Thank you Sean.
My story actually starts with two films:
The first is "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham", - it's a great name -
one of the most successful films produced in India,
and the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire,"
one of the most successful films produced about India.
So when we look at images of these films,
we see two very different views of the same country:
one is a fairy-tale, this nation built on wealth and romance,
the other is a near calamity,
a place filled with poverty and corruption.
Cinema offers us insights
into how we can perceive a country and its people,
who they are, what they value, how they see themselves,
as well as how others see them.
And from these images,
the view of India it seems is either that of a musical or a slum.
So my own journey into the world of films started in the suburbs of Chicago
where I was born.
I'm the second child of two Indian immigrants,
and growing up in a joint family,
I was raised on stories told to me by both my grandfathers,
one of whom left school in the fourth grade
to sell timber to the British during the reign of the Empire.
The other worked for a local government,
and he would travel to remote areas of India
in order to implement the policies of the British Raj.
So as I grew up, I remember listening to these stories of India in the 1940s,
and longing for a connection to my own current story,
that of America in the 1990s.
I found this through film.
Through stories that were rooted in the American experience,
and offered me a perspective
that were so different from the stories of my origin.
However, it was the disparity between these two stories
that served as a constant reminder to me
of the hardwork and the sacrifice my parents had made to come to America.
Mainly, to offer their children opportunities
that they themselves never had.
America was possibility, freedom, and a place to make an impact.
My brother and I were raised fueled by that desire:
the desire to give something back
to a country that had given so much to our family.
I took this ideology with me into my first job out of college
at a prestigious magazine in New York City.
It was pretty much my dream job,
writing for a publication that I had idolized as a kid
for its political, environmental, and issues-driven content.
It was serious journalism, but made accessible,
and that felt like it was a real vehicle for change in my eyes.
However, instead of the fulfillment that I had expected, I felt emptiness.
It was as if I was surrounded by people who were more concerned
about how they, their brand, and their legacy was perceived
instead of their content.
So that serious journalism that I was drawn to,
its message felt lost and diluted.
I had built up this idea in my head
about what writing about social issues could do in terms of creating an impact,
and instead, I was faced with the reality
that to me, that message felt so out of reach.
So I quit my job.
I moved back home with my parents in Chicago
and I was completely disillusioned.
I spent months there; and finally, with nothing left to do,
I booked a ticket to go to a friend's wedding in India
for a two-week trip.
Little did I know
that I would find my lasting connection to stories and their impact
in the country of my grandfathers' birth
and through a medium that I knew nothing about:
Bollywood.
So a few days after I got to India,
through friends of friends I was invited to visit a Bollywood film shoot.
And it was like nothing I had ever seen before.
I remember watching as actors and actresses lip-synced
to these songs that blared from speakers overhead,
and they were twirling together in front of a green screen,
meant not to represent India,
but the mountains of Switzerland or the pyramids of Egypt.
(Laughter)
So this was a story like none I had ever seen before.
It was different from the stories of my grandfathers
and from the stories that I sought out in Chicago.
It was just the most incredible thing for me.
Seeing something so unknown to me was what pulled me in,
it made me want to learn more
about what the current story of India was, and what it meant to its people.
So I set up a couple of meetings
with the few people that I knew who knew people in Bollywood,
and at one of them, with the Confederation of Indian Industry
which is an organization that works to promote industry in India,
I was asked to write a report on the state of the film business
So I stayed at first for a month, then for three months,
and finally, for over two years.
I worked in International Marketing and Branding for Bollywood films,
setting up meetings for Indian producers in LA with their American counterparts,
putting together the first official Indian presence at the Cannes Film Festival,
and organizing a conference where Indian producers would get to meet
with Marketing and Distribution experts from all over the world.
But this was where I realized my own paradox.
I had thought that by addressing social issues head on
by writing about them, I would find my way of creating an impact.
But instead, it was in that moment of my disillusionment
that I stumbled upon the fantasies, and the fairy-tales of Bollywood,
and that was where I found my meaning.
Because Bollywood films, although they are musicals full of song and dance,
they are important to a country of over a billion people,
and there is one very simple reason as to why: they give us hope.
But this is the paradox of Indian films,
because Bollywood films mirror this dream of what India wants to be,
not what it really is.
And films like Slumdog Millionaire limit our view of all that India can be.
So somewhere between these two stories,
between this homegrown fantasy, and this imported fiction,
there lies a third emerging story.
And that is of a growing Indian middle class,
of young people who have opportunities
that they couldn't have imagined for themselves a generation ago,
of women who are charting their own course in their lives,
and of a country that although is in a constant transition and influx
is experiencing a renewal of all that it really is.
And to me, these are the stories that have the most meaning,
because these are the stories that allow us to break down
our stereotypes of a people and a place,
they allow us to re-examine who we are, and how others see us,
but most of all, these stories reinforce the idea
that our own lives are good enough to be the stories that we share with others.
So it's because of my own journey that I am always inspired to ask others
to look past what they know of their stories,
to re-examine how they see themselves, and how others see them.
For me, that involved letting go of a lot of the constructs I had in my head
about what impact was and where I would find it.
Because although we all have
our own versions of a path that we see in front of us,
or a story that we think that we've written for ourselves,
it is sometimes that unknown story,
the journey we didn't think we'd take that leads to our new voice,
it's that story that has us shift past the fantasy and the fiction,
and finally to focus on our own truth.
Thank you.
(Applause)