Geetika Kalloo, PhD decided that academia was not a good fit for her. After much reflection and confusion, she decided to take a job in healthcare consulting and is now so happy! Geetika and I share some of the many lessons we've learned in therapy, and we bond over our love of robes. She talks Frasier, cold-shoulder tops, and much more!
Geetika Kalloo, PhD decided that academia was not a good fit for her. After much reflection and confusion, she decided to take a job in healthcare consulting and is now so happy! Geetika and I share some of the many lessons we've learned in therapy, and we bond over our love of robes. She talks Frasier, cold-shoulder tops, and much more!
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Oh, cheers. What are you drinking?
Geetika Kalloo:
I'm drinking Prosecco, but not in a champagne flute because I broke all mine during quarantine, slowly. I had six and just did the all. They're so delicate.
Lisa Bodnar:
Did you throw them against the wall?
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah, I was like, I hate everything.
Lisa Bodnar:
Fuck this.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. A hundred percent, exactly.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hello friends. Welcome to Shiny Epi People. I'm Lisa Bodnar. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this episode, but I am recording it in the week leading up to the US presidential election, and I'm feeling super stressed. I'm guessing that you might be feeling the same way, so I hope that today's episode will bring a little lightness and joy to your life like it did mine when I recorded it with Geetika Kalloo, and when I was editing it too.
Lisa Bodnar:
Geetika was awarded her PhD in epidemiology from Brown University in May of 2019. She completed a postdoc fellowship and midway through, went through a dark time in which she realized that she didn't want a job in academia and she wasn't sure what to do next. Being an immigrant and the added pressure she was putting on herself wasn't helping. Geetika ultimately decided to take a job in industry, specifically in healthcare consulting. And now she's really happy. Geetika talks about how she got through that tough period and what she realized about herself in the process. I hope you enjoy the show.
Geetika Kalloo:
Hello.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hi.
Geetika Kalloo:
How are you?
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm great. You're in your closet too.
Geetika Kalloo:
You're getting a view of my husband's side of the closet. Mine is more over here.
Lisa Bodnar:
And perks of divorce, the entire closet is mine.
Geetika Kalloo:
We just moved into this house and we had this conversation where I was like, so would you like to use the guestroom closet?
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally.
Geetika Kalloo:
And he was like, what? I was like, okay, too soon, I guess. And I was like, okay, we'll give it one year of marriage, and then I'm going to be like, look how great the guest room closet is. I'm not kidding, yesterday I realized the drawers in his nightstand don't have anything in them. And I was like, why didn't you tell me this? I have stuff to put in there.
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally, you're like, I could fill those in like 30 seconds.
Geetika Kalloo:
I already have. He doesn't know. I haven't told him.
Lisa Bodnar:
What do you put in a nightstand?
Geetika Kalloo:
I just needed extra storage. Turns out I have a million robes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Me too.
Geetika Kalloo:
And I wear them all the time now. So I was just hanging them, but there were just always six robes on the door in my closet. So I was like, oh my God, the nightstand is perfect. So he's going to open it and there's going to be six satin robes in there, but it's fine. But I was like, okay, these are the ones post shower, these are lounge, these are dress up.
Lisa Bodnar:
I have a white one in the bathroom. If it's going to hang there, you can't have a grody robe. So I have a nice white one that's in here. I have a black one that's cozy, and then a lot of others.
Geetika Kalloo:
Literally I got one that was that waffle, you know that?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes.
Geetika Kalloo:
I was like, so do you like my new waffle robe? And he was like, one, I don't know why you're calling it that, and two don't you have six others? And I was like, but not waffle. And then I had to be like, see how it kind of looks like a waffle? And he's the only person I talk to now, so he has to put up with all of this. I was looking today, I was like, well I have all my robes are long, so I need a shorter one. Why? I don't know.
Lisa Bodnar:
If a robe doesn't have pockets, we're just done.
Geetika Kalloo:
As women, we've already been subjected to pants without pockets. All our clothes just don't, I'm constantly like, will somebody hold my phone? Because I don't have any place to put it. At least my lounge wear should have pockets.
Lisa Bodnar:
I totally agree with you. My thing that came out of COVID was realizing that everything I wear needs a pocket, and I've gotten rid of so many things that have no pockets. I'm just like, this is of no use to me. I need to have pockets at all times.
Geetika Kalloo:
And I've also become that girl who if a dress has pockets, I have to tell every woman I see, like, it is possible, guys.
