UCLA is a big school. It wasn’t uncommon to be in a lecture hall with four hundred and ninety-nine other strangers. The University of California system is designed primarily for students from the state; very few nonresidents are admitted. This means that the School of Theater, Film and Television has an acceptance rate of about 3 or 4 percent. Nobody from my high school had ever gone to UCLA. In fact, the only other kid from my high school who went to California that year was our valedictorian, Nancy Adelman, up at Stanford. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was walking out of an American history class one day and saw a guy I recognized from home!
He already had an unmistakably LA vibe, and it impressed me that he learned it so quickly. He was about my height, close-cropped hair, very cool shoes. I felt like his name was Sean? No, Steven, yes, definitely Steven something, I just couldn’t place him exactly. I thought he could have maybe been a year or two ahead of me in high school, and somehow I didn’t know he had transferred to UCLA. Or did I know him from the farmhand job the previous summer? I followed him for a few minutes, racking my brain. The more I walked, the more I noticed that Steven seemed to have a lot of friends. Definitely a big man on campus. With each intersection we crossed, more and more people would nod approvingly. I needed to just go say hello. Surely between the two of us, we’d remember exactly how we knew each other. I picked up the pace to catch up to him, trying hard to recall Steven’s last name. I felt like it started with a U. Umbila? Urwell? Urkel!
“Steve Urkel!” I blurted out, before freezing and realizing what I had done. Holy shit, it’s Jaleel White, the actor who played Steve Urkel on Family Matters. Dude is in my history class?! I ran around a corner to disappear. Hopefully he didn’t hear it. Not because I was embarrassed,5 but because I didn’t want to be seen as the guy who Steve Urkel thought was uncool.6
Seeing someone like Jaleel White around campus was a good motivator for an aspiring actor like me. In moving to LA, I had hoped to rub elbows with the casts of my favorite shows at the grocery store or something. I hadn’t really imagined that we’d actually be going to university together.
I only saw Jaleel on campus a few times after that. We never formally met, but my first actor sighting was an exciting highlight.
* * *
I assumed that being so far away from the likes of Panocha Auntie’s reach would mean I was saved from the constant pressure of “Beta, be a doctor.” Then I met Gita, Ravi, and the kids in the Indian Student Union.
I first noticed the Indian Student Union table on a walk through campus. “Hi Kalpen,” the woman behind the table said as she watched me sign up for their email list. “Where are you from and what are you majoring in?” I made small talk about moving from New Jersey and majoring in theater. She laughed. “No seriously, what are you majoring in?”
It was unique for a brown kid to major in the arts—after all, I was the only Indian kid in the entire theater department—so I didn’t take her laughter too pointedly. “Seriously, I’m really excited about it. I’m in the School of Theater, Film and Television!” With an evaporating smile reminiscent of an auntie who finds out you “only got an A minus in algebra,” she ignored me with dead eyes, quickly shifting focus to the person behind me. “Hi! Where are you from and what’s your major?” I never got added to their email list.
Gita and Ravi were part of the Indian Student Union crew. They lived on my floor in the dorm, which made them impossible to avoid entirely. They would often go out of their way to poke their noses in my business7 by posing weird questions and then telling me how awful it was that I wasn’t majoring in a science like all the other brown kids. “Aren’t your parents disappointed in you?” Gita would say. “You’re kind of a sellout.”
What kind of selective cultural nonsense was this? I understood our parents’ struggles, their immigration experience; the ways in which it was impossible for their generation to divorce culture from profession. What the heck did being Indian have to do with being a science major now? And why were they so obsessed with the fact that I wasn’t one?
For every sacrifice or personal victory that first year, it seemed like Gita, Ravi, and their friends in the Indian Student Union were eagerly waiting to throw shade. On my way back from mailing headshots at the post office one Wednesday, I ran into them in the elevator. Ravi eyed my backpack as we made small talk about where we were headed the rest of the day. “Library,” I said. “Gonna grab my books and study for a bit. I can’t really concentrate in my room.”
“Why are you even studying?” Gita chimed in. “You don’t take real classes. Aren’t you just, like, a theater major?” Ding. The elevator doors opened before I could invite them to kiss—as Jay-Z says—my whole asshole.
* * *
The contrasts between my passion for the arts and the crappy brown students on campus continued to build. I saw a flyer one afternoon in the theater building and my heart stopped: Mira Nair, the woman who directed Mississippi Masala—the film that showed me brown people could be in movies—was set to speak on campus. For two weeks I planned how I might meet her. Do I find her hotel and leave a note? (Too creepy.) Follow her out of the venue after her speech? (Too sycophantic.) The move I decided on was to queue up hours before the event. That way I could get a seat toward the front and reach out before she walked off stage. I just needed to introduce myself, hand her my headshot, and tell her she’s one of the reasons I’m studying acting.
As I was waiting in line on the north end of campus the day of Mira Nair’s speech, a group of Gita and Ravi’s friends walked by. Cool, I thought, they’re also standing in line early. Maybe this’ll be my college version of the Tin Man thing and they’ll understand that theater is a great major too! But they weren’t waiting for the event, they were just passing by. As they kept walking, one of them muttered, “There’s that weird Indian kid from New Jersey,” loudly enough for me to hear. “He’s the one majoring in theater. Such a sellout.”
As a working actor today, it feels silly to think that I let these people get to me. But that night, I sat by myself in the second row at the event. I hung on to every word Mira Nair said, took notes, raised my hand (but didn’t get called on). The crowd was made up of mostly older, white film buffs, a handful of brown science graduate students mixed in. After the event, Mira walked through the audience to get to the outside door, and I pushed my way to the front. “Ms. Nair, I’m a theater student here. My name is Kalpen Modi. I really admire your work and I wanted to give you my headshot and résumé,” is all I could quickly spit out in the rush of people swarming her. “Thank you,” she said, taking my envelope before disappearing into the crowd of paler well-wishing faces.
I was honored to meet the woman who had inspired me, but I felt sort of lonely to experience it by myself.
* * *