When Manish (Utkarsh Ambudkar), Kamala’s current boyfriend and a sneaker-wearing English teacher with no ties to his Indian heritage comes to the family’s Navaratri celebration, the differences between him and Kamala — and their relationship to their culture — is glaring. When he accidentally ruins Pati’s Golu (he uses her symbol of the American Dream, a brown paper Bloomingdale’s bag, to throw away cocktail napkins), Kamala’s grandma exclaims: “All [this] did was prove that this man has no respect for how things are done.” The pair offers a more grown-up and complicated exploration of this dating dynamic, something Ramakrishnan appreciates. “I love that yet again we’re showing that the brown experience isn’t monolithic,” she says. ‘These are two very different brown men, though both very charming and attractive, but what I love about [Kamala and Manish’s] relationship is that it has a little bit of a journey that it has to go through to prove itself.” The audience gets to watch as Kamala must grapple with the reality of choosing between appeasing the ideals of her grandmother, making a romantic decision for herself, and balancing her own ideals and needs as a young, immigrant woman.