Lisa Bodnar:
Or when you're standing there, you always make sure your hand in your pocket.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah, so somebody can be like, does that dress have pockets? And you're like, right?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. I'm glad that I'm not the only one with a robe problem.
Geetika Kalloo:
Me too. I didn't know. That's where this conversation was going to go.
Lisa Bodnar:
This is what's Shiny Epi People is, you just never know. You just never know.
Geetika Kalloo:
I do want to say I'm very excited to be on, and I've been loving them so far. I go for a run, turn it on. And it's also just the right amount of time for a run. When it's over, I'm like, I can go home now.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Geetika Kalloo:
Nobody needs to exercise for longer than this podcast. Last time I was like, come on, Lisa, wrap it up. This is true, I had to take a detour because I was close to home and I was like, the podcast isn't over. Because my thing was, you can run for 25 to 30 minutes. You can do it, get out there. So I like to look for things that are just that long. And I was like, how can this not be over? Very interesting conversation about feral hogs, but why is it not over?
Lisa Bodnar:
Jon Jackson and I were on the phone for three hours.
Geetika Kalloo:
He's so cool.
Lisa Bodnar:
He's so cool.
Geetika Kalloo:
I was like, where does he work? Then it was MGH, and I live in the Boston area and I was like, should I like slide into his DMs?
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally should.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. I just want to be like, "Hey, I want to be buds." So far everybody I've heard on the podcast, I've been like, I would like to be friends with this person. And some of them are like Matt Fox, who was my professor. So I still hold him in high regard, but also sure, I'll eat a pop tart, Matt. Let's hang out.
Lisa Bodnar:
Shiny Epi People takes a ton of time, but it's totally worth it because during COVID I've just been bored.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. It's monotony. I have so much work to do. I'm not actually being as productive as I usually am. And I am bored as fuck.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes.
Geetika Kalloo:
I got a new job during the pandemic and it felt like nothing happened, because I was still sitting at the same desk I sat at in the same corner of the house where I did my PhD and my postdoc. So it doesn't feel like anything happened. It's new, but it's only new on this screen where that's the only place anything happens in my life now. And it sucks. I have a kind of... Staying on clothes, this whole podcast is now about clothes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Why not?
Geetika Kalloo:
I found myself not wearing my nicer stuff, completely subconsciously had just decided, I'm going to wear out these sweat pants, these t-shirts, these whatever, and then I'm going to throw them away at the end of the pandemic.
Lisa Bodnar:
I just thought about that. I was literally like, I think it would be awesome if I just wore this, and then I burn it at the end.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. I had a pair of ballet flats at the beginning that I was like, these are my pandemic flats, and I'm just going to burn them because they're full of infection. I wore mascara for the first time today, since my wedding. This is how important this podcast is to me.
Lisa Bodnar:
Thank you. Your lashes do look kind of lush. I've decided I'm just going to get a whole bunch of new shirts. Just s I'll feel not so bad.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. And also I had to buy some new shirts because I don't fit into some of my old shirts right now.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Geetika Kalloo:
I put on a shirt the other day that used to be my loose shirt where I was just like, I'm just being so slouchy and whatever. And it was tight, and I was like, loose shirt, you have betrayed me. I was mad at the shirt.
Lisa Bodnar:
When you started your PhD, what were you imagining you were going to do with your degree once you were finished?
Geetika Kalloo:
I never had like a, oh, I have to be an academic, I have to be a professor, I have to teach. That was never part of it. I just wanted to do interesting work. I wasn't even that fixated on the topic. I just wanted to do something that I could see the impact of relatively quickly, which is a frustration I sometimes had with academia. Well, even while I was in it.
Lisa Bodnar:
Were you worried about what you were going to do when you were done?
Geetika Kalloo:
No, not at all. I was having a ball during my PhD. It's super hard, I don't want to minimize that at all, and it's stressful and all that stuff, but I loved the work that I did. I worked with Joe Braun at Brown, and he was an awesome mentor. My last year started and I knew I was graduating and I was like, oh God, I guess I'll just do a postdoc because that's what everyone does. And like people talked to me at various conferences about doing post-docs with them and whatever. So I was like, all right, this next step is just so readily available. And at that time, I didn't really think about it at all. Like I just did the next thing you're supposed to do, because everybody also seemed so confident. Joe said to me and other like mentors would be like, "You'd be great in academia." So I was like, "Oh, I'd be great at it." So I'll just keep down this path. But I never took that moment of self-reflection, and I don't think we ask students to take that moment, really.
