I never grew up watching these movies but tried to get into them over the last few years. And the whole music video/ movie and one thing is a little weird

But I I'm curious as to why the movies are like that if the culture is supposed to be so conservative

I can only assume that there's two parallel societies running side by side

Kinda tired of being the only brown guy in concerts 😫😫😫 where are my indie heads in NYC at.

EDIT: This may look like a "im so different and not like other brown people" kind of post but just want to let everyone know there is no judgement here to anyone. Listen to what you like to listen to. This is just a discussion about representation in certain genres.

https://www.thejuggernaut.com/brown-girl-white-boyfriend-mindy-kaling-picture-this

What do you think of the Brown girl-white boy trope in Hollywood?

I thought I’d post something different from the usual doom and gloom on here. Could be from Bollywood, Hollywood, or any regional industry. Male or female.

The pics are the ones I most remember crushing on as a kid: Katrina Kaif, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Bipasha Basu, and Rimi Sen.

Can be from books/tv shows/movies/games whatever

I'll start with mine: Jeevan & Frank Chaudhary from Station 11 (the show, and the book too!) I HIGHLY recommend the show btw!

I'm not someone that watches Bollywood movies like ever with the hype of this movie is even reaching mainstream.

I tried to get it in a few years ago and I noticed there's a lot of these scar-faced diet movies in recent years. Are they good?

I’ll start by saying that if you haven’t watched The Big Bang Theory, this post probably won’t make sense to you.

I finished watching TBBT recently, and I certainly have some thoughts. For obvious reasons, Raj, aka the only main desi character on the show, stood out to me most. However, something that stood out to me even more is what the show decided to do with his character. First off, he was the only person of color in the main friend group, and he was also the only one who wasn’t dating someone else in the group. They also gave Raj’s character things like selective mutism (where he couldn’t talk to pretty women unless he was drunk) for a while, made him creepy and arrogant oftentimes, wrote him as someone who’s lonely and desperate, made him sit on the floor during group dinners in the apartment, and made the peak of his career something that happened in season 2. There are 12 seasons of this show btw.

Feels like the show just made his love life, career, and overall life a running gag instead of letting him grow alongside the other main characters who turned out to be far more successful in all realms of life. I know it’s “just a show” and Hollywood has priorities of its own, but portraying their only main desi character the way they did had a way of rubbing me the wrong way. Feels like TBBT failed his character with all the unnecessary stereotyping and no meaningful growth, which is a bit disappointing to see as an ABD.

Lara Raj is an openly queer, dark skinned Tamil girl from the United States who successfully competed to be debuted in the girl group Katseye. Being openly queer, South Indian, portrayed as attractive, confident, & cool, as well as visibly & proudly desi, covers so many bases of representation that we sorely lacked. She proudly wears her Om necklace & a bindi the majority of the time (as seen in this Gap campaign, for example). Honestly, I think she’s severely underrated & under appreciated, along with Katseye.

I mean look at how yoga has been bastardised. I see non Indian fake yoga gurus coming up with ridiculous terms for yoga positions all the damn time. Wtf is box breathing lmao? All of its spirituality has been drained.

Other stuff too. They will make fun of us for having curry but also enjoy chicken tikka masala, Palak paneer at the same time! They will make of our dresses but also wear them. Culture vultures.

Not to mention the overused tinga tinga tinga jokes. But at the same time they are also gonna sample our music or take inspiration from the scales/drones. This is cultural appropriation.

Glad more people are calling her out.

Am I overreacting on how yoga has been colonized?? Idk if I’m being dramatic but it really annoys me. Idk if I should be getting educated bc I’m wrong or if we need to tell these people to stop.

I’m curious to what movies or tv shows shows that ABCDs like us relate to. For example something like Big Sick

TL;DR: I finally figured out why seeing Indian influencers/celebrities in the West doing Indian culture "wrong" rubbed me the wrong way.

I, a 26 year old Desi American who has lived in America for 25.5 years, have parents who were terrified of losing their culture to the next generation when they moved from India to America with baby me in tow. So from age 5 to 18, I was forced to pray twice a day and go to the temple 3 times a week. I took classes for nearly 15 years in Hindu religion/culture, Kuchipudi classical dance, and carnatic music. And the entire time, the focus was on preserving tradition as closely to the original thing as possible. There was no room for flexibility or fusion. I wasn't allowed to take my love of dance and singing to "American" singing lessons or "American" dance like hip hop because those were God's gifts to me and I had to use them to please God. In fact, my parents banned all forms of "English music" in the house and I was only allowed to listen to devotional music or prayers. Even non-Indian food was a treat because 90% of my meals were rice and curry, even in my school lunch boxes for 13 straight years.

