India Burns
Older Sister Role Models are girls who aren't afraid to take risks to be themselves, even if it sometimes means getting lost along the way.
The Long Way Home
On an early summer night in Manhattan, I met India Burns and her sister, Manzi, at their childhood home, a real-life Barbie Dreamhouse of pop art and playful color, staged by their mother, a fabulous interior designer.
Normally we'd be watching a movie and cuddling their pug, but I had a lot to ask India. She was going to be the very first Role Model for Older Sister, and I couldn't think of a better candidate. I met India, my best friend Manzi's little sister, when she was still a senior in high school, and at seventeen she was already cooler than anyone I knew. Then Manzi told me that India was a speech and debate champion, which I thought was totally unexpected then, and totally on brand now. So on that Thursday night in June, I started where it all made sense: I asked India to tell me about speech and debate.
It all started with a tap on the shoulder. Her high school drama teacher told India she'd be good at speech and debate and encouraged her to try it. She was resistant at first — it wasn’t an activity that any of the “cool girls” were into — until she found a piece of prose that stood out to her: a spoken-word piece by Big Poppa E called “Falling In Like”, and something just clicked. India started spending every weekend in her bedroom, standing in front of the mirror and practicing, getting completely lost in the performance of it all.
"It's fun and it's academic," she remembers thinking, "but I could really do this forever." This was a new feeling for India. She had always forced herself into things she didn't like, sports she dreaded, clubs that bored her.
“The journey is the joy of it, and the journey is long.”
But this — performing, being onstage — was different. It didn't feel like work. And she was good: she went to state championships. She competed at Harvard. Her dad came along as her groupie. She once memorized an excerpt from The Princess Diaries where she played seven different characters at once. And she won everything.
India recalls showing up to competitions in cute little outfits, winning the whole thing, then going out with her friends in the city that same night, living a double life between competitive mornings and teenage weekends.
“It was my calling,” India says. “But I didn’t know that then. I wasn’t fully in tune with my intuition.”
So she put performing on the back burner. In college, she directed a play, Dog Sees God, and felt something tugging at her while watching the actors, but she wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet. She knew she wanted to direct someday — a long-term goal she still holds — but she talked herself out of doing the thing right in front of her. "I could never be an actor," she told herself.
After she graduated, she spent the first couple of years working corporate jobs in New York City. By 24, she was feeling uninspired, and something was pulling her to get out of New York, fast. So she took a risk, quit her job, broke her lease, and moved to Australia.
She had a vision of what her new life on the other side of the world would be: hanging out at the beach, making new friends, and having sooo much fun that she’d come back to New York a changed person.
“There’s something beautiful in taking your time.”
But the opposite happened. She felt lonely. Without her friends and family around her, she felt like she was floating adrift on an island by herself. “That loneliness was probably one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received,” she says now.
“If I can move to the other side of the earth and sit with all of this,” she thought. “I could probably do anything.” The feelings she'd spent her whole life running from — being lonely, not doing what was expected of her — were finally just her reality. "And I was living it,” she says. “I was okay."
Determined to get clear with herself, India started journaling and going on long walks, asking herself who she was and what she wanted. Then one night, alone in her apartment with the FOMO closing in, she turned her phone off and cried. She made a request out loud: if there is some higher power out there, please send me a sign of what I'm meant to do.
That night, her sleeping mind handed her an answer: she dreamt she won an Oscar.
"I woke up and my entire life perspective was different,” she says. “I was on a path and it felt very clear to me." She texted her mom, asking what she saw for her future career. Maybe a CEO, running your own company?, her mom replied. What about acting? India said. Her mom’s reply was immediate: THAT’S IT.
From that moment on, India says everything just started to align. She saw an ad on the street for an acting class in Sydney; she called and they had one spot left, and the class was starting tomorrow.
And it was that acting coach who told India what she already knew, but needed to hear: move home and pursue this, for real.
Now she's home and in acting school, and measures success differently than she used to. "Every day I feel successful. It doesn't take big things for me to feel accomplished." Acting, India says, brought her home, and not just geographically.
Her advice for anyone wondering if they've missed their window: you haven't. "Don't be afraid to go back to school and learn your craft. The practice of it, the intentionality of mastering something, is just as fulfilling as the rewards it reaps. You have to slow down and realize that the journey is the joy of it, and the journey is long." A lot of celebrities and role models are very young, India points out, and that isn't realistic. “There’s something beautiful in taking your time.”
When I ask India if she wants to promote anything, she has plenty of options to choose from: films and projects on the way, one of them putting her face on a billboard in the middle of Times Square. Her answer? "School,” she says. “Take the class."
And the reward, the one that made all the years of running worth it, is not the Oscar she once dreamed about. It's this feeling she can now describe:
"When you find what makes you feel joyful and fulfilled, and you stay true to what makes you happy, suddenly all the anxieties you clung to dissipate, and you're left with a buzz of confidence."
