Indians in Media

Suddenly there’s a bunch of new options for Americans to see people of Indian origin on TV! It’s not just TV, either. Indians and Americans of Indian ethnicity are making themselves heard and I love it.

TV

Master of None (on Netflix): Aziz Ansari plays Dev, an Indian-American actor. It’s hilarious and my favorite episode is the one about his parents and his friend’s parents. Ansari cast his real mother and father and they bring so much heart to it that they steal the show.

Quantico (also available at Hulu Plus): An engaging drama about an FBI class training cut with the same class trying to figure out which one of them is behind a terrorist attack a few years later. The star of the show is Indian actress Priyanka Chopra and she is phenomenal in it. I’ve seen some Bollywood actresses not transition well to English language media but Chopra’s acting is superb. I’m looking forward to the next season for this one!

Movie

Meet the Patels (also on Netflix): Funny and cute, it is written, directed, and stared in by siblings Geeta Patel and Ravi Patel.

Video Game

Farcry 4: My husband has been playing this game and I knew that it was meant to be set somewhere in Southeast Asia. It seems to be meant to be based mostly on Nepal. I’ve been impressed looking over his shoulder with how much Hindu detail there is to it. Right down to the loading screen saying “one minute” in Devanagari! There is Devanagari script all over the place in the setting. The characters names are nearly all Hindu (the only thing that throws me off a bit is that there’s a female character named Lakshmana). There are Rakshasa in flashback scenes.

This review isn’t totally favorable but my husband LOVES it

Politics

I was also surprised and delighted to hear that a potential Supreme Court nominee here in the U.S. is a man called Sri Srinivasan, a Hindu democrat. I would be so thrilled to see a Hindu in that position. It would also add much needed diversity to our Supreme Court.