Can a marriage survive the many trials and tribulations that come with staying apart for four long years? And what if – just to make things even more complicated – your partner is someone you barely know? This is the emotionally complex question that dwells at the heart of Four Years Later, the new show by Indian-Australian creator Mithila Gupta. It follows a couple, married in India, and forced to continue the relationship separately when one has to move to Australia for work.
All episodes are available to – I sat down with Gupta to discover how the familiar trope of an Indian arranged marriage between the two protagonists, Sri and Yash (a brilliant two-hander by Shahana Goswami and Akshay Ajit Singh), becomes a catalyst to explore some important (and at times uncomfortable) truths about migrant experiences from South Asian backgrounds in Australia.
Mithila Gupta Credit: SBS
From internalising aspects of cultural shame, to the need for South Asian households to de-stigmatise conversations around mental health, we discussed some of the complex and sensitive issues that the show tackles.
Below are edited excerpts from our conversation. It's best enjoyed if you have familiarity with the story, and note that we touch on light series spoilers.
Stream free On Demand
Four Years Later
series • drama • Hindi
M
series • drama • Hindi
M
What I love in the show right at the outset, is this inversion of the trope – historically in South Asian narratives, it’s been the woman or the wife who is portrayed as submissive. She is the one who must find herself. But in this show, we see the tables turn. Sri is the one who really takes to Sydney and it's Yash who's really struggling to find his feet in a new environment. It’s Yash, not Sri, who finds the loneliness and the struggle to fit in alienating. Was this deliberate or did this inversion come organically to you?
Look, it was both. It was very deliberate in that right from the conception of this show, I didn't want to do anything that was expected. In my experience, both as a viewer and a writer, the little representation that we get as South Asians in western cinema and on screen back home, I don't relate to any of it, even though I love it. I haven't come across characters so far that I can really relate to. So, it was very deliberate, coming from a place of making this show truthful.
There are billions of truths on this planet. You can't tell everyone's story with just one story. So, I had to look within.
There are billions of truths on this planet. You can't tell everyone's story with just one story. So, I had to look within. This is the part that wasn't deliberate. This is where the inspiration part comes in. I looked at my parents. I saw that both of them have had very different struggles while they looked to set up a life for me here. And a lot of it was based on their personalities. I didn't want to tell a story based on gender roles and allow that to become the guideline. The aim was to create two authentic characters that I could relate to, and that these characters should have parts of me as a creator and a writer, and reflect the people around me.
In this version that I imagined, Sri is the one who wants to spread her wings. She wants to see more of the world. Like me, Sri is an only child. And as an only child, when you spend a lot of time alone, you become curious about the world. Yash, on the other hand, carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. He must succeed, not only for himself and his parents, but for his two sisters and the future of his family. So, it made sense to me that his character would be more reserved and focused on work, as opposed to socialising. But as we know, to build your home here in Australia, you've got to be open to socialising. Australians like extroverted, fun-loving people, and sometimes, because of this, the reserved people struggle.
Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh) and Sridevi (Shahana Goswami) talk outside the hospital. Credit: SBS / Lisa Tomasetti
Arranged marriage is a big part of Indian culture, even today. Let’s explore the balancing act that you play here – about showing something that’s traditionally representative of a particular culture but then, making it relevant to a contemporary audience who may not be entirely familiar with the concept. It comes across as, ‘this is something you may have seen, but I'm going to put my own fresh twist to it’…
When you pitch a show here [in Australia] and you say it revolves around an arranged marriage, people – especially those who aren't a part of our culture – have a preconceived idea of what that means. And it's not truly representative of how arranged marriages have evolved with the times. For my generation, there is an initial meeting with the matchmaker and the respective parents, but then the couple spend time together, call each other, and even go on dates. Sometimes they're chaperoned, but often, they're not. Once again, for me, it came down to telling the truth. I wanted to say, please, stop judging this part of our culture. This is how it works today. And to other South Asians, I wanted to say, this is our truth. If you're South Asian, you probably have people in your family who have gone through this process. I wanted to represent that process in a way that can allow us [South Asians] to stop feeling shy or weird about the whole thing.
