An Open Letter to the South Asian Entertainment Industry
Dear Producers, Writers, and Creators of South Asian Television,
We need to talk.
Specifically, about the way you frame women’s emotional suffering. Because somewhere between the perfectly winged eyeliner, silk sarees in hospital corridors, and melancholic soundtracks playing over breakdowns in slow motion—you forgot that mental health isn’t glamorous.
And yet, that’s exactly what many South Asian TV shows have done: turned stress, anxiety, and emotional trauma into an aesthetic.
Women sobbing in chiffon, breaking down while looking like they walked off a magazine cover—yes, it’s visually striking. But it’s also dangerously misleading. Because while you’re zooming in on a tear drop or dimming the lights to show sadness, you’re glossing over the raw, gritty, and uncomfortable reality of mental health.
When Struggles Become Spectacle
Take a step back and look at how often female leads in your shows are weighed down by emotional trauma. The abused daughter-in-law who keeps silent, the abandoned wife who continues to serve tea to her in-laws, the girl gaslighted by everyone but still fighting with a gentle smile. Her emotional collapse is not just ignored—it’s romanticized.
In dramas like Meri Zaat Zarra-e-Benishan, Kaisa Yeh Pyaar Hai, Bepannah, and even Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, we see women endure emotional breakdowns with elegance and dignity, never quite unraveling. They’re rarely disheveled, never truly allowed to break. It’s not because they’re strong—it’s because their suffering has been made into a spectacle.
Let me be clear: strength isn’t silent suffering. Silence isn’t resilience. And trauma isn’t beautiful.
The Burden of Perfection
Your protagonists are often emotionally suffocated, yet always composed. She’s expected to smile through betrayal, handle grief with grace, and carry the burden of the entire household without cracking. If she does falter, it’s either momentary or dismissed as a side effect of love, motherhood, or womanhood—never addressed as mental health.
You’ve created a standard where women must suffer beautifully. No rage. No therapy. No labels. Just more patience.
And what does that teach your audience? That to be loved or respected, a woman must be strong in her silence, poised in her pain, and immaculately dressed even when falling apart.
The Case of Maya in Beyhadh: Glorified Villain, Mocked Patient
Let’s talk about Beyhadh—a show that had the potential to explore complex mental health struggles, but instead turned a woman’s trauma into entertainment.
Maya Mehrotra, played by Jennifer Winget, is introduced as intense, obsessive, and emotionally volatile—a textbook case of unresolved trauma rooted in childhood abuse. She shows signs of severe anxiety, PTSD, abandonment issues, and emotional dysregulation. But rather than exploring her pain with sensitivity or offering a path to healing, the show transforms her into a glamorous, unstable villain.
Yes, Maya’s character was gripping, and yes, Jennifer Winget delivered a phenomenal performance. But let’s not confuse performance with responsibility. The narrative didn’t treat Maya as someone in need of help—it treated her as someone to fear, fetishize, and eventually discard.
Maya was rarely shown seeking therapy in a meaningful way, nor did the story attempt to dissect why she was the way she was. Instead, her trauma became a plot device. Her breakdowns were exaggerated for shock value. Her mental illness was equated with danger, manipulation, and madness—all wrapped in designer clothing and dramatic lighting.
This isn’t awareness. This is exploitation.
By glamorizing Maya’s instability and using it as a narrative twist, the show sent a message that women with mental health issues are threats—not people. That they should be punished, not helped. That their illness makes them dangerous, not deserving of compassion.
In a region where women are already gaslit for their emotions, characters like Maya don’t challenge stigma—they reinforce it.
Where’s the Realness?
Where are the panic attacks that don’t come with background music? Where are the messy, raw, and honest depictions of women trying to breathe through anxiety? The sleepless nights that don’t involve soft focus lighting?
We have a mental health crisis in our communities, yet the screen shows us women who experience trauma without symptoms, breakdowns without consequences, and healing without help.
Where are the stories where women:
- Actually go to therapy and benefit from it?
- Say “I need help” without being dismissed or labeled unstable?
- Don’t need a man, miracle, or makeover to recover?
You Have the Power to Change the Narrative
TV holds enormous influence in South Asia. For many, it’s more than entertainment—it’s culture, it’s aspiration, it’s reflection.
So imagine the impact if you stopped glamorizing women’s emotional pain and started telling the truth. If a heroine with anxiety wasn’t ridiculed. If depression wasn’t treated like a phase. If seeking therapy wasn’t a punchline or a last resort.
Give us the girl who cries in the bathroom and doesn’t emerge picture-perfect. Give us the woman who takes medication without shame. Give us the mother who admits she’s overwhelmed and the daughter-in-law who sets boundaries. Show us emotional recovery that isn’t wrapped in romance or redemption arcs—just healing for its own sake.
Final Thoughts
Behind the glamour, there are real women watching your shows—girls who are exhausted from smiling through their own pain, mothers running households while quietly battling depression, daughters who believe breaking down is weakness.
You have the chance to show them that being vulnerable is not shameful. That beauty doesn’t lie in how quietly one suffers, but in how bravely one seeks help.
We don’t need more perfectly dressed women crying in silence.
We need messy, honest, human stories—because that’s where healing begins.
Sincerely,
A South Asian Woman Who’s Tired of Seeing Pain Wrapped in Sequins
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