsaking the ghungroo bells that used to decorate my ankles, but I want to reintroduce religion and dance to my life again. There was no pride in my sickening form of self-perpetuated xenophobia.

I have no space in my life to conserve ethnic prejudice in the comfort and sanctity of my own home. I want to carry my Bengali culture with dignity, and this is why it has been an ongoing goal of mine to learn more about my heritage. All the never-have-I-evers I’ve collected thanks to ignorance now sit on my bucket list, and I’m finally at a point in my life where I can own up to my past mistakes and move forward in accordance with values that are important to me.

Here I’ve effectively displayed for you my lifelong intrapersonal cultural battle. And Mindy Kaling has attempted to do the same for her own experience with exploring her cultural identity in her latest brain-child Never Have I Ever. With meticulous attention to detail, just a splash of classic Mindy absurdism, and a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I don’t need to sing the show’s praises...it speaks for itself. But as with most television, commendation is accompanied by condemnation, and for Never Have I Ever, this comes in the form of frustrations regarding accuracy. 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a show to live up to your expectations, especially when the culture on display is your own, but accuracy is an interesting conundrum. 

There are thousands of ethnic groups that fall under ‘Indian’ classification, 22 official languages along with 720 dialects, at least nine recognized religions, a complicated caste system, political and social tensions, and countless other factors, much of which is frequently clouded by a North Indian cultural hegemony. Some of the most popular representations of Indian culture, like samosas and Bollywood music, are more representative of Northern regions, but appreciated by most Indians nonetheless. And this predominance of North Indian culture is easily noticed in certain episodes like the Ganesh Puja celebration episode, which showcases a classical Indian dance scene—dancers sporting lehengas and ornate gold jewelry suitable for the occasion, but dancing to Bollywood music rather than the Carnatic music typically associated with Mindy’s Tamil background. And during the chaotic lunch scene that takes place towards the end of the series, the main character Devi is said to eat samosas, a popular, but traditionally North Indian snack. Perhaps changing these small details to fit with the culinary habits and musical styles of South India would make the show more ‘accurate’ in regards to Tamil culture, but food and media are not restricted to specific regions of India, even more so in this day and age, where multiculturalism has bled into almost every aspect of our being. So what does accuracy mean for Indian representation when there are so many moving parts contributing to one person’s experience?

This show does have some faults, including caustic jokes we could have done without, but I’d argue that accuracy is not one of them. It’s not Mindy’s job to speak on behalf of all South Asian immigrants in America, and it feels unfair to expect this from her. For some, this show will be relatable, and for others, it won’t, but at its core, Never Have I Ever is a comedic teenage Bildungsroman, not a teaching vessel for non-Indian viewers to learn what their Indian friends experience at home. 

South Asian representation in America has come a long way from the nameable Simpsons’ Kwik-E-Mart clerk of the 90s. And eventually, I would love for various lenses of the South-Asian immigrant experience to be brought to light: highlighting religions other than Hinduism and a wider variety of ethnic groups, the reality of colorism and its impact on those that do not benefit from fair-skin privilege, languages other than Hindi, and families whose ideas of success are characterized by more than an Ivy League education. But until we get there, I’d like to think that the growing density of media outlets and television shows like Never Have I Ever will make the task of cultural blending less changeable and frenetic. Publicized multiculturalism is by no means the sole determinant of whether or not children will embrace their identity, but I’ve always found it helpful to find relatability with the shows I spend my leisure time watching, and broadening South Asian representation is long overdue. South Asian media moguls like Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj and Kumail Nanjiani have done a great job breaking ground in regards to representation, bringing forth figures whose heritage plays a role in their identity, and I’m optimistic that Kaling will continue to impress with Never Have I Ever’s confirmed second season.

By Anita Mukherjee

Indie rock enthusiast and home chef who will always make time to watch a stand-up special