Priyanka Chopra, who travelled a lot during her childhood thanks to both her parents being in the army and extended family across the world, had a very interesting childhood, one many of us can relate to. While the actress recently made headlines for “stealing the vibe” at Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s grand wedding, her childhood was like most of us, where she too was caught while secretly speaking to her boyfriend on phone and faced serious consequences at school for wearing makeup and short skirts. Like most of us, Priyanka too has a monkey story–however, her interaction with the monkey was quite unusual as she was slapped by the ape for laughing at it. Funny right?
In her memoir Unfinished, which the actress first published in February 2021, Priyanka shared several aspects of her life–right from her childhood to her parents to her time growing up in India and abroad and even finding love in Nick Jonas. In one of the chapters, the actress revealed having a boyfriend named Bob (identity not revealed).
“Indianapolis is where I met my first boyfriend. His name was Bob and we both attended North Central High School, where he was in tenth grade. Dating him was definitely a hard flex and I fell for him in a big way. The guy played varsity football, had a really high GPA, and was everything high school dreams were made of,” revealed Priyanka in her memoir.
Priyanka and Bob’s romance consisted mainly of Bob standing outside her classroom and making faces to make her laugh until the class ended. “He would walk me to my next class, completely willing, it seemed, to be tardy on my behalf. We got to the point where we’d even hold hands in the hallway. One day he took off the gold chain around his neck and put it around mine. OMG, I thought. We are getting married!”
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However, for Priyanka Chopra, who was living with her Kiran maasi “dating was not allowed.”
“For a while, I tried to outsmart Agent Kiran. In order to talk to Bob on the phone, I used subterfuge techniques. Bob would get his sister to call my house so that maasi would give the phone to me, thinking the girl on the phone was my friend. Then his sister would hand the phone to Bob. But maasi was too smart for such tricks. One evening she picked up the other landline extension. That was the end of our phone calls”, she wrote.
The next trick was to attend sex education class for extra credits, after which Bob would pick up the actress, drive her to the bus stop near her apartment, and from there Priyanka would walk home pretending she had exited the bus. However, this too came to an end when once suspicious Kiran maasi followed Priyanka after school and bust her boyfriend and her.
The third trick was to have Bob home after school, when her aunt was at work. One of these days, when Priyanka thought she was close to having her “first kiss” with Bob, she ended up arriving at home earlier than usual, catching the actress and her boyfriend whom she hid in her closet out of fear. After the incident, Priyanka was shifted to her uncle’s house at Newton, Massachusetts.
After completing her high school in the USA and being a victim of bullying in school, Priyanka called home and immediately returned to India with her mother Madhu Chopra and her brother Siddharth, who rushed to the USA after her stressful call. The next set of adventures began here for the actress. Again, something we can all relate to while growing up.
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The actress joined Army Public School in Bareilly for her 11th grade. The actress, who had recently returned from India, had become a mini-celebrity in her school. Challenging the norms, the actress who was supposed to wear uniform and skirt below her knees, went on to become a rebel kid and and kept her skirt above her knee and also wore makeup to school, which was not allowed. Recalling one such incident, she wrote in her memoir, “My chemistry teacher seemed to love to bust me on my skirt length. One day when she called on me she was in particulary exasparated mood. She took one look at my skirt, strode to the back of the room, and tore out the hem.”
In another incident, Priyanka Chopra narrated a hilarious anecdote from her life, when she was slapped by a monkey. In one of the episodes of The Kapil Sharma Show, the actress said, “When I was in the third grade in Lucknow, we used to have this huge tree outside our school, which was home to a lot of monkeys. I think one of the monkeys was just trying to clean herself up, I found that whole process extremely funny and laughed hard. I don’t know what happened, the monkey looked at me, she came down, and she slapped me hard and ran away.”
Priyanka Chopra, who is celebrating her 42nd birthday today, is one of the highest-paid actresses and is also honoured with the Padma Shri. After actively starring in several Bollywood films, the actress carved her way in the Hollywood, becoming a global star and one of the most followed actress on Instagram. She has 91.6 million followers, two times more than her husband Nick Jonas. She will soon be seen in the film The Bluff.
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