Dev Alahan (Jimmi Harkishin)’s life is turned upside down in upcoming Coronation Street episodes when he learns that his beloved daughter Asha Alahan (Tanisha Gorey) has made herself seriously ill with a mix of drugs and alcohol – and he has to face the fact that it could have been a deliberate suicide attempt.
Asha has been struggling after going through some horrible experiences during her work as a paramedic.
Already unsettled from a difficult and emotional shift, the final straw was being spat at and racially abused by a drunk woman she was trying to help.
Since then Asha has become more withdrawn and has been avoiding going to work. It didn’t help that the bad experiences coincided with her twin brother Aadi (Adam Hussain) leaving to go to India. Without him, Asha has felt quite isolated.
Dev has missed a lot of the clues that something was up with his daughter. He’s tried taking her out for lunch and spending time with her, but he hasn’t picked up on how bad she’s been feeling.
Jimmi Harkishin told us that Dev is blindsided by what happens to Asha.
‘He just did not expect his daughter to feel like that because she was always just so together and so just level-headed, so anchored in life and so centred,’ he explained.
‘That came as a massive shock I think, because she wasn’t running around doing this, doing that, she wasn’t a troubled teenager. She didn’t go off the rails when she was 15-16 years old, or anything like that.
‘She just did everything that she was supposed to. And then this disconnect happens, and it’s very hard to try and gauge it really.’
In the immediate aftermath of Asha being admitted to hospital, Dev’s primary emotion is anger that she would be so selfish as to put her family through such worry.
He’s careful, however, to share this only with Bernie (Jane Hazlegrove) because he doesn’t want to upset Asha further.
Jimmi said: ‘Dev goes and takes out all his frustrations, his anger, his self-doubt and recriminations with Bernie. But when he goes back to the hospital, he’s very, very gentle with his daughter, caring and apologetic, and then he walks out there, and then he’s angry and he’s crying.’
Dev’s anger is also directed at himself, for not picking up on Asha’s deep unhappiness earlier.
‘I think you do that as a father,’ Jimmi told us.
‘If something goes wrong with your children, there is a massive part of you as a father who thinks, “Was it me? Was it something that I could have or should have done?”’