Are you aware of the fact that Priyanka Chopra wrote a memoir? The book contains exciting stories about her childhood, the hardships she faced, and the tales of her beloved late father.
The name of the book is, ‘Unfinished’. The global star tried to keep the book insightful, she even shared some deep dark secrets of her life despite being a public figure.
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Down below are some of the memorable pieces and secrets of her life that she penned down in her book.
1. Priyanka Chopra resented her parents for sending her to boarding school.
Her parents decided to send her to a boarding school when she crossed the line by throwing a tantrum in her childhood. She initially resented her parents’ decision. She wrote,
“Having Mom visit was heaven, but her departures were agony for both of us. I’d be in tears, traumatized all over again by the separation, and as much as Mom must have tried to control her own tears as she was leaving, she would end up crying, too,”
She did admit later that the first few weeks were tough but she made friends and enjoyed learning and getting disciplined. She eventually grew fond of her boarding school.
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2. The story of her father’s heroic deed
Priyanka used to look up to her father and a huge part of her book is about him. She revealed in a chapter that when her father, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Ashok Chopra was posted in Leh, a soldier was injured very badly and was barely alive with a bullet in his head. Priyanka’s father did the surgery and he was successful at it. When the soldier said,
“Just tell my family that I was martyred for my country. That I did my job.” Her father replied, “You’ll tell them yourself,” and indeed the soldier lived to do that.
The way Priyanka narrates this story will make you understand that she adored her father who was her biggest support system. She wrote,
“Two decades later, after my father died, the soldier came to his chautha to pay his respects. He had kept the bullet that Dad had removed all those years earlier”.
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3. Getting kicked out of MoMa for touching the starry night
Priyanka went to The Museum of Modern Art as a teenager and just like any other curious teenager, he was so intrigued by the painting, Starry Night, that she ended up touching it. She wrote,
“I was also silently exhilarated. I’d touched The Starry Night! What a story to be able to tell someday!”
4. Her middle school heartbreak
Back when Priyanka was 14, she dated a guy named Bob when she was studying in Indianapolis, Indiana. They were very much in love with each other. They almost had their first kiss on the couch and she had to hide him in the closet from her Masi. But when she moved to Queens things didn’t work out, seems like Bob started dating her best friend as soon as Priyanka moved. She revealed,
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“I was committed to making the relationship work. Bob and I still wrote letters and postcards to each other, and I continued to email him, too, but now from the computer in the school library. Until I discovered that he’d started dating my best friend not long after I’d left. So much for true love.”
5. Priyanka was bullied in Newton, Massachusetts
Priyanka came back to India when she was 16, leaving high school in Newton, Massachusetts. There is a vulnerable reason behind that, when she was in Newton, she was terribly bullied by her schoolmates for being “different”. The incident took a toll on her as she was constantly told by a group of people to ‘go back to her country.’ She wrote,
“Well, the taunts and the graffiti and the physical aggression had done their jobs, and no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t maintain my sense of self-worth. I started to believe that I was somehow less than those around me”
6. Signing up for the beauty pageant was not her idea
Her brother, Sid, noticed the ad for the Miss India pageant in a Femina. Her brother thought Priyanka should sign up for it. He discussed this with his mother and they started filling forms while PC had no idea as to what was going on. He apparently did this to get his room back. When Priyanka got to know about this, she obviously didn’t know that the decision of her brother and mother would change her life for good.
The pictures they sent along with the form, did the deed. The interesting part is that Priyanka went to click some pictures for her passport but the photographer suggested taking some model-like photographs as well. She wrote,
“And those additional photos were the ones that Sid had Mom send off to the Miss India contest not long afterward. Those shots still adorn the Suri Photo Studio walls in Bareilly”
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7. The tale of her meeting her maid of honor
It so happened that once she rented a house and at the same time the landlord rented it to another person as well, just because he wanted to make double money. None of them were informed and got duped by the landlord. But the roommates became best friends over time as she wrote,
“There was one bed, one closet, two shelves, a little dressing table, and a window. That’s it. But we made it work, and Tamanna and I became best friends. Eighteen years later, she would be the maid of honor at my wedding,”
8. The iconic namaste pose that Priyanka owns, got an interesting story behind it!
Though namaste has become one of Priyanka’s signature poses now, it does have a different twisted tale to it. She revealed,
“And it’s true, I was ecstatic and dazed—and I was also desperately trying to keep my strapless gown from sliding down my body! I pressed my hands together in a namaste and kept them close to my body as much of the time as I could in an effort to hold my gown up, and I hoped for the best. I now do a namaste at almost every red carpet—and you know the origin story.”
