When Indian-Australian screenwriter Mithila Gupta’s family moved to Melbourne from Jaipur in 1990, when she was four, she didn’t see many people like her or her parents on screen. “So I hung onto Hindi cinema, which was also not my experience, even though it’s fabulous,” the Bump and Five Bedrooms scribe recalls. “But it was a bit of a no man’s land. I had awful self-esteem and body image. I didn’t think I could be a leader. It created so much anxiety and loneliness.”
Thankfully, both her parents and her friends were super-supportive. “I’ve been lucky. I’ve had good people around me to carry me through. And that’s why I write.”
It paid off when Gupta landed a “once in a lifetime” gig in the writing room for iconic Australian show Neighbours, introducing the Kapoor family. “I always cry when talking about this,” she says. “It was my first job as a trainee, and we’re getting an Indian family on the whitest show at that time, not anymore. Good people in positions of power agreed, and we made it happen. If you can do that, you can do anything.”
Like creating lush new “rom-reality” English and Hindi-language show Four Years Later. It took Gupta back to the city of her birth to tell the complicated love story of Jaipur residents Sridevi ( star Shahana Goswami) and aspiring doctor Yash (24 actor Akshay Ajit Singh). Their families set up an arranged marriage, and there’s an undeniable spark, even if he’s too strait-laced and can’t even name his favourite ice cream, let alone movie.
A whirlwind wedding takes place soon after in the stunning surrounds of Rajasthan’s ancient Pink City. “What’s more romantic than that?” Gupta asks. But almost immediately, Yash is offered a medical traineeship in Australia. Parental pressure sees him go it alone, and the couple endure four years apart. Will their fledgling relationship survive?
It was vitally important to Gupta to cast appropriately, with Australian casting director Marianne Jade teaming up with Indian counterpart Dilip Shankar (Monsoon Wedding). “From the beginning, I didn’t want to cast someone who sounds like me and is putting on an Indian accent, because that will pull us out of the drama,” Gupta says.
The lead chemistry test was nerve-wracking. “When we met Shahana, there was just no doubt she was Shri,” Gupta says. “And Akshay had such a deep understanding of Yash that he’d be saying all these things, and I was like, ‘Can you slow down?’ while I wrote them into the script. So I was really nervous they might not work well together, but as you can see, they absolutely did.”
Mithila Gupta with 'Four Years Later' stars Akshay Ajit Singh (left) and Shahana Goswami (right). Credit: SBS / Lisa Tomasetti
Gupta was undaunted by the logistics of a story spread across two continents and three timelines. “I’m still in the blur of all the beauty of it, but I was also surrounded by can-do people,” she says. “From the beginning, the development team at SBS said, ‘Just write the show you want to make.’ I always thought that, at some stage in the process, I would have to pull back, it’s a tomorrow problem. But that day never came.”
Lucky for us viewers, because it’s an emotionally rich, gorgeously messy and authentic story about the often-fraught realities of relationships. Four Years Later also finds room for Deadloch star Kate Box’s Gabe, a cafe owner nursing her own wounds who nevertheless takes Sri under her wing when she finally shows up in Australia. And there are layers to Arun (Roy Joseph), Yash’s cranky supervisor, and Jamal (Taj Aldeeb), a Syrian woman working as a cleaner at the hospital.
Sridevi (Shahana Goswami) with Gabs (Kate Box). Credit: SBS / Lisa Tomasetti
Despite many moving parts, the show never loses its way. “We had a script editor on board, Kate Gray, who gave us this advice I will use on everything I write now, which is follow the emotion of the story, nothing else,” Gupta says.
As for being seen, Gupta notes that the Indian community is the fastest-growing immigrant population in Australia, so it’s high time we had more stories reflecting their lives. “That’s the most resonant part of the series, for me,” she says. “There’s the love story, and we’ve all got our version of that and heartbreak, but I wrote Four Years Later specifically to reflect the experience my parents and I had.”
After all, one in four Australians were born overseas. “So, the more specific I am in those tiny moments, the more it speaks to other communities too,” Gupta adds.
Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh) and Sridevi (Shahana Goswami) talk outside the hospital. Credit: SBS / Lisa Tomasetti
Gupta worked with Counting and Cracking playwright S Shakthidharan, with Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry, and Australian-Fijian writer Nicole Reddy (), plus Lebanese-Australian director Fadia Abboud and creator , helping enrich the show further.
“They’ve got similar life experiences and brought bits of themselves to it,” she says. “The project grew and grew. At the heart of it, I see it as my story. But anyone who worked on it can also say that. It’s been a very emotionally open experience.”
Searching for shooting locations in Jaipur was particularly trippy for Gupta. “On the way to the airport, our scout surprised me and took us to the street that I grew up on as a baby,” she says. “That moment was so beautiful and overwhelming. I was like, ‘I’m here as an Indian-Australian, but I could have grown up here.’ Would I be the same? Probably not. It was crazy, like [filmmaker Celine Song’s] Past Lives, one of our references for the show.”
When going back to Jaipur, Gupta was determined to show a different side of India. “We often go into the depths of poverty, which is a reality, but there’s also a voyeuristic element to that. Or we go super-rich, Bollywood glam. But this is a beautiful, ancient city that has maintained its architecture and its views and it’s where I’m from.”
Gupta will be forever grateful to her parents for the challenges they faced. “How do you repay parents who have uprooted their entire lives just to give you a better one? I don’t think I ever can, but maybe this show pays back one per cent, thanking them for bringing me here and believing in me.”
All 8 episodes of Four Years Later will be available to stream free from Wednesday 2 October. Double episodes will also premiere on SBS each Wednesday at 9.20pm.
Four Years Later will be subtitled in seven languages, streaming on SBS On Demand in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi and Punjabi. All eight episodes will also be available with audio description.
