I took a story-telling class with Adam Wade at the Magnet theater here in New York City. I had a ton of fun both taking the class and telling a real story from my life!

Transcript

I grew up in a city called Hyderabad in the southern part of India. My dad’s a relentless optimist and my mom’s, a pragmatist. To put this in context, for my 10th birthday, my dad gifted me a kodak fun saver 35 mm camera, it was the most beautiful thing ever, and my mom got me the world book encyclopedia collection. As for me, all I wanted was an admission letter from Hogwarts.

In high school, when it was time to decide my career, my mom would become my counsellor and we decided I would go to an IIT and become an engineer. The IITs are the Indian institutes of Technology, they’re like the ivy leagues of Indian colleges, a million students take the exam every year and only 2% of them get in.

The entrance exam to these IITs are notoriously hard, and kids start prepping for them starting from the 8th grade. The prep school business for engineering entrances in India is huge. There are prep schools which prep you for entering better prep schools, which prep you for entering the IITs. If this sounds like a pyramid scheme, you’re not wrong. Cause it is one.

I went to one of these prep schools too. I would leave home at 4 AM and come back at 10 PM. For those of you who didn’t go to a pyramid scheme prep school, that’s 18 hours. 18 hours of maths, physics and chemistry. 18 hours spent in one dingy room, with exactly one window overlooking a rooftop garden. My friends and I in the room would watch the couples hanging out in the garden, and make predictions on who’d stay together and who’d break up. It was a small world for us in that room.

My parents were very supportive of me through the four years. My mom would only cook my favourite meals for me, after a sufficient amount of melodrama, of course. My dad would meet me at the entrance to our apartment every day, greet me with a smiling face, and carry my heavy book-bag up three flights of stairs.

I was the center of attention in my family for those 4 years, I would get everything I asked for! The family vacations were planned around my schedule, we’d only eat at my favourite restaurants and most importantly, I could skip whatever social engagements I didn’t feel like going to because I had to study.

I was also doing well in the prep-school. You know you’ve made it in the Indian prep-school circles when they decide it’s time to take your photo for advertisements. If you visit Indian cities, you’ll find huge advertisement hoardings with pictures of high school students with their ranks in the entrance exams next to their clue-less faces. And the folks in my prep-school decided it was time to take my photo for these advertisements! This was a big deal!

Everything was going well, things were good!
But all of this was about to change forever.
A month before the entrance exam I contracted chicken pox.
And it turned my world upside down!

I was advised to stop going to my prep-school and rest in bed all day. This meant I wouldn’t see my friends anymore, I wouldn’t know which couple broke up and which one stayed together on the roof-top garden. And the thought that my face in the advertisement hoardings would have chicken-pox in them was gnawing away at me!

I was truly miserable with all of this happening right before the most important exam of my life (that’s what I thought at that time anyway). I had lost faith in god. Which god would take away all that I’d worked for in the last 4 years?! I decided I would become an anarchist. 18 year old me didn’t know the difference between an atheist and an anarchist. And an atheist was what I really wanted to be.

My family really came together during this time. My dad had declared an emergency in the household, we were officially in war with the pox. My mom would arrange phone calls with healers for me. I once spoke to a Christian healer who said prayers for my recovery. This was a big deal because my family was Hindu, the most interaction we had with Christianity previously was hotel room bibles. My dad would fight with the exam organizers to allow me to write the exam in a separate room. My grandma, the sweetest lady would find the smelliest Ayurvedic herbs, and make a bed full of them so I could sleep comfortably.

I went through this ordeal and wrote the exam. I knew for sure that I’d bombed it. This was it for me, I peaked in prep school. I’d never go to a good college, and probably end up working in a McDonalds or something.

In the weeks following the exam, before the results would be announced, my parents would take me on long drives. My dad, the optimist believed I’d still make it in the exam. My mom, the pragmatist, would advise me to look into other colleges. We’d chat about destiny, about how everything in life happened for a reason. About how the chicken pox happened for a reason. The chicken pox did give me time to think. The 18 hour days over the last 4 years had left me with no time to think about what I really wanted. Did I even want to go to an IIT? The chicken pox also reinforced my trust in my parents, that they’d support me no matter what.

The day the results were announced, I remember waking up groggy. I hadn’t slept well in weeks. I just wanted to get all of this over with. To everyone’s surprise, especially mine, I made it, I passed the exam! The mythical doors of the IITs would open up to me. And my face would be advertised on the hoardings after all!

Since this was the pre-Photoshop era, we had to get real creative in covering up my chicken pox for the photos. My mom found skin colored bandages and carefully covered me up in them like a mummy. It was a proud day for all of us.

Going back to destiny, the chicken pox did happen for a reason. I decided against going to an IIT. I had my eyes set on a different college that I would end up going to on my own terms. And my parents supported me through that decision too!