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WORK TITLE: The Elephants in My Backyard
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1989
WEBSITE: http://lettersinink.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Canadian
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0839589/ * http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/how-rajiv-surendra-went-from-mean-girls-kevin-g-to-respected-chalk-artist * http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/11/rajiv-surendra-how-i-wrote-it.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2005002138
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2005002138
HEADING: Surendra, Rajiv
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100 1_ |a Surendra, Rajiv
400 0_ |a Rajiv Surendra
670 __ |a Music from the motion picture Mean girls [SR] p2004: |b label (Rajiv Surendra)
670 __ |a The elephants in my backyard, c2016: |b t.p. (Raiv Surendra) jkt. flap (Rajiv Surendra is a modern-day renaissance man; he’s a painter, potter, woodworker, and calligrapher; also an actor and is best known for his performance as the rapping mathlete, Kevin Gnapoor, in Mean girls; son of Tamil immigrants to Canada; born and raised in Toronto; holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and classics from the University of Toronto; lives in NYC where he runs his business, Letters In Ink)
670 __ |a IMDB, Nov. 14, 2016: |b (Rajiv Surendra; b. in Toronto in 1989)
PERSONAL
Born 1989, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
EDUCATION:University of Toronto, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Actor, potter, painter, calligraphist, and chalk artist. Played Chuck Singh in the third season of the YTV situation comedy System Crash and had a small part in Mean Girls as rapper and mathlete Kevin Gnapoor.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
The Canadian son of Tamil immigrants, Rajiv Surendra grew up in the shadow of the Toronto zoo. He became an actor, playing the roll of mathlete Kevin Gnapoor in the film Mean Girls. While working there, a cameraman insisted that the details of Surendra’s life were eerily similar to those of the protagonist in Yann Martel’s international bestseller, Life of Pi. As Surendra relates in his memoir, The Elephants in My Backyard, the cameraman finally convinced him to read the book. Surendra fell in love with the character, and when he learned that Life of Pi was being adapted for a feature film, he was convinced that fate had led him to the role. Surendra learned Martel was at a writing residency and called him there, and Martel was enthusiastic and supportive after hearing Surendra’s story. Martel sent Surendra his notes on the screenplay and promised to put in a good word with the film’s director, Ang Lee. Surendra then relates his decision to travel to India to perfect his accent and learn to swim, and he also shares the self-discoveries that arose as he prepared for the role. In the end, Ang Lee cast a different actor in the role, and Surendra shares his grief. He also shares how the setback set him on his next path, as a calligrapher and chalk artist.
Discussing the memoir and related events in an MTV News Web site interview, Surendra told David Cooper: “I created a real sixteen-year-old Indian boy [in my head]. And when I got that e-mail [from Martel], he died. . . . That was what was traumatic. It was weird because someone hadn’t really died. Like, I couldn’t go to my mom or my sisters and say, ‘Oh, I’m crying because someone died.’ They wouldn’t get it.” He also explained: “I realized that if I could put all my eggs in one basket, lose it all, and fall apart—fall flat on my face—and then pick myself back up, I could do it again,” he said. “And the next time I’m not going to be afraid of failing, because I already failed.”
Commenting on the author’s insights in her Washington Post Online assessment, Nicole Lee expressed a wish for deeper introspection, but she nevertheless remarked: “Surendra’s sexual awakening as a gay man is related with a sweetness and openness that could inspire other teenagers. Surendra’s creative awakening as a chalk artist is welcome, too, and his drawings scattered throughout the book display obvious talent. Surendra is also a clear stylist, and he brings sensitivity to his writing despite its tentativeness.” Annie Bostrom, writing in Booklist, was even more impressed, praising “Surendra’s imaginative, diversion-full, and refreshingly green memoir about the surprises that living a creative life can offer.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Surendra, Rajiv, The Elephants in My Backyard, Regan Arts, 2016.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Annie Bostrom, review of The Elephants in My Backyard.
Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2016, review of The Elephants in My Backyard.
Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2016, review of The Elephants in My Backyard.
ONLINE
Globe and Mail Online (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ (November 18, 2016), Mark Medley, author interview.
MTV News Web site, https://www.mtv.com/ (February 23, 2017), David Cooper, author interview.
