The best way to keep up with what is trending on Netflix is to combine it with my workout. There is not enough free hours in a typical day to do it any other way. Recently, I watched Secret Superstar this way. There is much to like about the Movie for a variety of reasons not to mention the one song that stuck like an earworm for days. To my desi self raised on a mix of Hindustani and Western classical music with a fair share of songs from old Bengali and Hindi movies thrown in, this tune was about musical umami. There was a little bit of everything I am familiar with in perfect balance. It carried me to a slower pace, an older time closer to the India I was familiar with it.

But most unfortunately, there were some triggers there too. The abusive father of the main character his reign of terror in the house brought back memories I would much rather forget. It made me wonder if our domestic help I knew from age ten to the time I left India was still alive, if at some point she stopped being beaten and bruised all over by her delinquent husband, if her kids had finally rescued her from the hell I had seen her live in for years. If she was still alive and if I would ever see her again.

She was like a second mother to me, a different kind of mother than my own but not less important. I remember talking to her about how she could escape and become free. And how there were only dead-ends in her life - with illiteracy, six children that could not do without her and the endless grind of poverty. There is a great sense of hopelessness that goes with being a woman who has choice as I did to watch another you care about who has none. There is this thick, impenetrable glass wall that separates you both. The facts of her life could not be altered, there was no way to swoop in and rescue her. So you talk about remedies that don't and can't work for her. Learn to live with the guilt and shame of not doing your part, not using your privilege to help those you care about.

I know she loved me dearly and will never forget the endless times she gave me a bit of what she cooked for her family on Diwali. Those may have well been the best meals of my life. Watching the movie made me think about her influence in my life and how much she shaped my thinking about womanhood subconsciously. I hope I have lived my life in a way that would still make her as proud as my silly accomplishments as a kid once did.