Never Have I Ever…Raised a Daughter Alone — Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar

“Time to watch an undemanding teen dramedy.” That’s where I was mentally, when I decided to watch “Never Have I Ever” on Netflix by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher. My expectations from teen dramas are set quite low. I was simply glad to see an Indian-American teenage protagonist who actually looked like a teenage girl.

I believe no one is too old to watch a well-made coming of age story. There is something therapeutic about the whole process if the story is handled with sensitivity. We find answers and closures to a lot of issues we dealt with while growing up.

Devi Vishwakumar (Maitrayi Ramakrishnan) is a 15-year old girl born in the USA to Indian immigrant parents. She is an overachiever, who is coming to terms with her dad’s untimely and sudden demise by checking off everything on her to-do list to be more than just your typical Indian class nerd. She doesn’t give herself the time to process her father’s recent death, an event so traumatic that left her legs temporarily paralyzed. She wants to rush the moving on process at the cost of her mental health and relationships.

Devi is tired of feeling pitied. When her legs recover, she decides to finally have a normal American high school life, which includes getting a boyfriend. I found her journey funny and flawed. She found herself in trouble often and ended up being an unpredictable and unreliable friend to her best friends sometimes. As I was watching her story, I found that her mother Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar (Poorna Jagannathan) was also on a journey of her own.

Nalini lost her unbelievably handsome, wonderfully sweet, and angelic husband, Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy) unexpectedly to a fatal heart attack. She always thought they still had decades together. Raising a teenager alone in a country that still doesn’t feel like home, while handling her dermatology practice hardens Nalini up even more. Mohan was the sensitive gentle parent, while Nalini is the tiger mom. Mohan pushed Devi to reach for the stars by using love and inspiration. Nalini does the same with warnings and bickering. She loves her husband more than her daughter. Devi loves her father more than her mother. Both lost the person they loved the most in the world. And now, they are left alone with each other to learn to live and love without him.

Nalini is a woman trapped in her conditioning of Indian cultural expectations. She expects Devi to be best at everything she does and get that highly coveted admission in Princeton. She wants Devi to have only female friends and not attend any parties. The only relationship she is allowed with boys is of competition and enmity. That’s why the only boy allowed in their house over a dinner is Devi’s arch nemesis at school, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison).

Devi is flawed, hot-headed, and reckless at times. She isn’t the perfect daughter, Nalini always wanted. Indian mothers have strange and unrealistic expectations from their daughters. They want their daughters to have a mind of Shakuntala Devi, beauty of Deepika Padukone, culinary skills of Tarla Dalal, etiquettes of the British royalty, and a libido of a rock (of course, only until marriage though or else how will the grandkids arrive). Enter Kamala, Devi’s cousin a.k.a the perfect young Indian woman. She moves in with the Vishwakumars from India after Mohan’s death for her post-graduate education in the USA. Kamala is a biologist pursing her doctoral degree at the esteemed Caltech. She is sweet, docile, polite, helpful, overtly apologetic, academically accomplished, and has the looks and body of an Instagram influencer. And to make things even more difficult for Devi, Kamala is also seemingly open to the idea of an arranged marriage. Undoubtedly, Devi believes that Kamala is someone her mother would always want as a daughter, instead of her.

Nalini rarely shows affection and empathy towards her daughter. She isn’t the one to give out hugs freely or having difficult conversations. Sometimes you question whether her husband was enough for her and she never really wanted a child. She looks at Devi as a project she has to finish by sending her to an Ivy League school and then hopefully marrying her off to an accomplished Indian boy from a nice family some day. In spite of her steely unyielding attitude, Nalini also has her moments of rebellion and vulnerability, which are shown wonderfully.

Nalini decides to take Devi and Kamala to Ganesh Pooja celebrations organized by the Indian Community within a year of her husband’s death to prove that she still has her life and family together. She chooses to dress up in a gorgeous green and red hued saree, which are classic Hindu bridal colors. She doesn’t believe in letting herself go completely and answers back when the pesky intrusive aunties comment she doesn’t need to color her hair black anymore, since she should be mourning her husband’s death instead. Nalini is confident in her choices and doesn’t believe that life has to halt for women who have lost their husbands. Women dress up and want to look nice because it feels good to do that. They don’t do it for attracting men or ensuring they don’t leave.

Nalini doesn’t feel guilty for bringing store-bought cupcakes for Devi’s Bake sale day event at school. She gives it back by saying she was too busy saving a patient’s life from melanoma to have time to bake at home. Nalini is a hard-working single mother who is doing the best she can. She shows up for her daughter and has her back when needed. She is surprisingly supportive towards Kamala, when she figures out Kamala is not ready for an arranged marriage and had been seeing someone secretly.

Nalini’s complete disbelief in therapy and talking about her grief comes crashing down when she finally opens up to her daughter’s counselor and has an emotional breakdown. Realizing that sometimes you have to fall apart and not have everything under control to process the most painful loss of your life. The love she has for her husband cannot be replaced with her daughter. But she takes a step towards amending her relationship with Devi after their ugly fight, when all their resentments and pent-up issues come raging out in the open. In the end, you see the beginning of a love story between a mother and a daughter. They cry, they hug, they mourn, and then they smile as the sun sets on the horizon of Mohan’s favorite beach. You can see Vishwakumars falling in love with each other all over again.

This show wasn’t a teen romance, it was a story about a child and a parent coming together and strengthening their relationship with reconciliation and acceptance. It was also a mother’s story of letting go and moving on by shedding the shackles of judgment, control, and expectations.