Washington Post Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (November 15, 2016), Nicole Lee, review of The Elephants in My Backyard.*
Rajiv Surendra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rajiv Surendra
Born 1989
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation actor, artist, writer
Years active 2000 – present
Rajiv Surendra (born 1989 in Toronto) is a Canadian actor, artist, and writer. He is best known for his 2016 book The Elephants in My Backyard, a memoir of his failed attempts to win the lead role in the 2012 film Life of Pi.[1] The book was a longlisted candidate for the 2017 edition of Canada Reads.[2]
As an actor, Surendra played Chuck Singh in the third season of the YTV sitcom System Crash, and had a small part in Mean Girls as rapper and mathlete Kevin Gnapoor.[2] He tried to land the lead role in Life of Pi after reading the book and noting many parallels between his own life and that of the novel's lead character, including the fact that Surendra himself grew up in a home immediately adjacent to the Toronto Zoo.[1]
He is currently based in Manhattan, where he works as a potter, painter, calligrapher and chalk artist.[1]
Mean Girls actor Rajiv Surendra confronts failure in new memoir
Tuesday, November 22, 2016 | 0
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The cult classic Mean Girls changed Rajiv Surendra's life in two ways. First, it introduced him to the world as the unforgettable rapping mathlete Kevin Gnapoor. But it was also on the set of the film that he discovered Yann Martel's Life of Pi.
Surendra's memoir The Elephants in My Backyard, which is on the Canada Reads 2017 longlist, is about his all-consuming six-year journey to portray Pi Patel in the film adaptation of Life of Pi. Weaving in poignant - often painful - moments from his past, Surendra tells a tale of chasing a dream across the world and, ultimately, having to overcome failure.
surendra-hiwi.pngRajiv Surendra is now a successful chalk artist and calligrapher based in New York City.
Open wounds
I'm a huge fan of Tina Fey. I met her on the set of Mean Girls. She wasn't really super famous then and it has been really nice to see her become this huge icon. I read her book Bossypants while I was living in Munich. I enjoyed it so much that when I went to write this book, I reread Tina's book. The one thing that I realized when I finished reading it again was that she didn't really let the reader in to any kind of trauma in her life. I understood and respected that, but it was insightful for me because I decided I didn't want to do that. I want readers to understand why I did what I did and why I was pushed to go after this part. I felt I could only get the reader to be on my side and understand me fully if I let them in.
I wanted to put the struggle with my dad in the book. My relationship with my dad pushed me to get out of that situation. It pushed me to get out of the house and it pushed me to try to find a world in which I wanted to not only live but work. I thought regularly as a child about what I wanted to do for a career. And the impetus for pushing myself to think about a career was so I could get out of the house and survive on my own. It was unbearable at times. The only constructive thing that I could think about was, "OK how do I get out of this? How do I get out of this and actually thrive?"
Hello, computer
I started writing here in my bedroom and then one day I just took my laptop to a café nearby. There was something about the noise and the bustle all around me that made the work a lot easier. I think it's because I wanted to write this book as a kind of conversation, a casual park bench conversation almost in the tone of Forrest Gump, sitting next to that lady and telling her his story. At the café, because everybody around me was deep in conversation, I inadvertently felt like I was having a conversation with my laptop. I started going every day and I'd spend like six hours there. So, God bless the baristas who put up with with me placing order after order of coffee and hogging a table.
Keeping focus
Yann Martel said to me, "I think you have a great story here. The key is you have to tell the story as a universal story. It's nice to talk about hypnotizing lobsters and tracking down castaways, but people need to be able to relate to the main point of the story. And your main point is how to deal with failure." His advice was really helpful and I kept it in the back of my mind throughout the entire writing process, as well as while I was editing.
I mention very briefly at the beginning of the book that the only roles that I could try out for were terrorists and math geeks. But the greater story is not that of a brown actor who doesn't have the opportunities that a white actor has. The greater story is of a person who is trying to figure out how to materialize their dream. That is something that a lot more people can connect to.
Rajiv Surendra's comments have been edited and condensed.
INNOVATIVE DESIGN
How Rajiv Surendra Went from Mean Girls’ Kevin G. to Respected Chalk Artist
There might be nothing this New York creative can’t do
TEXT BY
LINDSEY MATHER
Posted June 17, 2016
Photo: Lisa Kato
You likely know Rajiv Surendra for his famous rap in Mean Girls as MC mathlete Kevin Gnapoor, but 12 years later, Surendra has embraced a new career—as a multihyphenate. He’s a chalk artist, a calligrapher, a potter, and, yes, still an actor. “Since I was a little kid, if I was interested in something I just found a way of doing it, whether it was making pottery in my basement or keeping chickens in my backyard,” he says. The latest addition to his résumé: author. Surendra’s memoir, The Elephants in My Backyard (Regan Arts), hits shelves this fall. At a bakery in his New York City neighborhood, surrounded by walls decorated by the man himself, AD spoke with Surendra about how he went from movie screen to chalkboard.
