Every family has its own archetypes, so here’s mine: My dad and my brother and I are all miserable. Neither of us is experiencing joy, and all for different reasons — my dad is irritable, my brother is anxious, and I’m bitter. The three of us together could make one moderately sick. Instead, we are planets orbiting a sun more optimistic than we could ever be, and hopefully some of that glow rubs off on us periodically.
My mother believes in a positive ethos: that things will always get better, that everyone is doing their best, that it’s better to be surprised by bad than to keep expecting it. In April 2023, I was laid off from my job and it immediately put me at ease. “Everything always works out,” he said. But for the first time, I noticed a trace of concern running across her face. She seemed to be losing her luster.
I later learned that my mother had been hiding something important from me and my brother for a month: She had had a biopsy to see if she had breast cancer. Within weeks of her 69th birthday, she had a lumpectomy. Doctors told her she would need a grueling surgery and then grueling radiation. For just under a year, she went through therapy and steadily changed — she became sour, nihilistic, and impenetrably dark, just like the rest of us. I had never seen it before and I didn’t know what to do about it except try to change her mind. Who was this woman? Every few weeks I went home to see my mother again.
Cancer robbed my mom of most pleasures. The food became tasteless at best and inedible at worst. he pushed around a plate of cheese and crackers like a child, miming vomiting at each meal. The radiation caused her brain fog, so it was difficult for her to follow along in a book or movie. She didn’t find anything funny on TV anymore. He didn’t find me very funny. She was noisy and crying no matter what the day looked like. In her discontent, she found only joys. Rummy after lunch, chest heating pad, wearing a mastectomy bra that I lied about and said was given to me for free to avoid the cost argument. But nothing brought her consistent enjoyment like the Hindi version of ‘American Idol’. New episodes were shown twice a week, and we would record them and watch them after dinner. Only during “Indian Idol” was she standing, eyes peeled, singing along.
I was grateful for the absence of conflict. We tuned into a world where everyone was a winner.
Having just completed its 14th season, “Indian Idol” has been on air since 2004 and has aired 179 episodes. On the South Asian TV channel my parents paid a premium (“This,” I grumbled as a child, “but not Cartoon Network?”), the reruns seemed to play daily, for months. “How come no one gets distracted?” I asked my mom after seeing the same contestants on the show three weeks in a row. “Oh, it takes a while,” she said, which was a big deal. It was always a big deal when he spoke at all. “Everyone always seems to get the same number of votes.”
If you watch “American Idol” — or “Canadian Idol,” as I did growing up — you’ll know that the most interesting parts of the show are the brutal, often harsh criticism the contestants face. But that’s not the case on “Indian Idol,” where every contestant is truly one of the most amazing singers you’ve ever heard (the show usually features contestants singing a catalog of vocally demanding Bollywood tunes very competently). The show is structured in such a way that the weeks go by without elimination – there are non-competitive audition and coaching phases that span long periods. Viewers, it seems, appreciate the chance to watch months and months of really great karaoke, regardless of who wins in the end.
I don’t like reality competitions but I appreciate “Indian Idol”. I appreciated the repetition, week after week — the rules didn’t make sense, the music was unnecessary, and there was no real tension. When I watched with my mom, the judges hardly said a bad word about anyone’s performance. In fact, there was no friction at all. The worst thing the show did was engage in some vague poverty porn, portraying most of the contestants as low-income desperadoes who think of nothing but family and religion. But I was grateful for the absence of conflict. We tuned into a world where everyone was a winner. In the episodes we watched together, all the contestants survived another week.
It was this “Indian Idol” likeness that anchored us as we navigated the unpredictable reality of her illness: Would my mother eat today? Would her pain be so debilitating that she would cry all afternoon? Would he sleep? Would drugs make lucidity impossible? Today is the day for her, or about her cancer? Who cares! During “Indian Idol”, I could coax her with a THC edible or two, maybe a fruit. Her eyes would open. We could forget that we had lost the routine we took for granted.
My mother just turned 70, and is now in remission. I flew back home to see her for her birthday. He refused most of my suggestions: no big parties, no big banquets, no big attention. “Dim sum can be nice,” she said of a dinner reservation just for us, our sun and her ugly planets. It was the first time since her diagnosis that food seemed like it could bring her pleasure again. I can fool myself into believing that things can stay this way. We have so few guarantees in life, but there are two I know for sure: My mother, for now, is cancer free. and this week, no one is going to start “Indian Idol”.
Photo source: Getty Images
Scaachi Koulis, Emmy-nominated reporter, podcaster and author. Her second collection of essays, “Sucker Punch,” is out in March 2025.