There is a scene in Daldal in which a burned down house becomes a daughter’s traumatic memory that she can hardly return to. With this, Prime Video’s 2026 psychological thriller, led by Bhumi Pednekar as DCP Rita Ferreira, pretends to be a crime thriller. But it’s actually about what happens when single mothers have to get by without any support in a patriarchal society. Her untreated trauma then metastasizes into her daughters.
Based on Vish Dhamija’s Bhendi BazaarThe murderers Anita and Sajid can be seen in the series. But it is the mothers (and Rita) who form the basis of the story. Against the backdrop of ritual killings, we see that India has no idea how to care for its single mothers.
Children who grow up in similar emotional droughts pay a price later in life.
The two main types of Indian single mothers
On the one hand, we have Isabel Ferreira (Rita’s mother), who is married but abandoned – first emotionally and then physically. So she has to raise a daughter who reminds her of her “useless” husband while working as a police officer. Read “Mother Mary Comes to Me?” by Arundhati Roy. Then this part might sound familiar to you.
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So while Isabel is “socially single,” Vivianne is effectively widowed. The latter is a sex worker trying to protect her daughter Anita from the red light district, to which she is forced to return after her husband is killed and she is disposed of by his family. She begins to dress up little Anita as a boy, which later leads to a strange love story with her criminal partner Sajid.
What happens when single mothers have to get by without any support in a patriarchal society? Her untreated trauma then metastasizes into her daughters.
Obviously, these mothers come from different morals and classes, but must live their lives surrounded by a toxic kind of patriarchy.
However, India’s traditional family paradigm still combines motherhood with marriage. Accordingly a research by the IOSR JournalSingle mothers are labeled as “broken” or “incomplete” and (as I experienced with my mother) exposed to social control and economic problems. There are over 13 million single mother households in India, but only 20% receive professional mental health support. So, having isolated them, the system blames them for the collapse.
In Daldal we see both Isabel and Vivianne breaking down.
Vivianne is killed in a police raid after jumping from a balcony to save herself and her child. Isabel dies by suicide in a gas explosion, managing to leave her daughter with lifelong scars. None of the women were allowed any fragility other than death. Both daughters therefore grow up with the consequences of their mothers’ desperate decisions.
The myth “It depends on what you do with the pain”
While Rita theoretically becomes a highly decorated policewoman, Anita practically becomes a serial killer. This difference seems to be a “thought of the day” you may have heard in a school assembly – both the egg and the potato are cooked, but one becomes hard and the other soft. The show proves that it’s not that easy. Success does not equal stability.
Rita is capable, but to cope with her oppressions, she begins taking drugs and loses her lover, knowingly unable to maintain intimacy. Anita, on the other hand, is nihilistic and convinced that all “good people” in the world are frauds because an orphanage director with a savior complex further distorted her childhood through sexual abuse.
As a result, both women find themselves in extreme situations and can hardly regulate their emotions.
The NCBI study “Experiences of Single Parents in the Current Indian Context” found exactly that. It found that 73% of participants had difficulty regulating their emotions even as adults, while 54% described overcautious decision-making that they learned from their parents’ fear and financial strain. Unfortunately, 91% of children from such single-parent households experience social stigma and no sense of belonging.
Rita repeatedly withdraws from intimacy and Anita becomes suspicious of anyone who claims to have virtuosity. These are textbook trauma responses, and they are so simple and so complex. The show argues that children of overwhelmed single mothers can become either overly responsible or overly destructive. Sometimes, as life would have it, both.
What happens when mothers don’t protect their children?
The crux of Daldal is that both Rita and Anita grew up in homes where their mothers could not fully protect them. Both women would have liked to have been present mothers to their daughters, regardless of their social status. But the system wouldn’t allow it.
Vivianne tries her best to protect Anita from brothel politics and the mafia, which separates her from her daughter in a rivalry with the police. Isabel, on the other hand, tries to juggle police work in Mumbai and raising an artistically talented child on her own. But patriarchy ensures that they are not supported in any way, be it psychological or social. Added to this is the fact that, as previously mentioned, they are already at risk due to economic survival.
The IOSR study confirms this by dividing the burdens on single mothers into economic burden and psychological burden. Sixty percent of the subjects reported discrimination in the workplace, and many of them had to live hand to mouth. Only 40% were aware of social assistance systems, even if they did not have access to them.
And this mental anguish that we see in the series is, unfortunately, quite common. When a mother is both a provider and an emotional sponge, soaking up society’s judgment on a daily basis, she burns out.
And when she burns out, her child barely learns to survive and feels neither emotionally nor physically safe, even in their own home. This inherited trauma is not genetic per se, but it is embedded in Anita’s anarchy and Rita’s silence. You don’t know life without it.
Is murder a sin? Or is it due to child neglect?
In the finale, Anita sets herself on fire, just like Rita’s mother in her childhood.
But this time Rita had to pull her out of the flames because the film had to be cinematic enough to make it onto Prime Video and thriller enthusiasts could enjoy it in a single evening. Yes, justice prevails, but even now that she is a grown woman, Rita saves her younger self.
We know that the “original sin” in Daldal is systemic neglect. First we saw the abuse in the orphanage, then the police raid in which a mother was killed. At the end of their lives, both mothers had virtually no psychological support and lived in a culture that firmly believed, clearly out of convenience, that women should survive quietly.
We now know that the “original sin” in Daldal is systemic neglect. First we saw the abuse in the orphanage, then the police raid in which a mother was killed. At the end of their lives, both mothers had virtually no psychological support and lived in a culture that firmly believed, clearly out of convenience, that women should survive quietly.
The NCBI study also finds that 82% of single-parent children take on additional responsibilities early in life. This teaches them to prioritize stability over desire. Rita embodies this statistic by executing her competence so well that no one notices the flames within her.
And this is where matricentric feminism becomes indispensable. As we begin to put mothers at the center, we must also remember that they are not black and white saints or villains. Structurally, they are among the most burdened individuals in society, which can help us interpret the tragedy differently. These two victims are the result of a system that romanticizes victims to the extent that my mother once nicknamed my grandmother “Victim Sundari.” This may sound strange, but in reality we have so much data to prove otherwise, and now a show too.
So what is Daldal really about?
It would be easy to describe Daldal as a story of resilience. Finally, the NCBI also reports that 91% of participants demonstrated resilience, adaptability, empathy, initiative and maturity. But is that the same as healing?
Rita’s solution to the case does not fix her childhood. The fact that Anita survives does not undo her trauma.
The show ends with Rita calling her former fiancé from the site of all her traumas (guess where?), the house where her mother tried to burn herself and her daughter down. This move therefore implies that she may finally be ready to face her past.
In a country where single mothers are still treated as deviations from the norm and where mental health remains taboo, Daldal insists that untreated maternal trauma is not going away. It can resurface in daughters who either implode or perform above average.
Sohini (she/her) hails from Kolkata and loves to research and write about everything related to society, culture and gender. With a background in journalism and English literature, they have finally managed to make heartfelt conversations a big part of their lives outside of the usual boxes.