Akshay Ajit Singh as Yash and Shahana Goswami as Sridevi in Four Years Later. Credit: MEGHA CHHATTANI
There is an element of shame at play which is important to note. One side of the coin is about educating others about aspects of our own culture. But equally, the other side of the coin is about reclaiming our own culture and coming to terms with the fact that arranged marriages are nothing to be ashamed of. As a South Asian, it took a bit of effort on my part to watch an arranged marriage storyline unfold on screen and not attach a degree of shame to the whole thing.
Exactly. In a world where so many people are getting divorced, I don't think we have the right to judge any kind of union.
I brought up shame because it leads me to another uncomfortable truth which often goes unacknowledged in South Asian households. Our culture and stories often treat marriage as a ‘happily ever after’ moment. We don’t entertain the possibility that you could be attracted to someone else who is not your partner. The hypocrisy is that this happens all the time. But we don’t openly address it within our circles. Arranged marriages are often viewed as the epitome of a perfect relationship, but they’re anything but that. When you talk about coming from a place of truth, I want to explore certain truths which might be uncomfortable, that our diaspora refuses to see, but they exist around us in plain sight. People do develop feelings for others even after they get married. I found it interesting that the show was brave enough to explore that territory, and not put arranged marriages on an impossible pedestal.
As you said, it all starts with the truth. And luckily, as a TV series, it also makes for good drama. There’s a combination of, let's have some good drama with twists and turns and the unexpected happening, but then ground it in a place of truth. None of these relationships in the show are shoehorned in. For Sri, it’s a way of acting out – she's angry, she's repressed, she needs to blow off some steam and it's meaningless. But Yash, he's a man of duty. It's a slow burn for him. He never actually physically acts on his feelings while they're apart. But still, it's an emotional affair – he's lonely, he needs a friend, and he finds an outsider like himself who respects him.
I wanted to see both sides of it. Also, I didn't want it to be gendered, where the woman has the emotional affair, and the man goes and acts out physically. Once again, it’s about staying true to their characters. The question I always asked myself, and I continue to, is: ‘Would this couple have worked if they had not had the four years apart?’
I truly don't know how to answer that. This is what I loved about writing this show. Would Yash have been attracted to Jamal if Sri was there and they weren’t in a long-distance relationship? Conversely, would Sri have acted out that day, if they were never apart? I don't have a clear answer to why certain partners do things or why some things happened the way that they did. I wanted to reflect that lack of assuredness, which is how it plays out in real life as well. You have to build your own trust. But it's not easy. That was something that I wanted to work into the show. Let's not make this go the expected way just for the sake of drama.
A closer moment for Sridevi (Shahana Goswami) and Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh). Credit: SBS
One aspect that I was quite moved by – because it's never really discussed within South Asian households – is Yash having panic attacks. More importantly, we call them what they are, and not a euphemism such as Yash is feeling a bit ‘under the weather’. Something that frustrates me immensely, and I’ve noticed this in South Asian circles, is the tiptoeing around having real and open conversations about mental health. It’s like, you would never say that someone is depressed. We [as South Asians] would invariably find a way to talk around it, downplay it or worse, brush it under the carpet. I believe there is a serious conversation around mental health that hasn't fully occurred in the South Asian community in the way that it probably should have.
I think these kinds of conversations ought to be destigmatised. For us, as a community, it's still a new conversation to have and somebody needs to throw the first stone. We need to start somewhere. And I was thinking, here is a show that, if I'm watching this with my parents, we can't avoid that conversation. It'll come up. Can we talk a bit about how the panic attacks not only form a major part of Yash’s story arc, but the fact that mental health plays a big part in this series?
With my own mental health journey, when I first started speaking to a therapist for generalised anxiety, it did upset my family. They [my family] thought that they had done something wrong or that there was something wrong with me. And I believed that I was really privileged that I had access to a therapist and that it’s a very healthy thing to do. It's like when you're getting a checkup for your body, you should also get a checkup for your mind. I realised that if that's the reaction I get – when I’m an emotionally open woman – I can only imagine what it must be like for men in our culture.
Life in Australia holds challenges for Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh). Credit: SBS
Once we got into the writers’ room, we had a Sri Lankan man there with us, and he spoke a lot about how it's impossible to talk about mental health for men. It was one of those things where this was always a part of my story, but as Four Years Later developed, it became evident to us in the writers’ room that if anyone is isolated, crying for help and unable to seek it, it is Yash. It was organic to his character that he is the one who holds it all in. And then, everything he’s trying to push down comes out in a panic attack. It changes how he sees himself and his world. It was always a story I wished to tell, but it became so organic to Yash’s story that we just could not avoid it and nor did we want to. For me, it made his character so much more relatable. And grounded. And real.