Let’s start from the beginning. How did you get into calligraphy?
I started doing calligraphy when I was 12. Someone gave me a bunch of old letters from the 1800s. I just remember being so floored by how beautiful the handwriting was. I took those letters to elementary school, and I would copy the letterforms when we had to do handwriting exercises. By the time I was 15 or 16, my script looked similar to that script. It became a kind of hobby.
When did you start to take it seriously?
When I was in high school, I was pursuing a career as an actor, so when I was sending out my résumé to agents or casting directors, I’d address the envelope in beautiful script, and I’d often hear back because of it. I started realizing that writing this way had a unique ability to get people to recognize what it was I wanted to convey to them.
But it wasn’t your only hobby.
I did a lot of other things—pottery, drawing and painting. I went to an arts high school, and my specialty was pottery, but we had a music theater department and I dropped out of pottery to do music theater for a year. So I was kind of an arts slut—really, that’s what it felt like.
You were cast as the now legendary Kevin G. in 2004’s Mean Girls.
As the popularity of Mean Girls was growing over the years, I was interested in pursuing a career in acting, but it was just very, very hard to actually land roles. People would often stop me and say, “Oh, what else have you done?” and the answer was always, “Nothing.” And they’re like, “Why, you were so good in Mean Girls?” and the answer was, “Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Trust me, I’ve been trying.” All the while, I continued to do my other hobbies.
You spent six years researching and hoping for the main role in Life of Pi, but the director went with someone else. How did you move on?
I got a job at a paper store in downtown Toronto where I actually bought paper for calligraphy. I was lethargically dragging myself through life, and I was talking to the manager one day. She knew I did calligraphy and said, “We should have a calligraphy event in the store where whatever customers buy, for one day only, they can bring it to your table and you can do calligraphy on it.” So we did that, and it was a huge success. There was a line outside the store, and there was a wedding planner in that line. When she saw what I was doing, she was like, “Why aren’t you doing this full-time?”
Chalk is an ephemeral medium. Do you love or hate that about it?
To me, chalk is a medium that’s been very, very inspiring because I don’t hesitate doing anything on the wall, knowing that I can just erase it. Whereas when I’m doing pen and ink stuff, I have to do it so carefully. Sometimes I’ll be doing something that’s taken six hours, then all of a sudden for whatever reason the nib breaks and ink splatters everywhere.
How do you approach choosing artwork for your own apartment?
My apartment is a little treasure box of my artistic life. I have a cutting board that says “staff of life” and it’s a copy of a breadboard from 1820 that I made from a tree that I cut down and turned on a lathe and spent three months carving. I have cloth that I’ve woven from wool that I’ve spun from sheep that I’ve sheared. That’s what this apartment is.
Is there any chalk art in your home?
When I moved to New York, I wanted to live in an old apartment, and I found a prewar place that was perfect for me. The little entrance hallway in my apartment is small but has high ceilings. When I moved in, I instantly knew: I’m going to paint this in chalkboard paint and do paneling on it. [Designer] Garrow Kedigian saw that and said, “I want to do this one day in a whole room.”
What’s your go-to chalk?
Crayola white chalk. I don’t use anything else.
KEVIN G. PERFECTS THE ART OF FAILURE AFTER MEAN GIRLS
TIRED OF AUDITIONING FOR GEEKS AND TERRORISTS, ACTOR RAJIV SURENDRA SET HIS SIGHTS ON THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME. BUT THINGS DIDN'T GO AS PLANNED.
02/23/2017
David Cooper/Toronto Star
DEEPA LAKSHMIN
I never grew out of my emo phase.
Rajiv Surendra was face-to-face with a Siberian tiger. The overwhelming smell of urine — how tigers mark their territory — hit him first. He stood watching, both captivated and terrified, as the beast crouched over a slab of raw meat. Every few bites, Surendra caught a glimpse of giant teeth.
As an actor, Surendra was used to getting into character, but this was way different than prepping to play Kevin Gnapoor, the mathlete in Mean Girls. Rapping at a talent show may be nerve-wracking, but there's no rehearsal for looking a tiger straight in the eyes.
Yet this was precisely the skill Surendra would need to draw on for his Life of Pi audition. In the 2012 film adaptation, Pi, the young protagonist, gets lost at sea with a tiger. But more importantly to Surendra, Pi also defies Hollywood stereotypes for an actor with brown skin. After years of reading for geeks and terrorists, the young actor recently cast opposite Lindsay Lohan was convinced this was the game-changing role he was born to play.
