I think my heart stopped during Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever

I have cried so many times over the past two days while binging Netflix series Never Have I Ever, for so many inexplicable reasons. Perhaps it's the undeniable connection I feel to Devi Vishwakumar as a first-generation migrant. Perhaps it's the connection I feel to her teenage-girl mind and obsession with a half-Japanese boy (so my type). Perhaps it's the all-too-familiar mother-daughter relationship. Perhaps it's the grief she feels towards her dead father. Perhaps it's the intensity of feeling like a lost girl. In my last cry-out on Twitter I screamed "Words cannot express how much I love Never Have I Ever", but I'm going to try.

I first heard about Never Have I Ever through Mindy Kaling's twitter about a month ago, and for obvious reasons, immediately added the show to my watch list. First of all, it's a first-generation migrant story. I eat that shit up. Second of all, it's Mindy freaking Kaling. I flashback to 2014, watching The Mindy Project in the school library. Mindy was a chaotic, comedic, woman-of-colour doctor. My dream. In my teenage eyes, Mindy could never, and will never, do any wrong. Of course she'd make this show everything I'd ever dreamed of.

Unpacking the ultimate first-generation migrant experience portrayed by Devi, an especially relatable scene occurred in Episode 4: Never Have I Ever... Felt Super Indian. Devi arrives at a Hindu event feeling complete disdain towards her culture. She knocks down her traditional dress, speaks about how the whole event is dorky, and ultimately, feels ashamed. She just wants to fit in, and according to the norms of her predominantly white high school, being All-American is the way. This brings me back to my 14-year-old self touching down at the airport in Malaysia. Looking around, I just felt... better than everyone. I was from a white country, with white people, where we did cool white people things like in the American movies. As far as I'd seen, Asians were nerds. We played the piano and got good grades. In the back of my mind, I think I'd always wanted that aesthetic of being part of a big blonde sorority girl group - because that was normal.

At the Hindu event, Devi runs into an older family friend who's already left for his Ivy League college (obviously), and is back to celebrate the holiday. Expecting him to make fun of their culture as they usually do, he instead expresses his newfound love for being Indian. "I just thought, am I going to be this insecure Indian guy who hates doing Indian things? Coz that's it's own identity. It's just a shitty one." I feel like as we grow older, we go through this journey of falling in love with our culture and having the best of both worlds. In my case, this realisation began with Asian YouTubers (The Fung Brothers, NigaHiga), who shook me into understanding that hating on your culture is not attractive. This led me into a phase of digging deep into the rabbit hole to figure out what the whole immigrant experience means, wearing a cheongsam to my high school graduation, feeling unique, hyper-sexualised, occasionally fetishised, and having a disdain for the people I met who really did think that being an Asian who hated being Asian was a cool identity (God, I've encountered so many of them). 

However, habitual views from repetitive under-representation still run deep, and even post-enlightenment, I still occasionally catch myself. Coming to university where I study medicine, a classic Asian degree, I encountered a population of people who had grown up in a predominantly Asian demographic. These suburbs and communities are everywhere in Western cities nowadays, and I love seeing it, but I didn't grow up in it. I couldn't help but feel my 14-year-old self at the Malaysian airport creep in. I had this underlying feeling that I was better than them, cooler than them, because I had so many white friends, and had experienced all the cool white people things like in the American movies. After everything I'd learned about loving myself, this pathetic white-supremacy mind-set could still creep in. Over the years, I can feel myself growing further into my culture and my own skin, but it's a journey I'll probably be on forever in an ever-changing cultural landscape.

Another profound experience represented by Devi was her argumentative, head-strong relationship with her mother. I'm not sure if this is a migrant-thing, with all the opposing cultural views, or an every-race thing, but goodness I could see so much of my teenage self living with my mother - except this time I could see it from the maternal side too. In Never Have I Ever Devi and her mother argue not just about the usual strict parenting rules, but also about smaller things like losing her sheet music. They get so frustrated over the little things that it turns into screaming matches, with neither side budging. I recall my 16-year-old self yelling down the stairs at my mum, screaming "I hate you"s and "You don't understand." and she'd get so riled up and scream back "You know what? You're a bitch!" even though we're not allowed to call each other that. I remember my mum sobbing that I'm too headstrong, that she can't deal with me anymore, in the same way Devi's mother does. "She's no daughter of mine." 

What I didn't realise at the time was how hurt my mother felt by my words, crying in her bedroom every time I told her I hated her; or how difficult it is for one stubborn woman to raise another, in a foreign country. I remember the night before I moved out of home, my mother and I got into our usual fight about my independence. I wanted to go to a party with my college friends. She wanted to have dinner with me one last time. At the end of the argument I made some lame excuse about "it hurting too much to see her again. I needed to rip the bandaid off." and she began to cry, hugged me and told me she was going to miss me so much. I began to cry too, which I didn't understand because I was literally ditching her for a college party. It took me almost a year out of home to really appreciate my mum, not just for everything she's done for me, but for the phenomenal woman she is. Since then, we've had many conversations in hindsight, about the cultural barrier and the way she raised me - every calculated move she made in sending me to public school then private school (for the exposure, then the opportunities), the forced trips back to Malaysia (to understand my culture) and the rules she enforced (our values). Who I am today was not me independently forging a path for myself. It was her all along.

And finally, let's talk about the mind of a teenage girl. At the beginning of Never Have I Ever Devi wishes to "be invited to a party with alcohol and hard drugs" and for a hot boyfriend. If that isn't the perfect representation of my desperate mind as a teenage girl, I don't know what is. Although, I would've felt a lot less desperate if I knew every teenage girl was probably thinking the same thing at the time. Where was this show when I was 14? It's in the way Devi runs up to her hot half-Japanese crush and blatantly asks him to have sex with her, with the naivety of somebody who doesn't understand what sex really is - We wanted something we hadn't seriously comprehended yet.

Underlying all this is an ocean of unexplained emotions. In Devi's case, she's struggling with the trauma of her dad's recent death. In the case of every other teenage girl, it was probably this feeling of a deep seated insecurity. Unpacking the reasoning behind wanting to drink alcohol and have a boyfriend, it all comes down to belonging and validation from our peers. Teenage girls are fragile and are finding who they are. As we grow older, we branch away from this susceptibility, but ultimately, as a 20-year-old, I feel like my mind is just a wiser version of that lost girl - meaning, I'm still lost. It's all about making mistakes, and existential crises every day, and losing your shit over the smallest things - and having the people who know you best ask you what you want, what it is you're striving for because you, yourself don't even know. I don't think I'm the only one here.

And I don't know if it's because it's a migrant-thing that so many experiences in this show resonate with me, or if there's elements of this that relate to everyone. But yeah, words cannot explain how much I love Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever. Just freaking watch it.

Love,

M