Sri had never had a panic attack. She didn't really understand what a panic attack is like. And this is another part of the question: would they [Sri and Yash] have made it without the time apart? When Yash has his first on screen panic attack and Jamal helps him, why does he know to count? He’s had these panic attacks before in India. He’s got his own coping mechanisms. But he has had panic attacks potentially his whole life, and not told anyone about it.
It’s okay to say that you're struggling. It's okay to admit that.
And that feels very truthful to me. It’s okay to say that you're struggling. It's okay to admit that. But then, I've had to go on such a huge journey myself to get to that point, and not everyone gets to do that. It became an important part of Yash's story, but also their [the couple’s] love story. We had so many options of what stories to tell. The stories that remain here are those that I thought would speak to people who aren't represented on our screen. And secondly, stories that really affect the central love story, whether it's for better or for worse. And so, mental health just felt, for both reasons, it had to be a part of it.
You touched upon this idea of living two lives and living in two different worlds. That brings me to the very interesting ‘villainous’ arc of the show with Arun (played by Roy Joseph). We’ve seen the story of first-generation migrants and their struggle to belong and them having to occupy two different worlds. We don't realise that this is something that extends beyond just one generation. It's a multi-generational arc. Somebody who might be born here but is from a CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) background may still be trying to fit in both worlds. They feel an outsider back in their own culture but also in trying to fit in Australia. You may realise that you don't have to choose. But that comes with age, experience and maturity. But while you're growing up, you really feel that you don't know enough about your culture.
I think Arun's journey is indicative of that conflict. He tries so hard to be a model minority that I feel sorry for him. I can see that he is supposed to be the villain of the show, but I just couldn’t feel anything but empathy for him. How did you come up with a villain that one ends up feeling really sorry for?
Arun is so precious to me. I feel like I've been both Yash and Arun at different points in my life. I was four years old when we came to Australia. I didn't understand what was going on. I knew English but Hindi was more natural to me. I had my Indian accent. But then, because I was so young, I assimilated within a few years. I saw my parents being in Yash's position and I was in Arun’s. All I wanted as a kid was to fit in this country and to belong and be a model migrant. It’s not even that complicated. It was simpler than that. I just wanted to be an ‘Aussie’.
Arun (Roy Joseph) and Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh). Credit: SBS
Even though at home I was eating ‘dal-roti’ and watching Shahrukh Khan movies, when I went outside, I wasn't talking about those things. I didn't want my mum to speak to me in Hindi at the supermarket. I'm so ashamed about that to this day. I can only imagine how hurtful it must’ve been for her when I was only speaking to her in English. But that's how this country made me feel. Like I had to do that to fit in. So, what happens when you do this over years and years of growing up?
Then you enter an industry, and you realise that your accent, your humour, and all the things you felt ashamed about, you can use them to progress your career. That's what I see in Arun. At the end of the day, he wants Yash to succeed. It's when Yash screws up that he feels that ‘you're making us both look bad’. That's not Arun's fault. He knows this world and how it works. He knows that in this world Arun and Yash will be seen as the same person. He's not only trying to protect himself, but he’s also trying to protect Yash as well. For me, that is an interesting antagonist: someone with their own fears, insecurities and flaws. And they aren't just mean for the sake of it. Their meanness and antagonism have a purpose.
When we were in the writers’ room, we tossed up the idea that perhaps we could have some white doctor who behaves like a bully saying, ‘go back to where you came from’. But we've already seen that. And it doesn't really ring true. Although, we've all had those experiences [as migrants] as well. I'm not as interested in those experiences. I'm interested in the more subtle, the more everyday experiences. I agree with you. I want to give Arun a big hug as well. And I'm happy that we do get a chance to redeem him. He starts revealing more parts of his character and emotional being. As a writer, it's really interesting to see how a viewer's life experiences, and cultural lens, impacts how they see a certain character. But I'm with you, Virat. Justice for Arun!
Stream free On Demand
Four Years Later
