Ms Marvel and (hopefully) the end of brown fetishism

Is Marvel's latest venture going to pave the way for better South Asian narratives in American shows and films, or will we stick to lehenga-cholis, Bollywood music, and gaudy Diwalis?

- Arnesh Ghose

There is a scene in the fourth episode of Ms Marvel, Marvel's latest series about a Muslim American teenage girl superhero (if your reaction to that was a "say whaaaaa", which hardened mass of dirt are you living under, sir) where Kamala, the protagonist, sits by a bonfire on a beach in Karachi, Pakistan, with her cousins and their friends, strumming guitars, and eating biryani out of plastic packets with wooden spoons, with smaller pouches of raita and salan doing the rounds. Kamala, born and bred in the US, comments that she had never eaten biryani like that. I smiled. That scene was such a wonderful slice of lived reality that South Asians share, and till date, I cannot remember many shows or films discussing and exploring intimate facets of the Indian or Pakistani experience in such detail.