“When I was 8, my father passed away. Mother wanted me to become independent as being a single mother was not easy for her. ‘Now that you are 8, I need you to be independent. I need you to grow faster than other kids. I need you to understand what the world is all about.’ She thought it would be better for me to experience life in a boarding school away from the comforts of home. In school, I always felt and knew that I was different. I was the tallest kid in the class. I was the skinniest kid in class. And from the very beginning, I never felt I fit in. Because I was constantly bullied for my weight and height, I never felt accepted. I was always looking for places or things as an escape. Sports became my escape. I ran a lot, I was into marathons and I played basketball for the school team. So from the very beginning, I was always trying to find a way to escape the feeling of not being a certain type, of not being accepted and not being a part of a group. I did not want to be in a humiliating position where I was bullied and did nothing about it. I picked my self up and put myself in a better place. In Nepal, our community is very shy. Especially, women and girls are told not to talk when two men are talking. We are always asked to be quiet, submissive and to keep our opinion to ourselves. This bothered me at a very young age. I wanted to be given the freedom of my mind and I felt I never had this growing up.

In retrospect, I feel like I came to NYC to pursue a career in modeling to experience true freedom. It was a struggle. I was rejected from a lot of places. They would write, ‘You are not the right look.’ I understood what that meant. I felt like I was subjected to the same kind of discrimination that I had to endure when I was at school. I never gave up. When things started falling into place, it dawned on me that it could not be about me only anymore. I was in a place where I could do things to make an impact on someone else’s lives. It became more about me and the world. This feeling or paying it forward or the love and compassion comes from my roots and I can never forget that. In NYC, you can drink away your sadness but people do not have the resilience to laugh it away. People are running all the time. The concept of ‘doing nothing’ on the weekend is foreign. It is all about business. The first question people ask is, “Is it good for ‘the business’?” There is so much competition that many people have lost their souls. Everything is borrowed, our houses, the oxygen we take, all the money. And neither can you buy happiness. I don’t think the western world has quite understood this concept. In that way, I find people in our part of the world are much wiser but we lack logic and calculations. Everything is random and everyone seems to be afraid or questioning things.”