Kavya Profile
Kavya Thakkar sat in her Tuesday’s journalism class, in a pair of white Air Force 1s, grey sweatpants, and a slouchy pink hoodie spelling “new york, i love u” in tiny white letters. Between her easy outfit and free-flowing black hair lies this New Jersey native’s third year at New York University, two-thirds of which was eclipsed by the pandemic.
Thakkar grew up in Edison, a suburban town with a significant Indian population. “Growing up it was very competitive,” She reported of her local schooling system, where magnet schools are popular and most of her peers took up majors in health-care or engineering. Thakkar had been wanting to be a doctor until the age of 16, when she got to talk to someone attending med-school. “I just couldn’t imagine myself in a white coat saying good morning to the patients” said Thakkar, who didn’t have an immediately plan of what to do.
However she was determined to move out of the neighborhood, where she was surrounded by a much-too-familiar Indian community and had few leisure activities than going to the shops around Menlo Park Mall.
Moving to New York was scary, but between her wish to escape and the relative cost of attending the neighboring Rutgers University, it was not a hard decision.
Thakkar’s freshman year living in Weinstein Hall was glorious, filled with the excitement of attending classes and clubs in college and all that Lower Manhattan’s shops and restaurants had to offer. She loved trying out different eateries so much that she kept a rank of all those she had been to: from upscale South American restaurants to the infamous Dosa cart in Washington Square Park. Towards the end of March 2020, life in the city was going so well that Thakkar never expect its sudden end: her hurried exit from the dorm, escaping the raging pandemic via her parents BMW with all her freshman year’s worth.
New York was never the same when Thakkar returned four months later. The citywide mask mandate was in full effect, and she was initially taken aback by the experience of meeting a friend in person after months of isolation, only to see half her face. “Everyone looks different with a mask,” Thakkar recollected.
However over the course of two years Thakkar got use to her new daily accessary. Since she moved back to New York in January 2021 to attend classes in-person, Thakkar found it a helpful barrier against the cold, and a handy tool for school days when she is just not feeling it: “It’s great for when you don’t want people to see your face,” Thakkar noted, “when you don’t want to put on make-up.”
