Notes for my Future Memoir

I was born in the year 2000, very shortly after Y2K didn't destroy us. After spending 10 months in Salem, OR, my family moved to Massachusetts, where we would stay for...up till now. 

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I was born in Salem, OR, but soon moved across the US and was raised in a tiny town called Bellingham, MA. My parents often recall me singing and dancing to the Bollywood hit Kal Ho Na Ho and videos of folk dances my dad used to choreograph for a local cultural group while I was still in diapers. 

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I grew up on Bollywood movies, especially those by SRK. Favorites include Kal Ho Na Ho, Om Shanti Om, Jaane Tu...Ya Janne Na, and 3 Idiots. American films I destroyed the VHS of include Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Brother Bear, and Rush Hour (fine, that one was a DVD). 

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My parents knew I would be a performer when I was three and would dance along to Bollywood movies, as well as videos of folk dances that my dad choreographed for our local Indian cultural group. Like good Indian parents, they steered me in the other direction. But in middle school, I joined my school's musical cause a couple of my friends did it. My first role was the bass who plays the bass and a flamingo in The Little Mermaid. 

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Theatre helped me stay close with my friends and also make new ones when I transferred districts between middle and high school. I did almost every show in high school (except that one winter I skipped auditions for our festival show so I could try out for the basketball team: I didn't make it). Sometime in junior year after our production of Legally Blonde (still the best show), I decided to take theatre more seriously. 

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My parents let me audition for four MT schools in addition to the fifteenish schools I applied for some finance or management program. I set out on the college audition process armed only with two monologues from Dog Sees God and Reasons to be Pretty and "Grow For Me" from Little Shop. I ended up at Wagner College, pursuing a B.A. in Theatre Performance and Arts Administration. My mom let me know I got in with a text that said "I'm so proud of you" and nothing else while I was in English.

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I started school the fall of 2018. My first college production as a performer was Kent in Reasons to be Pretty which I thought was pretty ironic because my alternate college audition monologue was his. Also, I wasn't and still am not the gym bro the script describes him as. A similar irony fell on me when my first department show was a dance concert and I am firmly not a dancer. I graduated the spring of 2022, and now live in the city!

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