The most interesting Choudhary if not the richest

[Music]

hello namaste everyone

i am todori and i am a host by

profession

student of masters of arts in clinical

psychology

and right now i am feeling like phoebe

who had this pressure of finishing her

speech on certain time because monica

was constantly saying

and we’re given only 15 minutes to talk

and i personally think that i have so

many stories to tell

uh because that’s how i am i personally

think that i am

one of the most interesting chowdharis

in the country if not the richest

of course i’m going to talk about

how i feel my existence is my opinion on

love

life what i think about my existence

right now my importance basically i’m a

little self-obsessed i’m sorry

and then i’m going to talk about what i

want to do further

in the future so i personally think that

all of us

our existence our existence starts from

not the moment where we are in our body

but

uh before that when we are in some

others

some other people’s body that is our

appearance so uh

my parents and their story holds a very

important

part a very important role in my and my

siblings life and it has really nurtured

the way i think

my character and my spirit and life so

my mom born in italy she is

frosh she belongs to the brahman

community my father

is a thorough man born in duhabi

somewhere

while my mother was trying to figure out

her independence

she happened to come to the hobby and

meet my father

it’s a beautiful love story they fell in

love and as normal as it was 30 years

ago guys

for a brahman woman to get married to a

thorough guy they just got married

all by themselves they were welcomed in

my

father’s house grandfather’s house i

would say a big zamindar in duhabi

they were welcomed and straight put to

the backyard of the house

so my parents lived for

quite a while there because my sister

was also born in the backyard

of my grandfather’s house basically

she’s a doctor right

now she’s one of the first doctors in

the family so

uh now i think you know all of this

all of this that i have seen through

them gives me the idea of

what love is and also i’d like to

clarify something if you

some of you i know have this that you

know constantly you talk about brahman

and tharu and brahman and tharu

you have no idea what it is like to live

in a multicultural family so

i’m just letting you know that nepal is

like

a jar okay please imagine

a transparent jar and there are

different colors say yellow blue green

pink

red all of it and you know

when when i say that i am yellow and you

are blue i’m not trying to say that

i am bigger than you or you are bigger

than me what i’m trying to say is

acknowledge

each other’s existence so that is how

nepal is

it’s very beautiful it’s very colorful

but

it is equal and all our communities all

our culture is

absolutely adorable and we need to

respect that

so uh why i’m sharing my parents and

their relationship

on a platform like this is because i

want them to know that

we wouldn’t have it any other way the

way they have fought

um they were told that they were never

they will never have a house

because they got married by themselves

uh they will never be successful in life

their children will be meh

and uh you know there were so many

things that they were told and today we

have a house

we have a house of our own my father

built it all by himself

with no help from my grandfather or any

other relatives

my sister is a doctor my brother is

absolutely everything that we want in

our life by the way they were also told

that

they won’t have a son because having a

son is such an important thing in our

society

so uh and i am well i am me you can see

me right now

my parents have taught me about love

that love always wins

and when i say love wins it’s not about

two people staying together

it is about what love is pit and pitted

against too

so my parents and the love was pitted

against doubts

my parents and their love story was

pitted against

life choices of both men and women my

parents and their love story was pitted

against slut-shaming

my parents and their love story was

pitted against systemic oppression of

women

and their life choices and today at this

point of time i’m so proud that my

parents and the love has actually

fought against everything to have what

we have right now

and we as children wouldn’t have it any

other way

this also uh uh gives me

the idea of uh you know how i would want

uh

love to be seen in this world

now i’d like to move a little further

and share what i think

about myself this is not very

self-obsessed part i’m yet to come there

so i personally think that

i don’t belong to one place you know

when i look at myself my mom is brahman

and my papa is haru they’re two

different

opposite spectrum of culture in nepal

so how i am raised is is somewhere in

between

okay so i think i’m a bridge me and my

siblings will probably

always be a bridge i’m a middle child i

cannot be

as responsible as the eldest child and i

cannot be as baby as the younger one

so i’m always in the between i studied a

very calm

composed psychology and then

i’m working in rather glamorous and

chaotic media

always a bridge there even in terms of

my personality what i feel like

is i am very bubbly by nature