He was wrong.
But Surendra didn't know disappointment was looming. For the next six years, he transformed his real life to match Pi's fictional one. Getting up close and personal with a tiger at his local Toronto zoo, yes, but also setting off on an adventure that would take him across the world to Pi's hometown of Pondicherry, India. He worked tirelessly hoping to nab the role, even developing a correspondence with the book's author, Yann Martel.
But Surendra never even got a formal tryout. How could this happen? Let's back up for a second.
Discovering Pi
When I sit down with Surendra to talk about life post–Mean Girls, he explains how he fell in love with Pi while reading Martel's novel on set.
"I was a huge fan of big, epic movies [with] the quintessential American hero," Surendra told me, citing Lawrence of Arabia and Out of Africa as examples. "They go on a journey, they fall, they struggle, they have to pick themselves back up again. They’re not as beautiful as they were made out to be, but they’re stronger. That weakness has made them beautiful in people’s minds. I just never, ever thought that — well, those characters were always white. Or black. I thought that would never exist for an Indian guy."
KEVIN G. WILL STILL DO HIS ICONIC MEAN GIRLS RAP FOR YOU
On top of that, Pi and Surendra had a lot in common. Both are Tamil — an ethnicity and language common in South India and Sri Lanka — and grew up close to zoos. Pi is trying to reach Canada, while Surendra was raised in Toronto. Those similarities made the Mean Girls alum confident — perhaps too confident, I gather from reading his new memoir, The Elephants in My Backyard — that no one could portray this character better than him.
His daydreams are vivid: He's singing classical Indian music for the movie's soundtrack, helping his mom decide whether to wear a sari or a Chanel gown on the red carpet, chatting with Meryl Streep at the lavish after party, and, of course, giving his Oscars acceptance speech.
Becoming Pi
Before the awards roll in, Surendra first has to land the starring role. So he dedicates himself to preparing. Meeting that tiger in person made Martel's characters more tangible — more real — to Surendra, inspiring him to recreate Pi's story without actually getting stranded at sea. Instead, he visits a real-life castaway who survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. He lasers off his facial hair to clear up his skin and learns how to swim. He tracks down Martel and asks for his advice and travel itinerary. Most significantly, he leaves the University of Toronto and moves to Pondicherry, where he immerses himself in Pi's home.
Surendra already understands Tamil, but he wants to pick up the accent and mannerisms of native speakers. So he hangs out at a nearby school, befriends the students, and tours the same zoos that Martel did.
Even once Surendra returns to college in Toronto, he refrains from alcohol and partying to "maintain the mindset of an innocent Indian schoolboy." Armed with secondhand knowledge of a Pondicherry childhood, he's finally ready to be Pi.
Mourning Pi
Unfortunately, Director Ang Lee has someone else in mind. On a Saturday in July 2010, Surendra's six years of diligent work come screeching to a halt when Martel emails him an update. "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news," he writes. Pi has officially been cast.
The lucky actor is Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old with zero professional acting experience. Surendra, despite his hard work, is still a twentysomething Canadian pretending to be a 16-year-old South Indian. Meanwhile, Sharma is the real deal: a New Delhi teenager plucked from obscurity. Lee says his eyes convey the innocence and emotion he was looking for.
"He didn't want an [established] actor. That's why mainly I wasn’t even seen for it," Surendra explains to me. His book details the grief he felt after losing the part. "What's ironic is when I was re-reading the drafts, I wrote this line in Pondicherry with the kids: 'Any one of these schoolboys could've played Pi.'"
He continued, laughing at himself: "Yeah, you’re damn right any one of these boys could play the part, because Ang Lee fucking went to India and found one of them. That’s what ended up happening."
Surendra went numb once his Pi fantasies crumbled. He had plenty of other awesome things going on — he's been practicing calligraphy his whole life and even drew his book's cover, as you can see in the video above — but he'd invested so much in Pi that he wasn't sure how to move forward without him.
"I created a real sixteen-year-old Indian boy [in my head]. And when I got that email [from Martel], he died," Surendra reflects now, nearly five years after Pi's big-screen release. On a chilly Christmas night in 2012, he bought one theater ticket and shed tears within the first few minutes of the movie.
"That was what was traumatic. It was weird because someone hadn’t really died. Like, I couldn’t go to my mom or my sisters and say, 'Oh, I’m crying because someone died.' They wouldn’t get it."
Remembering Pi
In time, Surendra healed and accepted his loss. (Escaping to Munich for an extended vacation helped.) He eventually collected his old journals — he recorded everything, he told me, so he'd have something to look back on while filming Pi — and turned them into a memoir about his experience.
