MY STORY

For as long as I can remember, stories have been how I processed the world around me. Whether it was snuggling into bed with a flashlight and the latest Artemis Fowl book or binge-watching the Mahabharata TV series with my mom, it was in these worlds that I learned about love, life, and loss.

 

But, growing up in an Indian American household in the Midwest meant that I didn’t always see my experiences represented in mainstream media. The characters didn’t look like me; the extended families didn’t function the way mine did. This was my first hint that the stories I was hearing about myself and my surroundings were not fully representative. 

 

After a long and winding path, through U.S. State Department internships in D.C. and Jakarta, a service year in a Detroit high school with City Year, and a short corporate communications stint, I finally found my way to storytelling as a career. With my work, I strive to disrupt the dominant narratives we have been handed and to hold space for voices that have been historically silenced or neglected. As the child of immigrants, I gravitate toward writing about identity,  and the journey to healing and decolonizing our minds. 

 

I graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where I focused on audio storytelling and reporting on the South Asian diaspora. I currently work as a producer at Futuro Media's In The Thick, where we break down the latest news in politics and culture from the perspective of Black and brown communities. My work has also been featured on Self Evident: a podcast telling Asian America's stories, Feeling My Flo: a podcast about menstruation, The Juggernaut, Huffington Post, Brown Girl Magazine, Bklyner, and Catalyst Midland, among others. Previously, I directed and produced a short documentary about growing up Asian American in southeast Michigan.