I began to process Dad’s advice.
When normal people study something, they usually opt for rote memorization. In prepping for a dumb and useless geometry exam, for instance, they might recite “the area of a circle is pi r squared” and “the area of a triangle is one-half base times height” over and over until the formulas stick to the right part of their brains. The problem with me is, I don’t have that part of my brain where formulas stick. It’s missing.
When you memorize lines as an actor, you’re really memorizing a story and a motivation. You’re invested in it. In The Wiz, it was easy to memorize “All you fine ladies out there… ha ha ha… watch out!” because my character is expressing confidence after finally getting his heart. I knew what those words meant. They advanced a plot, a story. In fact, I understood their significance so deeply that I even added a pelvic thrust. What the hell does “the area of a circle is pi r squared” and “the area of a triangle is one-half base times height” mean? Nothing! It means nothing. And teachers would acknowledge nothingness saying, “There’s no story here. You’ll only understand how equations are applicable years from now, if you continue to pursue science.” (But why would I pursue science if you’re not telling me how the equations are applicable now?!)
I just couldn’t memorize those equations. If I wanted formulas to make sense, I was going to have to take some of Dad’s advice and define them for myself.
* * *
One night after a particularly huge Gujarati dinner of rotli, daal, bhaat, and shaak (colloquially referred to as RDBS), I was standing in my bathroom shirtless. Staring into the mirror in pajama shorts, toothbrush in hand, I noticed that my tummy looked quite large. Oooh, circle, I thought. Maybe this is how I take Dad’s advice. Maybe today I’ll act math.
Looking at my round belly in the mirror, I came up with a character: Sandra! I was massively pregnant—eight months on, at least. I revealed my two ginormous breasts; not because I was provocative, because of geometry. My belly was the circle I studied earlier: pi r squared. Each breast was a triangle: one-half base times height.
With my toothbrush hanging out of my foamy mouth, I strutted the length of the bathroom like it was a catwalk, rubbing my imaginary pregnant stomach, saying, “Oh hello pi r squared baby. Are you ready to come out of Mommy’s belly?” Acting math was working.
I got deeper into the role. Asking myself character background questions: Who is the father? What are our hopes and dreams for this beautiful little pi r squared baby?
I grabbed my large triangle breasts tightly and screamed, “YOU WANT MOMMY TO FEED YOU HOT YUMMY MILK FROM HER ONE-HALF BASE TIMES HEIGHT BOOBIES?!” Just then, I glanced up to see my terrified parents standing behind me in the bathroom mirror.
“What the hell is going on here?! Stop this business right now!” Mom said. They had heard Sandra’s commotion and saw enough to be concerned. “Finish your brushing and go study!”
I’m not cut out for math.
* * *
February 1992. I can’t remember exactly where we heard about Mira Nair’s film Mississippi Masala. It must have been either word of mouth or the Indian community newspaper. As the director of an Oscar-nominated movie called Salaam Bombay!, Nair was someone who excited me. Her new feature was about the daughter of an Indian African motel owner who falls in love with an African American carpet cleaner in Greenwood, Mississippi. I had to see it.
There we were: Mom, Dad, me, and my older cousin Shami walking into the cold, dimly lit movie theater, unaware that my world would change forever. I was mesmerized from the start: Here were brown characters who looked like me, were played by brown actors, in a film written by a brown woman and directed by another brown woman! In 1992, the only time brown people would appear in film or on television was if they were a) actually white,5 b) cartoon characters,6 c) doing something deeply stereotypical, d) eating monkey brains, or e) some combination of the above.
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)