"I realized that if I could put all my eggs in one basket, lose it all, and fall apart — fall flat on my face — and then pick myself back up, I could do it again," he said. "And the next time I’m not going to be afraid of failing, because I already failed."
This pursuit added one more title to the former mathlete's Mean Girls business card: author. He's also a performer, painter, potter, woodworker, and business owner, but that's probably too many words to fit on there.
Paramount
Even though Pi didn't pan out the way he hoped it would, his unbreakable spirit makes it very clear: The limit does not exist for Rajiv Surendra.
DEC 1 2016, 8:46 AM ET
How Elephants Sent ‘Mean Girls’ Actor Rajiv Surendra on a Quest for His Perfect Role
by LAKSHMI GANDHI
Rajiv Surendra's new memoir, "The Elephants in My Backyard" was published in November.
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Fans are always surprised when they learn Rajiv Surendra isn’t particularly good at math.
After all, Surendra first made a name for himself portraying Kevin Gnapoor, the scene-stealing mathlete and self-described “badass emcee Kevin G” in the 2004 cult classic “Mean Girls.” But Surendra told NBC News his actual academic career was much rockier.
“It was almost as if someone had observed many things about my life and decided to write a book about it.”
“I tried. I really did try to work hard in school and get results but math and I didn’t want to be friends with each other,” Surendra said. “I was getting 13 percent on tests. That was actually my grade in high school calculus before I decided to drop the class and take something else.”
Surendra said he’s regularly stopped by fans of Kevin G to talk about “Mean Girls” or his memorable rap scene to this day. “Young actors dream of getting a role that people love and remember,” he said. “I thought Kevin G reminded me of guys I went to high school with and when I was reading the script through, ‘Wow, I like this character.’”
While Kevin G was a life changing role for Surendra, another important moment of his life happened when a camera operator working on the film insisted on giving him a copy of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi.” The cameraman repeatedly told Surendra that he exemplified the enigmatic main character and continually asked if he liked the book.
Surendra was skeptical of the cameraman’s insistence. “You know when people guess things about you and say things like, ‘Oh my God, you’re from India? We love this Indian restaurant!’ and then you’re like ‘whatever,’” Surendra said. “When this guy said, ‘You are in this book,’ I didn’t believe him at first. But he was persistent.”
When Surendra finally did begin reading the book, he was immediately enthralled. “It felt that some strange way the stars had aligned above me,” he said. “It was almost as if someone had observed many things about my life and decided to write a book about it.”
Like Pi, Surendra is of Tamil descent and was also fascinated by different religions and cultural traditions growing up. He and the fictional Pi also both grew up around zoos; in Surendra’s case his childhood home overlooked the one in Toronto. They were even the same height (5 feet and 5 inches tall). All of the similarities convinced Surendra that whoever portrayed Pi Patel would get the role of a lifetime — and that he was born to play him.
In his new book “The Elephants in My Backyard,” Surendra details the extreme lengths he took over the course of six years to embody his favorite book and get cast in his dream movie. What followed was a long personal journey that included a life changing trip to the South Indian city of Pondicherry, a visit to the survivor of an actual shipwreck, and a long email friendship with author Yann Martel.
Surendra said the journey turned out to be much easier than it sounds. Martel, a fellow Canadian, was doing a writer’s residency at the Saskatoon Public Library when it was announced that the book was being made into a film. A phone call to the library lead to an in-depth correspondence between Surendra and Martel, which lasted the better part of a decade. Many of the chapters of “The Elephants in my Backyard” begin with Martel’s encouraging notes as Surendra updates him on his progress.
In order to immerse himself in Pi’s world, Surendra took a break from his studies at the University of Toronto to head to a small Catholic school in India to volunteer and observe, Surendra said that part of what made his story unique was that South Asians don’t often write stories about going to India to find themselves.
“Struggling with difficulties in life things might be difficult and things might be hard, but we need use that to bring ourselves to a better place.”
“You usually hear about stories like Julia Roberts’ in ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” he said. “The connection I wanted to make was that as a brown guy in North America, I was often conflicted and aware that I was born somewhere else from where my parents were. It wasn’t until I really started delving into my Sri Lankan heritage that I really began to understand and appreciate that part of my identity.”
While Surendra personally got a lot out of his quest to embody the life of Pi, one thing he did not receive was the role he coveted. When he was informed that the role in the 2012 film would go to the Indian actor Suraj Sharma, he was devastated. But Surendra said learning to overcome that disappointment had ultimately made him a better person.
