Most of the children of South Asian immigrants know the often true stereotype of being offered at birth the professions of doctor and lawyer and being asked (read: forced) into one of the two. If you're lucky, or a boy, engineer is a third option. I, personally, picked lawyer - no offense to the rest of y'all.
I always found it interesting that being from a culture, that is just that - so cultured, with its arts and media and food we found ourselves limited to these few opportunities. This environment with its colorful Bollywood movies and soap operas so dramatic they put American ones to shame so we refer to them as just dramas cultivated my love of the arts to no surprise.
It is now as an eighteen year old and college freshman that I can pursue my dreams. From the proceeds of my summer job, I will purchase subscriptions to casting call websites.
From my savings, I will take classes at an acting studio in Manhattan. With my weekends, I will attend workshops and go out for auditions in the community only to return to campus by Monday morning bright and early for my Political Science seminar so that they cannot say I put my foolish dreams before their tuition money, which I am grateful for; I'm just choosing both.
You can say I'm living a double life but I say that I and every other young brown kid who doesn't fall into the perfect mold of just doctor, just lawyer, or just engineer are living the lives of a product of two cultures so we might as well have two careers.
