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 NPR's TED Radio Hour. My work has also appeared in Futuro Media's In The Thick, Self Evident: a podcast telling Asian America's stories, Feeling My Flo: a podcast about menstruation, Storycorps, 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.