Surendra's memoir, "The Elephants in My Backyard," detail his relationship with the book "Life of Pi," and his ultimately unrealized goal of playing the main character in the film.
“I think Yann said it best: Failure and loss is something every single person will encounter in life,” Surendra said. “Struggling with difficulties in life things might be difficult and things might be hard, but we need use that to bring ourselves to a better place.”
These days, Surendra is focusing on his art and calligraphy business. “It was only after I didn’t get Pi that it became a business,” he said. “When I was a teen, someone gave me some very old letters from the 1800s and they were so beautiful. So whenever we had to write something for an assignment in school, I would try to imitate that script and eventually over a couple of years, that became my handwriting. So I had this skill in my back pocket.”
But Surendra said that fans shouldn’t completely rule out his return to the silver screen. “Some directors are reading the book and talking about maybe getting the film rights,” he revealed. “So it would be a movie about a book about a movie about a book that started on the set of the movie. It’s very meta. But, we’ll see.”
Memoir by Rajiv Surendra traces actor’s parallels with Life of Pi
MARK MEDLEY
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Nov. 18, 2016 3:23PM EST
Last updated Friday, Nov. 18, 2016 3:26PM EST
0 Comments PrintLicense article
One recent morning, Rajiv Surendra was waiting to meet the man who changed his life. He’d travelled from New York, where he lives, to Toronto, where he was born and raised, and was currently, and patiently, sitting in a quiet boardroom in a downtown office building. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, although it wasn’t on account of nerves, necessarily, but an “overwhelming feeling of happiness and excitement.” He’d been looking forward to this day for more than a decade and Surendra, dressed in tan khakis and a brown striped cardigan, spoke quickly, as if this would make the moment arrive that much sooner.
Voices were heard outside in the hall, followed by a knock at the door, and then the man whom Surendra described as his “guru,” the Canadian novelist Yann Martel, walked into the room.
“Nice to meet you,” said Surendra, and the men exchanged an awkward hug, like a couple set up on a blind date; Surendra had even brought Martel a present – a bar of goat’s milk soap he’d crafted himself.
To understand how the two men arrived at this moment, travel back 13 long years, to 2003. Surendra, then a struggling young actor, had just been cast as rapping mathlete Kevin Gnapoor in Mean Girls, the now-cult teen comedy. During a break from filming, a cameraman told Surendra, somewhat eerily, “You’re in the book I just finished.”
Later that day, Surendra bought a copy of Martel’s Life of Pi, a purchase that altered the course of his life and eventually led to Surendra’s own book, his memoir The Elephants in My Backyard, which arrives in bookstores next week.
It’s not uncommon to say a book changed your life. It’s also not uncommon, while reading a novel, to connect with one of the characters, to feel they are you. But what Surendra experienced, flipping through Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, about a 16-year-old boy set adrift on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, with only a Bengal tiger for company, was something more profound, almost transcendent. Surendra was Pi. The parallels were numerous: Both Surendra and the narrator, Pi Patel, were Tamil; Pi eventually enrolls at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, which Surendra attended at the time; both teens were fixated on religion as children; Pi grows up in a zoo, while Surendra’s childhood home backed onto the Toronto Zoo. (“It was kind of creepy,” Surendra said.) When he learned, a short time later, that the novel was being turned into a movie – M. Night Shyamalan was originally slated to direct – Surendra made it his mission to land the lead role: “I was sure that there was no one else more perfect than me for this part.” The quixotic quest that followed, which lasted the better part of a decade and took him to India and back, is chronicled in his memoir.
Which brings us back to the meeting. Martel, who’d recently finished the book, was in Toronto for eye surgery and the International Festival of Authors, and Surendra, 30, who lives in Manhattan, had arranged to fly up and meet him. (They are both published by imprints of Penguin Random House Canada.) Now, there they were, sitting side by side. For Surendra, it was a chapter of his life that he could now close.
“This is kind of like life tying a little bow on the box,” he said.
Although this was the first time they met, it was not the first time they’d spoken; indeed, they had been in contact for years, mostly via e-mail. When Surendra first learned about the film adaptation, he sought out Martel.
“I can’t remember – did you call me?” Martel asked.
“Yeah, I called you. I went on Yahoo and found that you were doing a residency [in Saskatoon, where Martel now lives with his wife and four children]. I thought, I’m just going to call and see what happens.”
Martel, as it happened, was in his office that day. He answered the phone, and, far from hanging up, listened as this complete stranger explained all the similarities he shared with Martel’s fictional creation, and told him his plans to seek the role of Pi. Graciously, Martel offered to e-mail Surendra a lengthy letter he’d sent Shyamalan, outlining his thoughts on the potential movie, in hopes it would help the young actor, marking the beginning of a correspondence which has lasted to the present day.
