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‘This Show Really Faced an Uphill Battle’
Deli Boys creator Abdullah Saeed talks about putting the jokes first while examining survivor’s guilt and dodging representation discourse.
Today, the phrase “White kids made fun of my lunch” is less a referendum on this specific grievance than a shorthand for the way that era’s reductive identity politics flattened the varied cultural experiences of millions. In episode three, the brothers, along with their late father’s business associates, Lucky Auntie (Poorna Jagannathan) and Ahmed Uncle (Brian George), are looking for a new front to distribute the cocaine they smuggle in pungent jars of achaar (South Asian pickles), so they take a meeting with an Indian restaurant chain to trick them into carrying their product. “If your kid doesn’t get bullied by the white children in their class when they pull that out of their lunch box, it’s not Kaka-brand achaar!” In the world of Deli Boys, this is neither a reference to a racial slight nor a rebuke of its exaggeration; it’s simply a trope to be played with.
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