possessions. Her room is near-empty: Just the bed and a few stuffed animals remain (the many other stuffed animals have already been packed). Her mother tells her, “I’m going to


miss your silly talk. Like when you come in the door and you say, ‘How are you doing, chickens?!’ ” Out of earshot, Suchithra says, “I was


feeling kind of blah this morning, but then I thought, This is what she wants. This will make her happy. . . . This is the love of her life.” She adds that when her husband worries about the uncertain- ty of a new life in Los Angeles and the instability of comedy as a profession, “Aparna will say, ‘Daddy, without this, I’m going to be very depressed.’ ” Still, when Ananth comes downstairs


to the kitchen, he’s hiding his tears. He sets to work filling a paper bag with an enormous plastic container of home- made rice and curry, then several pieces of fruit, “to make it look benign,” he jokes when Nancherla wonders whether the food will make it past security. They gather up the last of her bags,


and Ananth asks, “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?” She laughs. She’s told him so many times: “If I hate it, I’ll move to New York. But it has to be one or the other.” She’ll be staying with a friend she


veloper in Northern Virginia, started doing standup in the early ’90s, when Garvin’s and the Comedy Cafe were the big, popular venues in town. Since then, he’s stayed and had a family, and now uprooting is much more difficult. Yet, he says: “You’re not going to make it here. I mean if you do, it’s amazing. I wish I had gone a long time ago.”


One night at a comedic/musical open mike at Solly’s U Street Tavern, Nancher- la is the only woman among 10 guys of varying talents — and, not counting the performers, there’s an audience of two. Everyone gets five minutes, and some of those minutes feel awfully long: One guy plays the bass guitar while singing in Spanish. He’s followed by a comedian who tells a joke about midget vampires, which causes Nancherla to roll her eyes.


But nobody, including her, gets big laughs or applause in such a low-energy atmosphere. “It’s hit or miss,” she says, after the performance. “A lot of times, it’s this — then one good week occasion- ally.” She reflects for a moment, then says, “It just feels like it’s time.”


On a bright October morning, Nan- cherla is crouched over a small suitcase on the floor, stuffed impossibly full of clothes for her move to Los Angeles. It’s a few hours before her flight from Dulles, and she exudes calm, though her par- ents are nervous about their daughter’s departure. Her father, Ananth, hovers over her. “You need your alarm clock,” he insists. She tries to jam it into the near-bursting bag. Nancherla has al- ready sent her car off to California, its trunk packed with more clothes and


met a few years ago at an open mike in New York, joining her in a group house, where she’s not entirely sure there’s a spare bed for her. She mentions this ca- sually to her parents, which causes their expressions of concern to deepen. At Dulles, Nancherla checks her


bags and heads with her parents away from the ticket area, but they soon stop, unsettled to realize that only passengers can enter the gates. “Appi,” her father says, “remember,


two promises right?” “Yeah,” she says. “What are they?” “Exercise twice a week and home-


cooked meals twice a week,” she says, and smiles. They hug tightly. She waves at them as she turns the corner toward her gate, and then she is out of sight.


Christina Ianzito is a freelance writer in Washington. She can be reached at wpmagazine@washpost.com.


December 19, 2010 | The WashiNgTON POsT MagaziNe 25


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