Kunal Nayyar - Yes, My Accent Is Real: And Some Other Things I Haven’t Told You

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SOMETIMES PEOPLE ASK ME, WHY are you writing a memoir? Youre only thirty-four.

This is not a memoir. Im not a president, or an astronaut, or a Kardashian.

This is a collection of stories from my life.

It is not an I was born in... type of book.

I was born in London and raised in New Delhi. When I was eighteen, after maneuvering my way through a billion people and a few cows, I moved to Portland, Oregon, where I studied business, cleaned toilets, lied my way into an IT job, and fell in love twenty-seven times. I went on to get my masters in acting in Philadelphia, auditioned for a play in the basement of an Apple Store in New York City, and spent four hours a day commuting on a bus in Los Angeles. Somehow this crazy journey landed me on a little television show called The Big Bang Theory .

Here are some things that happened to me along the way.

. Obligatory cow joke. The first of many.

NEW DELHI, 1993. I WAS twelve years old and I had two great loves in my life. The first was Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years . Cable had just come to India and I was obsessed with Small Wonder, M*A*S*H, Doogie Howser, M.D., and my beloved Winnie.

My second great love was a friend of my cousins named Ishani. She was two years older than me, she wore shorter-than-normal skirts, she smoked, and she always smelled like cigarettes and perfume. I still clearly remember that perfumelemony but also just a little masculine, as if shed finished her morning perfuming ritual with a splash of her fathers aftershave. She had a mole like Cindy Crawfords and she was light-skinned, with hazel-brown eyes. Every guy I knew had a thing for Ishani.

But I had one advantage over the other guys: she was my cousins best friend, and my cousin happened to live directly above me and my parents.out, I would follow them around like a puppy. Even though they went to the girls school and I went to the boys, I always timed my walk from the bus so wed somehow wind up together. Oh, hey there, what a surprise seeing you two on this fine walk from the school bus this morning! In the evenings Id be there as they talked about boys and kissing and sex and stuff. Sometimes Im not even sure if they remembered I was in the room; they would gossip and giggle while I bounced a ball off the wall. Literally. I became Ishanis good friend. A younger brother, if you will. Safe, innocent, G-rated.

Have you ever kissed a girl? she asked me one day.

Never. I couldnt make eye contact. We were in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, side by side. The curtains were drawn closed, like always, to shield the room from the scorching New Delhi heat.

Never? she said, teasing.

My father was at work, my mother was taking a nap, and my cousin had gone upstairs to take a shower or something. We were alone.

Suddenly the electricity went out and the room darkened. This may sound overly convenientand, frankly, a little implausiblebut it was actually pretty common to lose power during the summers, especially in the afternoon. The government arranged something called load shedding to ration electricity during high-consumption months.

I could barely see her face but I could sense her next to me on the bed.

Kiss me, she said.

I froze. My twelve-year-old self was terrified. I didnt know what to do or how to respond. Is she joking? She must be joking. She has to be joking.

She was not joking.

I had been dreaming of this moment for months, though I never in a million years thought it would come to pass. So of course I said the only thing that made sense: No, no, I dont think its the right thing.

Kunal, what are these words coming out of your mouth?

The lights came back on. She looked me in the eye and I looked away. I thought the moment had passed... and then, just like that, she scooted over to me and planted her lips on mine.

At that point in life, my entire knowledge of kissing came from my true love, Winnie Cooper. I had just watched the episode where Kevin and Winnie share their first kiss, sitting on a swing, and I learned one very important lesson: As Kevin leans in to kiss Winnie, he closes his eyes. And he keeps them closed the entire time. Genius.

So thats what you do when you kissjust keep your eyes closed. Got it. Easy peasy. So when Ishani kissed me I closed my eyes, kept them shut, and I literally replayed that scene from The Wonder Years on an endless loop. I cant remember what I was doing with my hands, or what my mouth was doing, or even what Ishani looked or felt like in that moment. When I closed my eyes, I was Kevin Arnold, and she was Winnie Cooper.

Afterward I opened my eyes. Winnie was gone. Ishani was there.

Okay, she said, with no inflection.

Okay.

Dry. Like it was a verdict.

Okay .

We didnt discuss the kiss. Not in that moment, not later that day, not the next day, not ever. Okay.

But it did happen. Clearly what we had shared was by definition special, magical, and I didnt want to rock the boat by pushing my luck for an encore.

I gave that kiss a lot of thought. Maybe too much thought. I suppose youre supposed to say that a first kiss is lovely or maybe achingly sweet, but instead I thought... How weird.

I was hitting puberty and I could have been aroused by a dead duck, but even back then, on that particular day, I felt nothing. Maybe I was overthinking things. Maybe I was worried about getting the kiss right, as opposed to just living in the moment. I struggle with that a lot, you should know. Living in the moment. I should have been thinking, Holy shit, I just kissed a girl, and instead Im wondering about the meaning of that noninflected, dry Okay.

So I took it upon myself and decided the most reasonable interpretation of her statement was, Okay, now were boyfriend and girlfriend.

I just assumed we were dating. We had kissed, right? When youre twelve, a kiss has the weight of a marriage covenant. It was my signed, sealed, delivered moment. My cousin, Ishani, and I would hang out as always after school, but now I would tell my mother, Im going to see my girlfriend! Since my girlfriend liked cigarettes I decided to take up smoking, stealing little white cancer sticks from my parents so I could practice puffing.

Were going to a party! my cousin said to me one day.

What party?

Ishanis boyfriends party.

I was confused. Wait, but Im Ishanis boyfriend. Nervous, baffled, and hurt, I tagged along as my cousins plus one to my girlfriends boyfriends party. The room was filled with cool, older, dangerous-looking kids grown men, really, sixteen years oldand they were drinking beer. Real beer. I scanned the crowd of giants and I spotted Ishani. With a guy. An older guy. She was holding hands with him. He was tall, with gleaming white teeth, and he wore Doc Martens, shoes that clearly meant one thing: Im a badass and you suck at life . He spoke in a deep, manly voice that seemed to charm the pants off Ishani (literally, I imagined). My heart plummeted and I stared, speechless.