As a child growing up in India, Fairy Pardiwalla '05 made rhymes out of the prayers and speeches recited during school assemblies. This fascination with poetry has followed her ever since.
"It's definitely a childhood thing," she says. "I've always been writing."
Now an English major, Pardiwalla is trying to shape a future around her love of language.
A petite native of Bombay, Pardiwalla has an almost ethereal presence well-befitting her first name. She is soft-spoken yet forceful, and her language reveals the sophistication of a writer.
She is looking to continue her studies in writing in graduate school, especially experimental poetry, a developing form of largely web-based manipulations of language. She hopes to eventually earn a Ph.D. in English and pursue a career as a writer or professor.
Nervous about rejection, Pardiwalla has applied to 25 schools, all of which are among the top English graduate programs in the country.
"I've spent many, many hours in the Princeton post office," Pardiwalla said. "I applied pretty much everywhere. I'll take whatever I can get."
Her top choice for next year is Columbia, which offers both a well-respected English graduate program and a city environment — an important criterion for Pardiwalla.
"I miss my city [Bombay] so much," she said. "I literally need to go to New York all the time just to breathe the air."
Pardiwalla's move to study in the United States came partly by chance. As a student in the Indian academic system, Pardiwalla began what in the United States would be considered college in 11th grade.
She enjoyed college, but after scoring well on the SAT and realizing the prospect of obtaining funding from academic institutions in the United States, she decided to apply to several undergraduate schools — including Princeton.
Life at Princeton
Here, Pardiwalla has developed her love of writing and language into a passion for experimental poetry.
She was influenced greatly by a creative writing course taught by former Princeton professor Craig Dworkin.
Pardiwalla wrote her junior paper on constraint poetry, a form of experimental poetry, specifically focusing on the one-word poem "lighght."
"With constraint poetry, authors just have a particular restraint," Pardiwalla said. "The writing is expanding within limits. Language can do really surprising and exciting things within limits."
For Pardiwalla, even her first name is representative of her passion for language. It was chosen as a linguistic compromise between her parents.
"My mom wanted to call me Pari, which is Gujarapi for a fairy," she said. "And my dad wanted to name me something in English." Her first name, Fairy, is a compromise between meaning and language.
Pardiwalla also loves art. "I go to MoMA [New York's Museum of Modern Art] a lot," she said. "I definitely am there a lot on Friday at three o'clock waiting an hour so that I can go in for free."
Her love for the creative is evident in her choice of clothing — stylish, flowing skirts that seem tailored to her free-spirited personality.
"I love fashion — I think I spend too much time on it, actually," she said, laughing. "I should really write my thesis rather than dressing up so often to go to Terrace."
Stressful road
The most challenging part of the application process for Pardiwalla was completing a required set of standardized tests, the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) subject tests.
The tests necessary for her applications involved the identification of any work of literature from any canon.
"That almost killed me," she said. "That is the most ridiculous test I have taken."
Pardiwalla anticipates receiving decisions from most graduate schools starting at the end of March.
Until then, she may begin looking for jobs as backups in case her academic plans do not work out.
Her extensive work experience in advertising, including two summer internships and a yearlong hiatus from Princeton to work at advertising agencies in her native Bombay, may help her with this process.
But Pardiwalla said she doesn't "really want to" pursue job opportunities and would rather count on graduate school options.
While her family has remained generally supportive of her interests and her goals for the future, Pardiwalla says they don't always fully understand her.
"[They] have been very supportive but it is still a strange thing to be doing for some members of my family," she said.
Her mother is a civil engineer and her two brothers have focused their collegiate studies here in the United States on computer science and economics.
Pardiwalla's younger brother Kyan, a freshman at Stanford, said of his family's reaction to his sister's interests and goals for the future, "I don't think anybody minds, as long as she likes it."
Pardiwalla's plans to attend a graduate school in the United States have been influenced by the funding opportunities available at academic institutions here.
However, she has not ruled out moving back to India in the future.
"I would consider going back home," Pardiwalla said. "I'm not against it."
For the meantime, she anxiously awaits application decisions from institutions within the United States.
"I hope I get in at least somewhere," she said.
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