OCCUPATION: Biomedical engineer and professor at USC
HAS BEEN IN WESTWICK: She’s been living there since she was 14 years old, left about a year ago and has returned recently.
Born in England to a Pakistani mother and an American father, Neela Dayal spent most of her early childhood running around with her sister in the outskirts of London. Her parents, a very dedicated physical therapist and a strict cardiologist both made sure that their girls were not only raised with love, but also, with ambitions and eyes set on building themselves stellar careers. So Neela grew up with this greed for things. She’d always wanted more than was had been given her, and obviously, she’d work hard to make things possible for herself.
At the age of fourteen, her family moved to Westwick due to a promotion that had been given to Dr. Dayal, to work as the Cardiology chief in Browne Memorial Hospital. In Westwick, Neela was able to blossom even more as both a young woman and the academical prodigy that she’d starting to work on back in England. It was in high school that she met Hyde and that was possibly the biggest turning point in her life. From the moment they met, they seemed to be connected to the hip, and with time, that friendship and care turned into love. They seemed to work well together, she helped him with his studies and with his social skills and he—well, he gave her love. Pure love and companionship. He seemed to be her biggest supporter and for someone who aimed as big as Neela did, she could use all the support from around her. Her family had practically adopted Hyde too, and from the time they had graduated high school, a marriage proposal knocked on her door, swooped her parents off their feet too and there she was, having the cutest little end-of-the-summer wedding with her first love.
College life wasn’t so hard as most people made it out to be. Neela got accepted into USC to study Biomedical engineering. After spending so much time in her mother’s physical therapy’s clinic and getting to hear these stories about war veterans, her future was pretty much set in stone by the time her sophomore year of high school rolled around, and what she really wanted, was to research ways of making body prosthetics more comfortable and better to the ones who needed them. So, since she had that part of her life already decided, it wasn’t hard for Neela to focus on what she needed to focus on for that to happen. The best part was that Hyde also seemed interested in the academic life, so all the pressure their friends were putting on them, asking about babies and all that, she could push to the back of her mind and focus on what mattered.
However, as the time passed, Neela started feeling like she was trapped. It wasn’t like she didn’t love Hyde, because she did. She truly did, but their lives came to a point where his revolved around hers and hers revolved around something else. Neela began feeling suffocated and unhappy, which was not ideal for a marriage. Her career was going great, her social life was amazing and yet, there was still pressure to start a family and Neela didn’t know if it came from within herself or from the ones around her. When the opportunity to spend a few months in London doing some research in the name of UCLA showed up, Neela grabbed with so much strength that it probably gave everyone around her a whiplash, including Hyde. With the excuse of needing some time away, she left.
She never asked for the divorce, she never completely removed him from her life—at least not in her mind. Although she didn’t keep in touch with Hyde, there were moments where she missed him deeply, but there was always the doubt of it being missing the comfort of being married or Hyde himself. After she was done with her research, Neela ended up staying for some months more, trying to actually find herself and figure everything out that was keeping her from being happy. And even though she hadn’t completely figured it out, Neela’s back in Westwick and to a brand-new job as a professor at her Alma Mater that she is very confident about. Now, she just need to figure out what her next step with Hyde will be, whether they’ll try and work on it or if she’ll just file for the divorce.
✓ social, organized, hard-working
✘ perfectionist, demanding, over-critical
This role is played by Bru
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