Mindy Kaling Eyeglasses

More info about her

Kaling was born Vera Chokalingam in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Tamil parents from India. Her father, Avu, is an architect and her mother, Swati, is an obstetriciannecologist.

She explains that she has been known as Mindy ever since her mother was pregnant with her when her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the U.S. and wanted a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."

She graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College, where she was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe "The Dog Day Players" and the a cappella group "The Rockapellas", the creator of the comic strip "Badly Drawn Girl" in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), as well as writing for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern (the college's humor magazine). She graduated in 2001. In 2003, she portrayed Ben Affleck in a play titled "Matt & Ben", which she also co-wrote with Brenda Withers. The play was named one of Time magazine's "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year".