“It’s something these lovers have done because they’ve been separated while still in their honeymoon phase, just a matter of weeks from their wedding. But, now they have to find their way back to each other and their own selves.”

Gupta, whose career began as a writer on Neighbours (she introduced the first Indian family to Ramsay Street) and includes writing for Bump, Home and Away, The Heights, Doctor Doctor and The Unlisted, says Four Years Later was inspired by stories and feelings she accumulated while growing up in Australia and rarely seeing herself represented on screen.

She was also keen to subvert Western concepts of arranged marriage while exploring a passionate love story.

“I once met someone who had waited six years for his wife to come over,” Gupta says. “He was the barista at my first ever TV job, and I remember being there after she finally came to Australia. It just blew my mind that he had to wait six years. And then, when she got here, it was like his life finally began.”

Having been brought up on Bollywood cinema, and experiencing her own romantic ups and down, Gupta also wanted to show the realities of expecting a happy ending.

“Love is not always perfect,” she says. “It’s not always dancing in meadows. It can be really hard, really painful. This show is a real love story with challenges and flawed characters who make mistakes.”

Along the way, pivotal characters help Sridevi and Yash’s individual evolution. Actor Kate Box, most recently seen in Deadloch on Prime, plays cafe owner Gabs, who becomes a friend and mentor for Sridevi. Taj Aldeeb, an actor and radio presenter on ABC Classic, is Jamal, who forms a close friendship with Yash.

For Akshay Ajit Singh, being cast in the lead role of Yash was life-changing. “It has been profound,” he says. “Yash is a simple guy. He wants to make his family happy, to support and be a pillar for them. He marries the love of his life and comes to Australia to find employment and do his specialist medical training. But, it’s the transformation he undergoes once he comes here that is the most beautiful part. He changes drastically.”

Singh avoids spoilers about Yash’s evolution but keenly underlines the rare focus of his role. “It explores vulnerability in men, which is something we don’t do enough,” he says. “Men don’t always have to be macho. A balance of feminine and masculine makes, I think, the perfect man. Even though we have completed filming, there’s a part of me still left on the moving train of making this series.

“I’m waiting for that train to stop so I can catch that part of me and integrate it back in my life. Right now, I don’t know where Yash stops and Akshay begins. It’s been so emotionally uplifting. I’ve grown as a human being because of this role.”

Shahana Goswami, who plays Sridevi, praises the quality of the writing. “There’s nothing that’s left unsaid with these characters, whether that’s expressed through their words or their silences,” she says.

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“Moving back and forth in time constantly, you’re juxtaposing emotions of today with similar or opposing emotions from the past. It’s all done with great honesty, clarity, precision, but it’s not a dry script. It is full of truth and emotion.”

Gupta is intensely proud of creating a simple love story told within Indian culture in two countries. “It’s a very specific story but I believe a universal one,” she says. “It’s also a specific experience of migration in Australia which is one of the great things about this country, something that is constantly battered by people who don’t know anything.

“A lot of the culture in this story is my life experience, and it’s been great to make sure the attention to detail, the authenticity, is there. It took me a while to grow into having a voice [in TV production]. But I really feel like I have now.”

Four Years Later screens on SBS at 9.20pm, Wednesday, and SBS On Demand

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