Well, at least the gown didn’t fall off and she was witty enough to steer clear of the wardrobe malfunction.
9. When a director/producer harassed her in front of her manager
After winning the beauty pageant she got a Bollywood offer. While she went there with her manager (now ex-manager) she was harassed (verbally) by the director in front of her then-manager. She was asked to get a “boob job, fix my jaw, and add a little more cushioning to my butt.” Clearly, she left the meeting feeling humiliated and disappointed. She wrote,
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“One of the first meetings was with a very famous director/producer who not long ago was caught up in a sexual harassment accusation in India, a man known as much for the giant movies he made as for his notorious philandering. I didn’t know that when I walked into his office with my then-manager, of course”
10. She talked about walking out of a film because the director’s behavior made her uneasy
Priyanka spoke about leaving a movie because she was uncomfortable because of a seduction song in it. She knew that the song was a part of the film when she signed, but she did not expect to be objectified to such extent as the filmmaker said,
“Jo bhi ho, chaddiyan dikhni chahiyen. Nahi toh log picture kyon dekne aayenge?”
As she walked out of the set after this, the filmmaker came looking for her at another shoot, where she was rescued by her co-actor Salman Khan. He communicated with the filmmaker and came to the conclusion that Priyanka would return the money already received and cover the cost of the shoot.
11. Priyanka regretted being a part of ‘fairness’ commercials.
She termed it the biggest mistake of her career, she wrote,
“Looking back, this was one of the biggest missteps of my career and is one of my most profound regrets. I can’t go back and change what I did, but I can apologize, and I do so sincerely. To all the people who saw the harmful messaging that I contributed to, to all the people who still have to see commercials like these in every medium—I am deeply sorry”
12. How did Priyanka meet Diana Chopra Jonas(her pet)?
In the BuzzFeed interview where the actress was asked to answer questions while playing with adorable puppies, cupid struck Priyanka and Diana. During the interview, the puppy started chewing on her Burberry shoes and snuggling at her arm. She wrote,
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“When Diana, as I soon named her, started chewing on my Burberry shoes in the interview, I immediately understood that she had excellent taste. And then at some point, she started snuggling under my arm. I was smitten,”
13. She sent a member of her security team to spy on Nick and her mother when Nick visited India
Nick took the chance to spend some time alone with Priyanka’s mom when he visited India for the first time. But when they decided to get lunch together and Priyanka couldn’t just let go, so apparently the Desi girl sent someone to spy on them! Nick’s plan was to ask her mom for her blessings as he decided to propose to the actress. Priyanka wrote,
“I sent a member of my security team out to take pictures of them at the restaurant they’d gone to—okay, to spy on them—so I could study their body language using my Quantico skills. #NotProud”
14. Priyanka hurt her leg moments before her mehndi
Back when she was getting married to Nick, on the eventful day of her mehndi, she hurt herself when a wooden splinter got stuck in her foot. Though they waited for a doctor, Priyanka became impatient and took the matter into her own hands. It seems dancing to Bollywood songs with blistered feet has made her pain tolerance high. She revealed,
” So Nick held my foot steady while I doused it in the only antiseptic I could think of—perfume (alcohol)—and then pulled the bloody spear out with a pair of tweezers”
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15. Missing out on movies because of a complication after her nose surgery
The actor had to undergo nose surgery after the pageant as the doctors found a polyp in her nasal cavity that needed surgical removal. However, the surgery changed her appearance, and to fix it she had to get several operations done for which the media called her ‘Plastic Chopra’. Piggy Chops revealed that she lost several movies because of this. She wrote,
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“The bridge of my nose collapsed and I started undergoing corrective surgery to normalize it. I was dropped from two big movies—my very first acting jobs, movies that were to have launched me—after the producers heard rumors that I looked different post-surgery”
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Did you get your copy of Unfinished? The memoir is worth a read.
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