Geetika Kalloo:
The world that we're in has chosen this path. So they're like, totally just keep on going. You'll be great. Which is why now I'm reaching out to every professor I know being like, "Hey, if you have a person who seems like a little bit confused, they don't have to leave academia, but tell them they can talk to me about it." Because nobody ever had that conversation with me. I knew that industry was this like that happened outside of academia, and I thought it was evil, and I thought it was a bad place and science died there. I had all these really negative impressions of a world I didn't understand at all.
Lisa Bodnar:
Did you have specific goals for the post-doc?
Geetika Kalloo:
That's when I knew I had a problem, because I didn't. I did not. I didn't really know what I was doing, except I was like, cool, I'll just work with you because I like you, and I like the research that you do. He would have talks with me in the beginning being like, what's your trajectory? Where do you see yourself? I didn't have an answer to these questions. And I'm really grateful to him to being like, all right, you need to think about if this is the place for you. And if not, talk to people about what are other things you can do with this skill set that you have, which was a very scary time, I'm going to be honest. For six months I was like, have I made a huge mistake by getting this PhD?
Geetika Kalloo:
He was a good mentor asking me, how can I help you get to where you want to be? And I was like, I don't know where I want to be. I like the work, I like working with people, I love collaborative science. I want to do something that makes a difference. And then I was like, so you tell me what that looks like. And he was like, that can look like different things for different people. When you're a postdoc surrounded by other postdocs, everybody is talking about writing their K and this is how I'm going to differentiate myself from my mentor so I have this body of work to take with me when I apply for a faculty position. And I was like, I don't want to do any of these things.
Geetika Kalloo:
I love epi, I love the work that we do. I was like, what's the job where I get to do cool research about interesting things without committing myself to something for 10 years of my life? So I was just stuck and I started talking to people at non-profits , and the NRDC, because I was predominantly an environmental epi person. And I was having really interesting conversations, but, nothing was really clicking. And then I just started going on LinkedIn, which was a thing that I'd never done before. Because who uses LinkedIn in science? Nobody.
Lisa Bodnar:
I always get these emails, they're like, you have 13 new contacts. I'm like, who the fuck cares? I don't even know what this is.
Geetika Kalloo:
I haven't even updated Like my LinkedIn, literally I go in every time a new thing happens, and I'm like, now am post doc and then get out of there. And it's mostly for my relatives in India to be like, she's doing something. I feel like they're already, like, how long have you been a student? So I go in to just be like, guys, I am doing stuff. Something is happening over here.
Geetika Kalloo:
And I went on LinkedIn and there was this random job posting from the company I now work for. And then I was like, Oh, who's going to write a cover letter? And then LinkedIn had this button that was like, LinkedIn easy apply, just upload resume. And I was like, okay, I guess I will upload my resume. I can deign to do that much, which is not to say that I wasn't interested in the position. That's just how defeated I was feeling at that point, where I was just like, I don't know what I'm doing in this world right now.
Lisa Bodnar:
How are you managing this uncertainty?
Geetika Kalloo:
Not very well, because I've been the kid, who's always had a plan. I'm the immigrant kid of immigrant parents who got straight A's, went to a good college, kind of always knew what she wanted to do. To hit this point in my post-doc and go, wait a second, I put in all this work and now I don't know what the next step is. And honestly, to feel like a failure because I didn't want to be a professor. And I was like, I suck, I don't deserve this PhD, because I don't want to take it to its next natural step.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. That sounds really hard.
Geetika Kalloo:
Thank God for therapists.
Lisa Bodnar:
Thank God. where would I be? Under a bridge. That's where I would be, living like a troll.
Geetika Kalloo:
I was sitting there and be like, I am complete failure. I've accomplished nothing. To have my therapist be like, literally she was like, "Tell me a time you've actually failed." And I was like, "I'm failing right now." And she was like, "Nope, you're confused right now. When have you failed?" And literally I was like, "Once I got a B minus on a math test." And she's like, "Again, do you understand failing?" And I really, my therapist really likes to call out my bullshit, which I love.
Lisa Bodnar:
Me too. Same as mine.
Geetika Kalloo:
Which is, I think, the hallmark of a great therapist. And she was like, "Go fail at something."
Lisa Bodnar:
I started with a new therapist not that long ago. And after we have two sessions, she's like, "I can tell you really have issues with you disappointing others and how you'll never disappoint anyone and how hard you are on yourself." And I said to her, "How do you know this about me so fast?" She's like, "Um."
