Growing up in the U.S., I'd siloed off my identities. While I was an Indian at home, I was an American at school. I have now embraced both the identities.

Growing up, everyone dreams of certain things, and they map out a direction that their life would take. Working with A. R. Rahman sir is one of my dreams, if not the biggest dream, realised.

Being an Indian in the U.S. and growing up in the suburbs were the two things that really shaped my outlook.

Growing up, any time I would sit down with my grandfather to learn or talk about Carnatic music, he would bring up G. N. Balasubramaniam. Listening to the recordings he would play me, I was dazzled by GNB's voice and how he was able to execute ideas that I could barely wrap my head around.

As the youngest child of a single immigrant mother with a third-grade education, I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd ever be an elected official.

I barely have time for my own children. To adopt more children and not have time for them, that would be poor parenting on my part.

We are in the era when I go home and have dinner with my kids and put them to bed, and hours later I go to Twitter, and the world has changed.

I was playing a singer-songwriter, so I started writing, and I started going up to different places around Los Angeles and reading poetry of my own, which terrified me, but I had to do it. I picked up a guitar and started learning guitar.