and i’m also very bold and these are two

different parts

of personalities again a bridge there

so i personally see myself as a bridge

and that is how i would like to

continue my life while talking about

life

i’ve always wanted to share this with

everyone that i take a lot of

reference of life from the earth the

mother nature

sun moon stars everything basically just

not humans we have a core

okay we are a core and i’d like to

compare that core with sun

and uh that core is uh of course very

energetic

and then there are other things the

other celestial bodies say

planets there are other you know planets

that revolve around

this particular core and those are our

relationships

those are our life stories those are

career choices

and life is all about balancing them

just like the sun balances

all the planets around them and if it is

balanced properly i’m pretty sure that

none of it collides with each other

and the fact that each of the planet is

different from each other

in terms of sizes in terms of their

qualities temperature

some has water some doesn’t and some has

humans

apparently with this i would like to go

to the most self-obsessed part

of my talk today and

in this one i’m going to talk about my

importance because i think it is very

important for each one of us to

acknowledge our importance importance of

our existence

in this planet so back in 2015 my sister

sent me a text it was a flyer

and on it it was written application

open

the most curvated crown waits for its

successor miss nepal

2015. and i and to that text i just

replied

good luck and to that she replied

thanks it’s for you to which i replied

have you seen my wardrobe i mean i

it was a the time where the supra and dc

were really famous so the big shoes

okay and that’s the kind of girl i was i

cannot go to a beauty pageant and to

which she replied you know bitter

pageant did so much more than clothes

and heels oh wow

and to which i said of course social

work

because you know i’m a big entertainment

fan so i have been analyzing this and in

entertainment

world not maybe all the time social work

is

like uh is is like a as like a way to

build your image okay uplift your image

or create an image overall and that a

good one because it’s social work

and for me that’s a sin so i said did

you i cannot do this

papo i said it’s a sin so she actually

figured out the most soft corner

at that point of time because i was 21

and i was in need of work she told me

that

you know what you can do miss nepal and

then get work in media

you can get paid to speak i said wow

you can get paid to talk that’s that’s

real

she said yes you know so many people are

doing i mean this is this this is how

they talk and

earn money i said why yeah it’s a cool

idea why i’m sharing this is i want you

to know

my motive of going to miss nepal 2015

because when i reached there

i was seen as something else so

apparently i belong to this community

which never had enough representative in

in media field

so i was the second woman who ever

participated in the history of uh

22 23 years of uh miss nepal but you

know some people really promoted me as

the first ever tharu woman to

participate in miss nepal and all that

uh and then um you know that was fine i

took it quite easily

i did not really share things that were

put in social media because i was like

oh my god that’s not real i am here to

get work for myself

for me it’s so self-obsessed thing that

i’m doing

then uh there were a few things that

happened inside

uh one of these co-contestants just

randomly because i was

pretty popular at that point of time as

the tharu contestant

so she just came to me and told me tata

alopez bisniko ambassador boy it’s just

me

let me translate this for you you have

become the ambassador for people who

sell vegetables

on the street and this was by the way

not the first time i’ve heard things

about my community i’ve heard a lot of

things about uh

you know being kages bottle or say dhoti

or things like that in my school and

high school and

i’ve always been like oh my god i know

where i belong to and i know okay

let’s just relax so sometimes i’ve

fought or sometimes i have it but that

particular sentence

gave me this i

i suddenly felt like oh my god

i belong to this community which is so

underrepresented

that the moment you will talk about it

you will only imagine vegetable sellers

or you’ll imagine someone wearing a

dhoti and walking by the street selling

you know

selling and buying the crabs maybe which

by the way i’m not trying to say it’s a

bad job even if i would belong to some

that kind of family i would be proud

but that’s not who i am and that’s not

what the community is we have doctors we

have engineers we have so many people

doing so many amazing things from my

community

but the youth of the country are going

to see me see me and my community like

this

and that is the day i think i got the

motive

of me i had a better motivation

to be on a platform like that from that

very moment i have decided

it doesn’t matter if i’m in media or not

when i stand

i don’t stand i flex and i flex this

beautiful exotic community

tharu community and when i stand

and when you stand anyone anyone from

this beautiful community