Geetika Kalloo:
She's like, "You're textbook."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. So I get it.
Geetika Kalloo:
I felt for whatever reason I was letting everyone who has trained me to this point down.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Yeah.
Geetika Kalloo:
I had this conversation with my, because I'm still working with Joe Braun to publish some of my thesis work. He was like, "There's places that do good research that are a little bit different than academia in ways that might suit your lifestyle or what you're looking for." And I was like, What? Permission from someone I respect?
Lisa Bodnar:
What an amazing mentor.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. He's awesome. That's what I needed, and that was right before somebody from Health Corp happened to call me. That led to a series of interviews in which I really learned about the company and while I was doing that, it gave me the motivation to apply to other places because I felt like suddenly somebody wanted me, not that I didn't feel that way in my postdoc, but I didn't want myself, this feeling that people valued my skill and were excited about my work, and it reminded me. I was like, oh, you still are good at this. And you still like it. You just, maybe aren't built for the academic world, and subconsciously I didn't see a lot of women around me doing it.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh, how sad.
Geetika Kalloo:
And I think that makes a difference. I get really mad at conferences where they're like, look, how many women are here. And I'm like, how many of them are full professors? I certainly didn't see a ton of women of color doing it. Representation matters, not in the sense that I'm like, oh, she did it so I can do it. But subconsciously you have to see someone that you see yourself in to believe in yourself. And I think part of the reason I lost that faith in myself was I was like, who am I looking to who has traversed this path?
Geetika Kalloo:
I've had wonderful mentors. They've all been men. And there is, I think there's somewhere in the back of your mind where you're like, yeah, they did it. They're awesome. But I'm not like them. And I've always wanted to do something at the cross section of research, policy and applied work. And I never found that lane in academia for myself. And that was what was exciting to me about Health Corps, because they were like, oh, you're going to work directly with the FDA and whatever. I was like, oh cool, so like the work I do goes to a regulatory body that could do something about my findings. And that felt very empowering to me as a scientist.
Lisa Bodnar:
Geetika, tell me about the job that you're in right now.
Geetika Kalloo:
I am a senior researcher for Health Corp Incorporated, which is a healthcare research consultancy firm. So I think they were interested in me because I have all this pregnancy research, and they have a ton of pregnancy work. So currently I'm PI-ing four studies, I think. They're all in the realm of either pregnancy or children's health. So I do what I would do in academia. I write protocols, I run studies, I write manuscripts, but you do it with a more direct goal.
Geetika Kalloo:
These studies are requested by the FDA because pregnant women aren't included in clinical trials. So you need to test the safety and efficacy of various medications on both the woman and her child, both in the short term and in the long-term. So they're the ones who put forth like calls for these studies. You write a proposal, you get it. It's very much the same. Then you write a protocol, you work with a client who can be the FDA, but can also be pharmaceutical companies whose drug is under consideration. And then you carry out the study, you write the publication. It's very similar in that way, there is an added touch, which is the client relationship. Nobody taught me how to deal with a third party in grad school, and scientific communication is a big interest of mine, and I think this is a great place to start.
Lisa Bodnar:
One of the things that I think I would worry about, and maybe others would worry about is, well, I didn't do pharmaco epi. I knew nutrition and pregnancy, let's say, they want to study vaccines and I don't know anything about vaccines. I think that's actually not as much of an issue as we think it is.
Geetika Kalloo:
It's so not. I would say trust your epi training. It's epi is epi. Programs train you to understand basic concepts and the methods around it. You can apply that anywhere.
Lisa Bodnar:
It sounds like you're really happy with this position.
Geetika Kalloo:
I really am. I think that's also why I'm like going around and being like, does anybody want to talk to me about it?
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. Email Geetika dot...
Geetika Kalloo:
No, seriously go for it. It's the Gmail that you would think that it is. But yeah, and I think I'm happier also because I did go through such a dark time for me career wise, because it was the first time I did not know what my next step should be.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. And I think leaning into that is the way to figure what's how to get out of it.
Geetika Kalloo:
Totally. And I would really encourage people, not to just keep going down that path that you think you're supposed to keep going down. Just take a beat. Think about what do you want your day to look like also.
Lisa Bodnar:
Well and just recognizing, what do I want?
Geetika Kalloo:
Right.
Lisa Bodnar:
It's such a simple question, but it's so hard to answer.
Geetika Kalloo:
And it takes time to get to the answer. I could still be applying to faculty positions right now because I just didn't think about it. I just thought that's where I was supposed to be.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. And then you turn 43 and you're like, what the fuck was I doing?
