Seeing Normal

Just watching Vasu do her thing in Pushpavalli is enough reason to stick with the show. It filled me with a great nostalgia for Bangalore of my childhood. Her creative use of English accented with Kannada made me crave oota Mrs S used to serve us kids if we showed up uninvited to her house on Sunday mornings.If you have spent any time in Karnataka you know a couple just like Nikhil's parents. The casting could not be more perfect. 

Hyperbole runs through the whole show and will likely make many a desi woman stop to think about where in the Pushpavalli scale of crazy her own "normal" might fall. The contribution of our mothers in how we turn out, the mistakes we make and the men we let into our lives. Speaking of mothers, Pushpavalli's is a force of nature but completely believable. I have friends whose mothers are much like her, speaking in mysterious metaphors and playing crazy mind games to retain control of their girls. My own mother is very complex creature herself.

The show made me think of cultural context of how a person may behave, the limits and filters that may apply in their lives. More importantly, when a person might descend into free-fall with no one watching or trying to stop it. Those among us who did not have a clear vision of their future at a young age or lacked the confidence to steer their destiny in the direction of their own choosing, could have felt like Pushpavalli - trying to balance the desperate need for validation of those who can never be pleased with an equally desperate need for freedom from those very same individuals.