The majority of The Elephants in My Backyard details the lengths to which Surendra went to land the role of Pi. They ranged from the practical – he learned to swim; he interviewed people who’d survived long periods alone at sea – to the outlandish – Surendra dropped out of school, and moved to Pondicherry, the southeastern Indian city where Pi spends his childhood, even going so far as to enroll in Petit Seminaire, the school that Pi attends in the novel. But as the years went on, and the film was passed from director to director, like a book – Shyamalan to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jeunet to Ang Lee – Surendra was eventually forced to accept the fact that, no matter how badly he worked for it, he might never have the chance to play Pi.
“It went from six months to six years. And at the end of four, five years, that’s when I started thinking, ‘What am I going to do if they do cast somebody else? Will I even be able to handle this? Will I fall apart?’ I didn’t know. But I’d come so far that I figured I might as well keep going.”
It’s not giving away the ending to reveal that Surendra did not get the role – it went to an unknown Indian actor, Suraj Sharma – but this, in a way, makes the book that much more interesting.
“His story is the story of everyone trying to find out who they are, and how to get there,” Martel said. “It’s a story that exemplifies, in some ways, Pi’s story. He didn’t get the role, but, in a sense, he lived the story.”
These days, Surendra mainly works as an artist – he’s a potter and a painter, a professional calligrapher and has built a thriving business as a chalk artist (his work can be found all over Toronto). He still goes out for the occasional audition, from time to time, and has already made one thing clear to his agent.
“If they sell the film rights, the one condition is no one else is playing me.”
The Elephants in My Backyard
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p15.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Elephants in My Backyard. By Rajiv Surendra. Nov. 2016.288p. Regan, $26.95 (9781682450505). 791.45.
Surendra was on set for his first major film role, the rapping "mathlete" Kevin Gnapoor in Mean Girls, when a cameraman nodded his way and
said, "You're in the book I just finished.... Have you read Life of Pi?" Intrigued, Surendra read Yann Martel's novel about a shipwrecked boy only
to discover that the cameraman's odd hello went beyond the looks and Tamil heritage he shared with the character. Pi is the son of a zookeeper;
Surendra grew up hearing the sounds of the animals in the Toronto Zoo near his house. Pi's journey even takes him to Scarborough, the very
suburb where Surendra lives. When he hears the movie rights have been sold, he decides that the role of Pi will be his. He corresponds with
Martel; travels to the Pondicherry, India, school Pi attends; and painstakingly learns to swim. Anyone who's seen the movie knows how this part
of the story ends, but that's exactly the point of Surendra's imaginative, diversion-full, and refreshingly green memoir about the surprises that
living a creative life can offer. --Annie Bostrom
YA/M: Artistic and movie-loving teens will appreciate Surendra's uncensored and irreverent account of his drive to succeed. AB.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "The Elephants in My Backyard." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 15. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142760&it=r&asid=ce851a6312b7fd0616a90c2d66f0b141. Accessed 20 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142760
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Rajiv Surendra: THE ELEPHANTS IN MY BACKYARD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rajiv Surendra THE ELEPHANTS IN MY BACKYARD Regan Arts (Adult Nonfiction) 26.95 ISBN: 978-1-68245-050-5
A young actor loses a great role but finds a wonderful story to share.Surendra might best be known through a memorable supporting role in Mean
Girls, but this debut shows a real gift for writing, likely one that has been shaped by the story it relates. While still a student in Canada, the son of
Tamil immigrants from India landed a role that would change his lifethat of the rapping Kevin Gnapoor in the Tina Fey film starring Lindsay
Lohan that would far exceed all expectations as a cult favorite. While shooting that movie, a cameraman strongly recommended the popular novel
Life of Pi, and Surendra discovered a host of remarkable similarities between himself and the young Indian boy cast adrift on the sea. Then he
learned that the novel was being adapted into a movie, and he devoted himself to landing the lead role. He traveled to India, immersed himself in
the locations referenced in the novel, initiated a correspondence with novelist Yann Martel, and conquered his fear of water and learned to swim.