Geetika Kalloo:
Right.
Lisa Bodnar:
And then you have a midlife crisis, whereas now you can have a midlife crisis over something totally different.
Geetika Kalloo:
Right, and I will have one.
Lisa Bodnar:
I highly recommend having a midlife crisis.
Geetika Kalloo:
I will have one and retreat to my land of robes. I will call you and say, "Hey, it's happened."
But it's not going to be about this particular thing, though it felt like a crisis at the time.
Lisa Bodnar:
Geetika, how does being an immigrant overlay on this?
Geetika Kalloo:
So I came here when I was almost eight, like seven and a half. I'm an immigrant. My parents are immigrants. I've seen that hustle that they've just had to have. They've done very well for themselves, but they, the first five, seven years in this country, my dad was in school. My mom restarted her career.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow.
Geetika Kalloo:
So it was incumbent upon me to make it worth it. My parents are working so hard for this new life that they've decided they want for themselves, but mostly for me and my little sister. So that's where this need to be perfect, need to achieve comes from. But it's also achieve while attaining financial and life stability. As well as I've done for myself, I don't have ancestral wealth, so I have to look out for myself. Even as I was deciding the post-doc academic route, people would always say to me, "Well, we don't do this for the money." And I was like, "Yeah, but I need money." You're right, I could've been somebody, like an i-banker and made lots of money right out of undergrad and I didn't.
Lisa Bodnar:
What's an i-banker?
Geetika Kalloo:
An investment banker.
Lisa Bodnar:
Investment banker, okay.
Geetika Kalloo:
I just remember a bunch of douchey guys from college became i-bankers. I just remember that from college being like, I'm going into i-banking and I was like, ew, you suck.
Lisa Bodnar:
Ew. That's so gross.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Sorry for any i-bankers listening.
Geetika Kalloo:
Sorry for our i-banker contingency of this podcast.
Lisa Bodnar:
We just called you a douche, but probably you're really nice if you're listening.
Geetika Kalloo:
If you listen to this podcast, you're nice. But everybody else sucks. No, I'm sure they're lovely. But that's not what I wanted to do. So when I was negotiating for a postdoc salary, the sense still around it was like, you're not doing this for the money. You're doing this for the greater good and whatever. And I was like, sure. But I'm now in my 30s, and I'd like to buy a house at some point. So that's how I think the immigrant mentality and the hustle, kind of stays with you, where I was like, yeah, I got to do this with work I love, absolutely. But I don't have a cushy safety net at the end of this tunnel. I also have to make sure I'm doing the work that I love while living the life I want to live. And healthy or not, living up to the dreams my parents had when they came to this country.
Lisa Bodnar:
There's so many people you don't want to disappoint.
Geetika Kalloo:
You don't want to disappoint your mentors. You don't want to disappoint the dreams that your parents had. You don't want to disappoint yourself, which I really struggled with because I was like, you're the girl that does the hardest thing and gets it done, even in relationships, romantic relationships, when things are flowing and easy, again, extremely good therapist burn, I was like, "I don't know. Everything seems fine. But is that what you base a foundation of a lifetime on?" She was like, "Why do you hate your own happiness?" She was like, "Why are you scared to be happy?" And I was like, "Because it's not hard." The priority is do you like yourself? Do you like your life?
Lisa Bodnar:
It is so much work to do that work.
Geetika Kalloo:
Oh God, it's exhausting.
Lisa Bodnar:
My therapist is always saying to me things like, I'll say, "I don't know, I'm working so hard on my relationship with my son and we made this progress. I don't know. And I'm just feeling so exhausted lately." And she's like, "Maybe you're so exhausted because you were actually doing so much emotional work to improve relationships in your life." That is a lot of hard work.
Geetika Kalloo:
And it's a lot of hard work to have the moment of introspection to be like, I value this relationship with my son, thus, I will work. That's work that no one can see, but it takes weeks to get there. Because I can imagine that you could just say, he's my son. He loves me, I love him. We're just going to keep going and it'll figure itself out, but you have to stop and go like, no, I'm going to work on it. That's so exhausting, but so worthwhile.
Lisa Bodnar:
Once you start to see the progress and then you're like, oh, this is really worth the time that I'm putting into it. But that hard work that you put in, and it's years of hard work.
Geetika Kalloo:
It took getting to a point where I was so anxious and so driven by I didn't know what I wanted. And this is another thing my therapist said like very early on to me, she was like, "You have turned down the dial of what do I want so low, you don't even hear it."
