You Can’t Be Serious(12)
Mississippi Masala sucked me into its beautifully crafted world immediately. Actor Sarita Choudhury’s character, Mina, had a family that was a lot like mine. Boisterous, yes, but also relatable and well fleshed out in real ways: the overdramatic uncle obsessed with his car, the complicated immigrant parents navigating complicated lives. Plus, Sarita’s character falls in love and has sex! With Denzel Washington! Sure, discovering my own sexuality was still a ways off, and sure, it was super uncomfortable to be a teenager watching a sex scene next to my then socially conservative parents, but you know what? I hadn’t kissed anyone yet, and in my subconscious it was reassuring to know that falling in love and having sex with someone like Denzel Washington might be a real possibility someday!
None of Mira Nair’s characters was one-note. They were all wonderfully flawed. For an hour and fifty-eight minutes, I was in the front seat of an emotional roller coaster. My parents seemed to enjoy the film too. I walked out of the theater, heart full. For all the spitting and hate I got from kids while they quoted Apu from The Simpsons, and Indiana Jones and Short Circuit, this was clearly the other side of cinema. This was an extension of the redemption I felt as the thrusting Tin Man. This was what images could make people feel on a larger scale if done smartly, deftly, creatively, inclusively, and in a not-lazy way. This was magic.
If Mira Nair and Sarita Choudhury can do this, I said to myself walking out of the theater that evening, maybe I can too! That day changed my life because it was the first time I watched something and saw myself depicted as a human being.
* * *
With Mississippi Masala fresh in my mind, I spent the rest of the school year getting more involved with my public high school’s arts programs, namely choir and drama club. I had already impressed the theater faculty with my small role in the fall play, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. (I played one of the creepy little kids who follows the Pied Piper around when he plays his creepy little flute.7)
Like most underclassmen, that spring I was not expected to audition for one of the coveted slots in the musical Godspell. The unspoken code—the spring musical is reserved for juniors and seniors and you’ll have your chance when you’re a junior or senior—didn’t sit well with me on account of the accolades I received for my breakout performance earlier that fall.8 I auditioned anyway, “just for the experience.” A week later when the cast announcement was posted on the drama club board in the main hallway of Freehold Township High School, my name was on it! Ensemble Member #3. An absolutely unheard-of feat for a freshman.
Teachers pulled me aside all day, congratulating me for getting cast. And not just the arts teachers, even the useless ones who taught things like physics and algebra! My fellow students were happy for me, saying very complimentary things like, “That’s phat!” and “Kalpen got cast in the musical… No duh.”
The reaction at home that evening was not as inviting. I hoped my parents might be proud. That the next time Rekha Auntie called to remind everyone that Nikhil got into Yale,9 they could brag that I was Godspell’s Ensemble Member #3. But my math grades were too low the prior semester, and they blamed it on my participation in The Pied Piper. Theater is a very nice hobby, but it’s not practical. My parents didn’t think I should waste time that way. That night, they forbade me from being part of Godspell. I was more heartbroken than angry. Not being able to act in the musical wasn’t like a high school soccer player missing a goal and saying, “Aw shucks, I didn’t score. Guess I’ll continue to get straight Cs and bang my girlfriend this weekend.” It was a real emotional devastation—like a piece was missing from somewhere inside.
* * *
As the dust settled through the spring and my grades didn’t improve, it became clear that being forced to decline the role in Godspell had no effect. Despite remaining so awful at math, I somehow convinced my parents to allow me to attend a residential acting program that summer. The New Jersey Summer Arts Institute was less like a camp and more like one of those nerdy, intensive pre-collegiate schools where you all live and study together for five weeks, in this case at Rutgers University’s Livingston Campus. I wasn’t entirely sure why they agreed to send me. Maybe it was pure encouragement. Maybe they thought it would get the acting bug out of my system completely.10
The New Jersey Summer Arts Institute was my first effort at taking the creative sparks I felt onstage and in the Mississippi Masala movie theater and turning them into something more. Living and working with people who thrived on artistic expression cemented everything I loved about making up stories. Our acting teacher, Joe Russo (white, smaller build, grayish hair, midfifties, raspy voice), and vocal coach, Yvonne Kersey (African American, midfifties, booming voice, stature of a Peeps marshmallow), were perfectly matched. Since this wasn’t traditional school, Joe and Yvonne didn’t have to conduct themselves with the same modicum of professionalism.
Joe openly chain-smoked unfiltered Camels from the back row of the theater while giving notes on our scene work. (This was viewed with some reverence by the handful of students who also smoked: “That’s the last stop, man. Unfiltered. When the nicotine from regular cigarettes just won’t do it for you. The laaaaast stop.”)
Yvonne snuck her cigarettes under a tree outside and seemed softly guilty about us knowing that she smoked in the first place. Every few days she’d pat her chest and proudly remind us, “You have to take care of your instrument,” before leading a group singing exercise of the gospel song “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” This was all designed to build camaraderie and confidence, and you know what? It felt friggin’ great.