Unfinished: Story of a girl who dared to dream and live boldly

Actress and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s very personal book, which celebrates family and self-love, is one that gives you goals to be your own person

Until a couple of days ago, which is when we started reading Priyanka Chopra Jona’s memoir, this writer was rather indifferent to the actress-singer-producer. In fact, we’ve been guilty of watching and sniggering at her songs, In My City and Exotic, telling nobody really: “Why would anyone put themselves through this?” We went back to listening to these after nearly eight years, sometime before writing this piece. And, while our feelings about her music remain unchanged, at this point, we wonder why we haven’t felt pride for her, as yet. Despite not being a tell-all, this book somehow makes you think that way.

Unfinished (Penguin Random House) comes at a time in her life when major shifts have happened. She straddles two worlds: one in Mumbai—let’s call it her ‘maayka’—and Los Angeles where she lives with her musician husband, Nick Jonas. It’s evident that so much is left of her for the world to see, and hence, the title of the book. But, let’s not dwell too much on that.

This book is a personal story of a girl, who dared to dream and live on her own terms, often boldly. If one has followed Priyanka’s career and dipped into her interviews, you’d get a sense of her roots—born to Army doctor-parents, raised in different towns and cities, and her brief teenage years in the US, where she lived with her mother’s siblings. Her memoir infuses life into these otherwise, sketchy details, and therein lies something new. It’s a story you haven’t read before: How an entire family of uncles, aunties, cousins, nani, and others, came together to give her the wings, with which she eventually learnt to fly. That she cut short her stay in the US because of the trauma of being bullied for her skin colour, is something we could relate to at a certain level, at least. The chapter on her nomadic life in America as a teenager is probably also, the most endearing account in the memoir. So is her journey to becoming Miss World—how she absolutely detested strutting in a bikini inside a hotel room before a group of judges, during a prelim round for Miss India, so much so that she clenched her butt tight.

Her Bollywood journey, though, has been sanitised, for reasons best known to Priyanka. She refrains from talking about her affairs, which gave enough fodder for gossip columns till they lasted. And, we can only guess, who the famous director-producer—he was apparently caught in a sexual harassment scandal in India—was, who suggested that she get a “boob job, fix her jaw, and add a little more cushioning to her butt”.

Where there are omissions, there are also some confessions. She does talk candidly about the series of nose reconstructive surgeries that she had to undertake after a polypectomy—surgery for a polyp in her nasal cavity to cure her sinus—went awry. The Plastic Priyanka accusations had hurt her deeply, but she has come around to it. “This is my face. This is my body. I might be flawed, but I am me,” she writes.

The moving account of her father’s (Dr Ashok Chopra) passing away, and her brief, but fairytale-ish courtship with Jonas, whom she married a few months later, are the heartwarming bits of this memoir.

The book makes you introspect, once too many. If you’ve judged the actress in the past, like this writer has, you might just feel like reviewing your own assessment. If you have been a fan, you may find more reasons to gush about her. Some may call it a great PR exercise, but this isn’t that, honestly! At the end of one of the chapters, Priyanka harks back to Queen Bey (Beyonces) song: 

Who run the world?
We’ll leave you to answer that one.

What: Unfinished by Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Where: Amazon.in
For: Rs 699
To buy: amazon.in

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