Lisa Bodnar:
I love therapist's analogies.
Geetika Kalloo:
I know they're the best.
Lisa Bodnar:
They're so good.
Geetika Kalloo:
They're the best. And she's like, "So what our work is, is to turn the other dials down and turn that one up." And I was like, "But that's going to ruin all those relationships." And she was like, "No, it's going to fix all those relationships, and the ones that are going to drop out, didn't serve you." And she was totally right.
Lisa Bodnar:
Sorry for the interruption.
Geetika Kalloo:
No, that's okay. All good?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes. That was my dad. And he was like, "Your mom needs an onion. Give me an onion." So I gave him the onion and then he was like, "Here's a bag of brownies and light bulbs." And I was like, "Okay."
Geetika Kalloo:
That's a standard dad interaction.
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally. And then he's like, "Okay, goodbye." All right, goodbye. Thanks for the brownies. And I don't even know what the light bulbs are for. I certainly didn't request them.
Geetika Kalloo:
Last time he was at your house, you had like one light bulb that was flickering. He's like, Lisa has no light bulbs and is not a functioning adult.
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Geetika Kalloo:
Always the overachiever. It was like, I'm going to be a professional dancer-astronaut-doctor. This is a thing I would tell people.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Geetika Kalloo:
And nobody had the heart to tell me no, it was kind of a sad day in fourth or fifth grade when I was like, I cannot be professional dancer, astronaut, ballerina? And now I think it sounds exhausting. Yeah. Epidemiologist is fine.
Lisa Bodnar:
It's fine. Is there a Halloween costume you remember?
Geetika Kalloo:
I came to the States when I was eight. So I was kind of like, what is this nonsense holiday? I didn't get it. So I was just a princess every year, because I was like, tiara, fuck yeah. I felt this way about Christmas also, because the first year my parents wanted me to be included and they were like-
Lisa Bodnar:
Did they?
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. So they got a Christmas tree, they were like, "A guy is going to come down the chimney." And I was like, "I'm eight years old. A fat guy is going to come down my chimney and leave... What?" And my parents were like, "Okay, it's not going to happen, but don't tell the other kids."
Lisa Bodnar:
What's something you're embarrassed to admit that you like?
Geetika Kalloo:
Oh my God, I love the television show Frasier.
Lisa Bodnar:
You mean like nowadays?
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah, like today. I can watch it, I find it so soothing watching the TV show about a neurotic white man. It's just like nothing, the show is nothing. And Kelsey Grammar has a very soothing voice.
Lisa Bodnar:
What about Roz?
Geetika Kalloo:
She's who we all want to be, just a single woman living her life in Seattle. Sound great.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, she's got great hair.
Geetika Kalloo:
Great hair. She's having sex with everybody. It's great. But every time I mention it, people are like, "What about your people of color rule in television?" I'm like, "I can make an exception for Frasier, the whitest show in America."
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. That's embarrassing.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. It's horribly embarrassing.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's something that is really popular now, but you think in five years we'll all look back on and be embarrassed by?
Geetika Kalloo:
Those sleeves, you know the peek-a-boo sleeves? Let's not do that anymore.
Lisa Bodnar:
I think they're called cold shoulder.
Geetika Kalloo:
Cold shoulder. That's right. Why are we doing that?
Lisa Bodnar:
You know what? I have a few shirts that are cold shoulder, and I kind of like them.
Geetika Kalloo:
Do you like them? I feel like I look like a wannabe. I love that it's working for you. It's not working for me, but every woman under 25 only seems to own crop top, cold shoulder outfits.
Lisa Bodnar:
Well I'm like, okay. I can't wear a short skirt. That doesn't feel comfortable. I can't do cleavage. I don't have it. I'll just do cold shoulder.
Geetika Kalloo:
I'll show what I can. It's my shoulder. That's fine. But I feel like in five years we're going to be like, really? We did that?
Lisa Bodnar:
This was so much fun.
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Lisa Bodnar:
The people that I've invited on, they're just people that I'm curious about. And then at the end I'm like, "Can we be friends?"
Geetika Kalloo:
Yeah, the answer is, yes. I don't even know if you were asking that, but please expect those heart best friend necklaces to show up at your door.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay, I'm good. Yeah. We'll just start out with some heart emojis, Geetika, let's start out slow.
Geetika Kalloo:
Okay. Oh, well, got rejected on my first pitch I threw, you were like, "Oh. Too much."
Lisa Bodnar:
I don't know.