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.
* * *
For the next three years, thanks to my Panoch access, I racked up as many unpaid credits on my résumé as I could afford, with small roles in student films and microbudget independent projects. I became a Resident Advisor （RA） in the UCLA dorms for a while, which covered my housing and meals. I got paid $5 an hour as an extra on TV shows and movies when I wasn’t in class, mostly so I could observe how big-budget productions work （and so I could continue to fund the parking permit and gas）。 I also set aside enough money to get my first cell phone. I bought it at McDonald’s.
Look, there was nothing wrong with my pager—it worked fine, and it’s not like I was getting so many pages about auditions that I was pulling off the freeway to urgently find a pay phone that often. So, when DLC knocked on my dorm door holding a thin, greasy piece of tray-liner paper with a photo of a blue plastic Nokia flip phone on it, it took me a second to follow along. McDonald’s was running some sort of promotion. If you signed up for service through them, the phone was pretty much free. “Is it a toy phone, or real?”
“Real,” said DLC. “Looks like it could be a toy though. It’s pretty tite.”
The catch when it came to the free McDonald’s phone was that each minute cost a pricey fifty cents. I put the phone number on the top of my résumé so I would never miss the rare audition call. Everyone else could call my landline.
No matter what I did, I still couldn’t land an agent, which meant I had no professional credits on my résumé at all. Dennis Pennis and most of the other guys I hung out with were science majors, following a well-marked path. Many of them were headed to graduate school and knew exactly what the next seven years of their lives had in store. For me, it was hard to figure out what the right catalyst would be. How could I get more auditions? Lots of the other drama students at UCLA had already secured agents—it seemed they were noticed because of the prestige of our program. I too was in this program—what was the best way to get an agent to notice me?
I had become friends with actor Jenna von O? （who had recently wrapped the popular sitcom Blossom） through her roommate Jason, one of my UCLA theater department buddies. Jenna was super supportive of my passion and struggle, impressed by the hustle of the parking permit fiasco, and always eager to offer guidance and help. She offered to show her manager—who worked at a well-respected A-list company—some of the scenes I had shot in those student films. Maybe he’d agree to audition me and take me on.