PRIYANKA CHOPRA JONAS
UNFINISHED
A Memoir
CONTENTS
Dear Papa,
Much like the title of this book, your story was unfinished.
With that in mind, I dedicate the rest of mine to you.
I miss you, Dad.
Preface
I M SITTING IN a meditative pose. In Sanskrit its called Sukhasana, or Happy Pose. Spine straight, shins crossed, shoulders pulled back, and chest pulled upward, Im taking slow, focused breaths to bring all my attention to my center. The slow breathing calms my mind so that I can now tackle lifes challenges.
Kidding .
I am, in reality, likely sitting on the set of my latest film project, or on a plane, or slumped in a hair and makeup chair. My breathing is erratic from the four espresso shots Ive inhaled in the past half hour while simultaneously wolfing down some form of comfort food thats probably not the healthiest of options. (Doritos, anyone?) My overbooked schedule glares at me with seventeen emails that are marked Urgent! Requires Immediate Attention! And my phone is buzzing like a bumblebee on ecstasy. I am running on IST (Indian Stretchable Time)Im lateand I am in no frame of mind to make sense of my day, let alone my life.
How is this possible when I come from mystical India, the land of yoga, meditation, the Bhagavad Gita, and one of the most learned civilizations of the world? Why am I unable to invoke the infinite wisdom of my ancestors to calm my raging mind when so many people around the world have embraced the teachings of my great country and managed to incorporate its lessons of peace, love, and happiness quite effectively into their lives?
Well, I am a product of traditional India and its ancient wisdom, and modern India and its urban bustle. My upbringing was always an amalgamation of the two Indias, and, just as much, of East and West. My mom was a fan of Elvis and the Doors; my dad listened to Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. My mom loves London, theater, art, and nightlife; my dad loved taking road trips through our subcontinent and sampling the street food at every opportunity. I lived in small towns in northern India for much of my childhood, and I also lived in the United States for three years in my teens.
Traditional and modern. East and West. There wasnt necessarily a plan to raise me as a blend of those influences, but here I am, someone who calls both Mumbai and Los Angeles home, who works comfortably in India, America, and plenty of countries in between, and whose style and passion reflect that global mindset. The cultural mash-up invigorates me, is important to me, because I believe we can all learn from one another. That we all need to learn from one another.
Cue my husband, Nick. As I embark on this new chapter of life with him, it seems like a good time to take stock. Its probably the first time as an adult that Ive felt the desire to look back and reflect on how Ive gotten to this moment. The first time since my life took a huge, crazy turn more than twenty years ago and I became a public person. Part of this desire to be introspective comes with maturity, no doubt. And I think its safe to say that part of it came along with Nick, a mature, introspective individual if ever there was one.
Looking back, I remember how I felt as my seventeen-year-old self, a small-town girl who exploded into Indias awareness back in January of 2000 when I was crowned Miss India World. I had no idea what to do with this unexpected widespread attention or how to prepare for what was nextrepresenting my country on the global stage in the Miss World pageant. My family had no idea, either, because we werent a pageant family or an entertainment family. Far from it; my parents were both doctors. With their love, support, and encouragement, I decided that I would do my best to learn from each new situation I found myself in, to throw myself into it wholeheartedly and work as hard as I knew how. Sink or swim. And if there was a choice, I was always going to do my damnedest to swim. Admittedly, sometimes my strategy has been flawed or Ive havent learned fast enough, but whatever my failures, they havent been for lack of effort.
I have always felt that life is a solitary journey, that we are each on a train, riding through our hours, our days, our years. We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we make as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone. Along the way, different peoplethe family we are born to and the family we choose, the friends we meet, those we come to love and who come to love usget on and off the cars of our train. We are travelers, always moving, always in flux, and so are our fellow passengers. Our time riding together is fleeting, but its everythingbecause the time together is what brings us love, joy, connection.
Which is why Im so grateful to be right here, right now, reflecting with you on my unfinished journey. I hope that whatever I have learned along the way, from fellow passengers, from my efforts and my own mistakes, can contribute to your journey, too. Because as I have discovered, if youre willing to be a student of life, the possibilities are endless.
Priyanka
MONACO BISCUITS AND LADAKHI TEA
Oh, look at the moon,
She is shining up there;
Oh! Mother, she looks
Like a lamp in the air....
ELIZA LEE FOLLEN
A S A CHILD, I never dreamed Id be in the movies. Or be a beauty queen. Or a fashion meme. I never dreamed Id be in any sort of limelight. When I was little, no one ever looked at me and predicted, Shes going to be famous, that one. (Well, my completely non-objective father might have said that.) No, the journey toward my life in the public eye began in 1999 when I was seventeen and my ten-year-old brother had a brainstorm.
Mom, he said, walking into our parents spacious bedroom one cool evening while I was in my room studying. Is Didi seventeen?
Yes, our mother replied.
Is she taller than five foot seven?
Well, shes five foot seven.
Is she pretty?
Sure. I imagine my mother smiling as she wondered what Siddharth was getting at.
Why dont you send this in for her? Sid held out a copy of Femina magazine, opened to a page with a call for submissions to the Miss India competition.
Mom didnt immediately agree to the plan, but Sid insisted. As fate would have it, Id just had professional photographs taken for a scholarship program Id wanted to apply formy first professional photos everand he handed them to her. Then when my mother pointed out that a full-length photo was also required, he found one of me all dressed up at a recent birthday party and cut the other people out of it. To quiet her persistent son and with no expectation that anything would come of it, Mom finally filled out the application and they sent it and the photographs off the next day without telling Dadand without bothering to mention anything to me. And that was how my public journey, and my career, began.
Thanks, Sid.
Sid now says that he pushed Mom to send in the application because when Id moved back home about a year earlier after living with relatives and going to school in the U.S., hed gotten kicked out of his room. There were only two bedrooms upstairs, and since he was a ten-year-old boy and I was a seventeen-year-old girl, Dad decided the second bedroom should be mine. Naturally, I didnt argue. Mom made my brother a new bedroom in the upstairs hallway between my parents room and mine. (Or his, as he would call it.) She put a bed there, and a little wardrobe closet, and a table. Then she tried to spin the move as a good thing for him, but he didnt fall for it.
