Write Your Own Part

I recently wrapped up watching the second season of Never Have I Ever, a coming-of-age drama co-created by Mindy Kaling – a smart, sweet, and honest depiction of an Indian American teen dealing with the aftermath of her father’s death. The show is loosely based on Mindy Kaling’s own childhood experience growing up in the northeast.

 Kaling was born Vera Mindy Chokalingam in Cambridge, Massachusetts to an architect father and doctor mother, who met in Nigeria while working at the same hospital. Nicknamed Mindy, her parents moved to the United States the same year that Kaling was born. Kaling went to Dartmouth College and while she was a sophomore, she was an intern on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. She went on to co-write a play with her best friend from Dartmouth and played Ben Affleck in an off-Broadway play called Ben and Matt. From there, Greg Daniels (the producer of The Office) saw the play and hired Kaling after reading a script she wrote. When she first joined The Office, she was just 24 years old and the only woman in the writing room. The Office went on to be a huge hit, and Kaling went on to create and star in her own series called The Mindy Project. She went on to become an incredibly successful actress, comedian, screenwriter, and author.

Throughout it all, Kaling often says that she never saw a family like hers on television, so she always had to write or create her own characters.

Write your own part. It is the only way I’ve gotten anywhere. It’s much harder work, but sometimes you have to take destiny into your own hands. It forces you to think about what your strengths really are, and once you find them, you can showcase them, and no one can stop you.

 For me, so much of what Kaling has accomplished makes me so happy for the next generation. I grew up around the same time as Kaling and similarly never saw characters like me on TV or movies. And I so remember seeing her for the first time on The Office, and being thrilled to see an Indian woman thriving on such a hit show. And in her example, I see what so many have done – a prompt to write our own stories when we don’t see them out in the world. It’s a message I hope that we share with each and every one of our students in the years to come.

-Reshma