Simi and Rupi Naik are estranged sisters, Indian immigrants to the U.S. who find love and salvation through a dramatic sacrifice. Simi has built an enviable life in rural Kentucky, with a nursing career that suits her (even if she has to work three jobs to sustain it) and the love of Prem Gupta, a good man who can’t wait to make her part of his prosperous and loving clan—all of which she’s terrified of losing because of her past. Bearing the brunt of the troubles that forced them to flee Mumbai, older sister Rupi has it much harder. She hasn’t put down roots and wields words like daggers to keep people at bay. The distance between the sisters narrows when Rupi’s boss at an LA tattoo parlor, the man who secured her travel visa before stealing her wages, dies, and his widow steals Rupi’s passport. Robbed of her meager belongings on a cross-country bus, a desperate Rupi shows up at Simi’s workplace in the throes of a raging bacterial infection, needing help from the sister she hasn’t seen in years. When she faints and later wakes in a hospital bed, she’s at risk of being deported to a country in which she may face serious charges. Rupi’s solution is to pressure Simi to get her would-be fiancé, Prem, to marry her instead and get her a green card. Since Rupi doesn’t believe in love or the sweetness of a guy like Prem, she’s demanding something she can’t believe will come to fruition—but Prem agrees. If that sounds heavy, it is. Rupi compares her plight to “a true-to-life Hindi soap opera in the middle of small-town southern Kentucky.” Alternating between Simi and Rupi’s narratives, Dev blunts the darker aspects, focusing on the aftermath rather than directly depicting traumatic events, allowing that heaviness to coexist alongside Bollywood melodrama and romance.
