Vera Mindy Chokalingam , better known as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer who plays Kelly Kapoor on the NBC sitcom The Office. Kaling is also a co-executive producer and writer of several of the show's episodes. Kaling was born Vera Chokalingam in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father and Bengali mother from India. Her father, Avu, is an architect, and her mother, Swati, is an obstetrician/gynecologist. 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.
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