Surendra even turned down an offer for regular work on a series to pursue the Life of Pi role. However, as Martel advised him, its in the hands of
Vishnu and Hollywood. Early signs looked promising, as the only notable brown director in Hollywood was attachedM. Night Shyamalan, of The
Sixth Sense fame. Alas, Shyamalan was only the first of many to be involved, and the process went on and on. Though many readers
will know that the part went to someone else, the authors determination was rewarded in different fashion: through what he learned about
himself and the salvation he experienced. He remains an actor, but he has also established a successful commercial calligraphy business, and this
book shows that he is an accomplished writer as well. One of the more insightful and inspirational of the recent glut of showbiz memoirs.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rajiv Surendra: THE ELEPHANTS IN MY BACKYARD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465181945&it=r&asid=bda1789d9078cece501a6dc623cd2a25. Accessed 20 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465181945
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The Elephants in My Backyard: A Memoir
Publishers Weekly.
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Elephants in My Backyard: A Memoir
Rajiv Surendra. Regan Arts, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-68245-050-5
In this honest but uneven memoir, actor Surendra chronicles his pursuit to become cast in the lead role of the 2012 film Life of Pi. Surendra
discovers the novel that the film is based on during his time on the set of Mean Girls. Surendra is convinced by cultural, physical, and
biographical similarities that he is destined to portray Pi, the Tamil teenager at the center of the book, and sets out on a series of adventures to test
his ability to embody his beloved character. In an early escapade, Surendra abandons his college life in Toronto to visit Pondicherry, India, the
hometown of Pi. Here, the genuinely curious narrator grapples with the pressure of researching for a coveted role while rediscovering his own
identity: "My first name was the part I thought was authentic, but in that classroom in Pondicherry, I discovered that I had lived my whole life
pronouncing my own name incorrectly, like a big dumb-dumb." These reflective moments add breadth to a voice that is otherwise naive to a fault,
stumbling awkwardly as he creates insensitive caricatures of some of the minor characters who cross his path. By the end of the journey, casual
readers get to experience beekeeping, au-pairing in Munich, and the life of a museum reenactor, but most will likely be left wondering what the
book's bigger point is. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Elephants in My Backyard: A Memoir." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 78+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558244&it=r&asid=13d548d6c860171c028ad616b8f99a6e. Accessed 20 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558244
Rajiv Surendra traveled from ‘Mean Girls’ to chalk artist
By Nicole Lee November 15, 2016
In the age of the selfie, what makes a memoir more than just an advertisement for the self? That’s a question that may trouble readers of “The Elephants in My Backyard,” by Rajiv Surendra.
Author Rajiv Surendra (Courtesy of Regan Arts)
Now a successful chalk artist in New York, Surendra first tasted fame 12 years ago when he played Kevin, the rapping mathlete in Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls.” During that production, he learned that “Life of Pi,” the Booker-winning novel by Yann Martel, was to be turned into a Hollywood movie.
For Surendra, then a young teen, this was the providence he needed. Like the novel’s main character, Pi, Surendra is South Asian, had lived near a zoo and had experienced a multifaith upbringing. And so began Surendra’s 10-year journey not only to pursue the role of Pi, but to become Pi, with all the disappointments and awakenings this kind of journey involves.
Surendra ticks all the boxes one would expect to find in a memoir based on such a premise:
●Hollywood tell-all: emailing with Martel as Surendra wins but then loses the role through a revolving door of directors.
●Acting-industry racism awareness: being mistaken for an Ethiopian slave at Toronto’s Pioneer Village.
●Method research: staring down a tiger at his local zoo.
●Personal awakening through travel: flying to Pondicherry, where the fictional Pi attended school.
●Hero-meet: visiting Steven Callahan, the naval architect who survived on a raft for 76 days in the Atlantic Ocean.
●Personal tragedy: dealing with his alcoholic father
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(Regan Arts)
But despite clear enthusiasm and wonder, Surendra suffers from the young memoirist’s lack of self-awareness. Though the trip to Pondicherry is intended to be inspiring, his interactions with the students sound like the musings of a privileged Westerner. His encounters with various characters (a priest in Pondicherry, an eccentric old lady) are often disproportionately reverential. For all his breadth of experience, Surendra mostly sidesteps anything that might reveal anything deeper.
The best parts of the memoir come toward the end. Surendra’s sexual awakening as a gay man is related with a sweetness and openness that could inspire other teenagers. Surendra’s creative awakening as a chalk artist is welcome, too, and his drawings scattered throughout the book display obvious talent. Surendra is also a clear stylist, and he brings sensitivity to his writing despite its tentativeness.
But unlike the novel that so influenced him, “The Elephant in my Backyard” often feels like an Instagram post. The best memoirs require authors to put away the social media shtick and reveal their essential selves. “The Elephant in My Backyard” suggests Surendra has a ways to go yet.
Nicole Lee is a writer based in New York.
THE ELEPHANTS IN MY BACKYARD