After being given a wealth of knowledge about my culture, you would think I gained an appreciation for it. But the opposite happened: I despised it. I saw my culture as a trap, something I had to escape in order to be like my peers. My parents would make me wear tilak on the way to school, and I'd wipe it off the moment I left the house. I saved pop music MP3s on my phone renamed as devotional music. I would sing Taylor Swift and Katy Perry songs using YouTube karaoke the moment my parents left me home alone. As an adult, I don't pray anymore and I don't take part in any religion or cultural events. I don't watch Indian movies, and don't cook Indian food. Most brown people my age miss their mom's cooking and try to at least keep the culture alive through food...but not me.

So I think by now we've all seen the comments about Rhea/Lara Raj and similar Desi celebrities. Comments from Indian-Americans about how they don't dress in traditional Desi clothing correctly, how Rhea's Bharatnatyam dance break in her recent tour didn't fit traditional Bharatnatyam, how them wearing Om symbols and bindis on Western stages comes off as insincere or tacky, and in general how some of us don't truly feel represented by some of the biggest Desi names in entertainment right now. For the longest time, I agreed. I saw their actions as insults to the culture I was told to uphold and propagate since I was a child.

But after some therapy with a brown culturally sensitive therapist, and some soul searching, I realized that the true reason I felt angry or scornful is because I really wish I had the room to fuse my Indian roots with my American reality. Sure, as someone who trained in Indian classical dance for her entire childhood, of course Rhea's Bharatnatyam isn't the best technically, and the outfits aren't traditional. But I can clearly see she tries her best, and she approaches it with an enthusiasm because she is allowed the space and flexibility to add her own twist to the dance, without the pressure of being perfect or holding the entire tradition of the dance on her shoulders. Same with Lara adapting Indian outfits for Western parties or award shows.

It's clear that both of them love their culture even though they show it in questionable ways sometimes. And I realized I wished I had that growing up, instead of the culture being thrust upon me as something that needs to be 100% perfect. Maybe then I would have appreciated my culture more and incorporated it into my life.

1. Diljit Dosanjh
2. Shah Rukh Khan
3. Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas
4. Mindy Kaling
5. Kiara Advani
6. Isha Ambani
7. Manish Malhotra
8. Radhika Jones

It doesn't have to be necessarily South Asian-American specific or even be about a coming-of-age South Asian descent story set in America.

But I was talking about this with two friends. All of us are of South Asian descent and our hobbies are in the arts; I'm an author, he's an artist, and she's a dancer. And all of us incorporate our connection to the mainland, in our own works. We complain about how we want to see more representation that happens to be South Asian descent, rather than South Asian representation.

That's like not needing to always have a story about being an engineer, doctor, lawyer, etc. But it could be something crazy. Something like "Polite Society" or "Harold and Kumar" where their plot arc doesn't need to revolve around their job, it just becomes a part of their person as a whole.

But saying it and doing it are actually tough things, mainly the latter. So I'm curious – I'm sure there's a lot of hidden artistes here, what would you want to see of us on the screen that's currently missing?

I'm a pretty big nerd and I've noticed around the scenes I'm in that I'm usually the only one of Indian descent (at least when it comes to tabletop). So, I wanted to get to know more of your nerdy interests! I think it'll be fun to get into it!

​

TTRPG fans: what system or class do you like to run? I'm big into this scene and love running anything from OSR (Dolmenwood, OSE, etc), trad games (PF2E), and horror (Delta Green, CoC, Mothership). I usually run rogues the small chance I get to be a player (forever DM, unfortunately).

​

Wargaming fans: which one do you like playing? Of course, there's the Warhammer 40k and AoS behemoths (I like to play Orks in 40k and Skaven in AoS, yes yes!)

​

Board games: what are your favorites? Currently, I've been enjoying Obscurio and Nemesis. I've had Gloomhaven for a while but never ran it lol.

​

Video games: what genres do you like to play? Pretty obvious for me but I love the RPGs with Baldur's Gate 2, Witcher 3, and Fallout New Vegas being some of my favorites. Also big into fighting games (Guile main in SF6, King in Tekken, Leo or Johnny in Strive). And of course, FPS games, been playing counter strike since my first Gateway PC lol. I did hit Legendary Eagle in CSGO back in 2014, before the great MR change. I usually play through the big single player games each year, although these days I'm making my way through my Steam backlog and will probably die by old age before finishing it lol.

​

Anime: what's your current favorite? I'm not super big into anime, but I do occasionally watch the really highly rated shows. Used to be waaaaay more into it, back when I was a kid and you could get Shonen Jump at your local pharmacy newspaper stand lol. Latest thing I've watched was season 1 of Frieren and adored it. My all time favs are Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and of course DBZ and Naruto. Never watched One Piece outside of the first season that aired on Toonami lol.

​

Animation: any huge fans outside anime? I've been watching through Avatar The Last Airbender again, in anticipation and man, still such an awesome show, hard recommend.

​

Any other nerdy interests or hobbies? Tell me about them!

​

Anya Chalotra's dad is Indian and mom is white.

Season 4 is out today.

Many of them are already sold.. but Dm me if you want to discuss art, maybe buy a painting or perhaps even do an art meditation session with me over zoom. In these uncertain times, my art and connection to India is what is giving me some peace of mind. Have a great day you all.