Acting

Among other roles, Surendra played Chuck Singh in the third season of the YTV sitcom System Crash (2000) and mathlete Kevin Gnapoor in the 2004 comedy film Mean Girls. After losing his bid for the lead role in the 2012 film Life of Pi, he decided to leave acting behind. He began reevaluating his life after that disappointment, saying, "It took a year for me to mourn the loss of what happened."^[6] Surendra subsequently worked as an au pair in Munich, Germany.^[7][6] On October 3, 2020, he appeared in a Mean Girls Reunion video on Instagram, with several original cast members, to encourage people to vote in the upcoming US presidential election.^[8][9]

In November 2023, Surendra reprised his role as Kevin Gnapoor in a Mean Girls-themed Black Friday commercial for Walmart, alongside his original co-stars Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, and Daniel Franzese.^[10] The commercial shows that Kevin is now a proud dad, as the original cast return to the halls of North Shore High School, where a new crew of It girls rule the school.^[10]

Writing

In 2016, Surendra published the book The Elephants in My Backyard, a memoir of his failed attempt to win the lead role in the 2012 film Life of Pi.^[4] He read Life of Pi for the first time on the set of Mean Girls in 2004 and noticed many parallels between his own life and that of the novel's lead character, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, including the fact that Surendra himself grew up in a home adjacent to the Toronto Zoo.^[4] To prepare for the role, Surendra temporarily dropped out of school at the University of Toronto and travelled to Pondicherry, India to learn the specific dialect of the character. Upon returning to Canada and going back to school, Surendra learned how to swim. While he did meet with the casting director of the film, Surendra was not selected to play the role of Pi.^[11] In a GQ interview, he said: "The project kept getting delayed. Three months turned into a year turned into four years. It was actually six years because of that year off. Life of Pi was attached to four different directors over the years, so every time a new director [came aboard], I'd go to the library and get out all the movies they had made and research that director. I worked really, really hard to try to get this part. In the end, they gave it to somebody else."^[7]

He reflected on these experiences in The Elephants in My Backyard. The book was longlisted for the 2017 edition of Canada Reads,^[2] and Surendra was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in 2017.^[12]

Fine arts and crafts

In 2010, Surendra founded Letters in Ink, a bespoke calligraphy and graphic design service based in Manhattan.^[13] He uses pen and ink and chalk to create art and branding for restaurants and other businesses.^[14]

While working at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto as a teenager, Surendra developed an interest in traditional crafts and antiques. As a result, he practices a number of traditional arts and crafts, including letter writing, calligraphy, bookbinding, and painting. He is an apprentice to Connecticut-based potter Guy Wolff, whose work has appeared in Martha Stewart Living magazine.^[15]

In 2020, Surendra created a two-video YouTube series on the art of letter writing for the Morgan Library & Museum.^[16][17] In 2021, he appeared in a series of videos posted on HGTV's YouTube channel, highlighting his personal collection of handmade objects,^[18] chalk art,^[19] bookbinding,^[20] and paper marbling.^[21] He created how-to videos, such as "A Beginner’s Guide to Chalk Art" and "How to Be a Good Host",^[13] which eventually accumulated over eight million views and encouraged him to create his own channel.^[13]

In 2022, Surendra started a self-titled YouTube channel, which has garnered over 221 thousand subscribers.^[22] The channel began with a GoFundMe, created after the success of Surendra's videos with HGTV, as a means of continuing to share his passions and interests. The videos on the channel are presented largely as tutorials, many of them on cooking, antiques, and crafts.^[23]

Film

Television

Commercials