Yes, I am Indian.  My father's side hails from Uttar Pradesh, and my mother's side was a bit of a mystery...until the DNA tests revealed some Bengali, Russian and Norwegian (some wrong side of the blanket action during the British Raj, oops).  Am I an Indo-Russian Viking?  I just like call it "North Indian" although it's way, way, way, north, as in all the way to Scandinavia.

I have a disregard for dogma and rules, because I believe I am qualified to think for myself.

 Despite my parents’ hopes of having their daughter  someday go to med school and marry a
mustachioed engineer of their choosing,  they nurtured my creativity by
requiring daily writing and reading and enrolling  me in many dance and
performance classes. I spent my early grade school years as  a spelling bee
queen but transitioned into cheerleader by high school.

    I like to think it all began in Ceramics class in high school. I never fully
  mastered the potter’s wheel, eroticized as it was by the film “Ghost.” I made
  hideous sculptures and lop-sided vases that my family proudly displayed at
  home.

     During a parent-teacher conference my art teacher could only tell my mother
  one thing–”Your daughter should be a model!” She told me that he spent an hour
  talking about my “presence” and physical attributes. I was flattered of course
  and took this vocational advice to heart. Though looking back he might have
just  wanted to kindly tell me I had no future in pottery. Still, I ended up in
LA and  never touched a piece of clay again.

    My modeling credits include Playboy, Maxim, FHM and other such publications
  that horrify my parents and make them question what awful things they
did  in their past lives to have such a daughter.

My author credits include an ebook on Amazon called "Revenge Shui" and a monthly advice column from 2005-2006 that ran in magazines in Chicago and Phoenix, which allowed me to be snarky and dispense questionable advice.