wherever you are if you’re a teacher if

you are a doctor if you are an engineer

if you just have a shop around the

corner you also stand but you don’t just

stand you flex

and you flex me and this way by being

ourselves

we flex each other and that is how we

can create

a better representation for such a

beautiful community

that has talented people and that also

has

some amazing things which i share in on

my instagram please follow me nishma

chowdhury

while i understand the idea of

representation i also

believe that when i stand i don’t

understand i flex i flex these girls who

do not fit under

under the specific beauty criteria so if

you are this dusky woman who don’t

feel who doesn’t feel like she fits in a

certain beauty criteria i’m i’m flexing

you

if you have this hair that is not a

presentable enough

i flex you i am flexing you right here

if you are someone

who took five years to complete their

plus two i flex you

if you are a failure i flex you and if

you are a woman who is often told that

you’re not enough

who are told by the aunties that you’re

not enough because you’re not you’re not

married by the age of 27 i flex you

and every time you all are seated around

with all these characteristics

i expect you to flex me okay

so this is the self-obsessed part it’s

it’s pretty much done

and now i want to talk a little bit

about uh

my love life not which which actually

you know

was about to begin and then got stopped

because back in 2014

around when i was like 24 or something i

fell in love for the first time yes

late bloomer that happens it’s

absolutely normal

um it was about to start like i said and

it got stopped

it was just like a full stop because he

said no

yeah yeah and i imagine like let me just

stand okay he said no

so what happened was the moment he said

no that evening i still remember that

something flew away from my body and i

don’t know what flew away because

the next day the next morning i remember

mamu looking at me and asking

what happened

and she kept on asking me you know for

two weeks what happened what’s wrong

with you you don’t look like yourself

and

i did not have an answer because i don’t

know what happened

i mean it’s just a guy who said no but

it wasn’t supposed to hurt so bad

the next thing i know is i am skipping

showers

i’m skipping showers i’m not sleeping

properly

i’m either overeating or not eating at

all

okay i have acidity most of the time

because i’m not eating healthy

and i don’t have motivation to take my

life further

and slowly slowly i realized that

there’s a lot of self-hatred in me

when you love someone you see yourself

from their eyes

so if they tell you honey you’re looking

pink today you are looking pink today

okay

because you see yourself from their

perspective so when they tell you that

you’re not good enough you’re not nice

not good enough to be a girlfriend wife

you’re so you talk loud and this and

that you

slowly you know slowly that eats you up

eats your confidence and you start

seeing yourself that way

and slowly that builds up into

self-hatred

and you know self-hatred when it goes a

little further

maybe longer than two weeks more than

six months

it becomes a mental problem because i

was ironically

studying psychology i knew one thing for

a fact that it was time i

speak about it to someone because that’s

what we’re told share about it

speak about it you’ll feel better so

that’s what i did

i spoke to my friends because they were

also doing psychology and

uh of course they are my friends so it

was much easier for me to say

um of course i felt a lot better or

maybe i thought i felt better because i

shared about it because

that’s what that’s how mental health is

seeing seen basically

that you share you feel better

but two two and a half years later when

lockdown started i took my first ever

professional mental health help and the

and the feeling that i had after taking

so many sessions with a counselor

i realized that i hadn’t been fined for

two and

two or two and a half years of my life

that is when i realized that it is not

just about

sharing when people tell you that if you

have been feeling bad for more than two

weeks

go and share it with your friends that’s

not enough

you have to go and take professional

help there’s nothing wrong with that

and after that i decided to uh spread

this

you know it doesn’t matter how many

followers you have forty four hundred

four thousand four lakhs

when you speak about something speak

from your heart and it will reach to the

people

also when it comes to spreading even you

know it goes to like four people

you’ve done your part so i opened this

uh platform it’s called the missing

counselor

from where i connected people who are in

need of professional

help emotional support to people who are

professionally doing it to the

counselors

and proudly we have been able to help

around 100 people in a short span of

four to six months

thank you uh right now we’re on hold

but we’re planning to do something um i

have a registered company now and i’m

trying to do something

in mental health so this is my further

way out

this is what i plan to do i really want

people to know

that sharing with your friends and

family

can be a way you can feel better for

some time but if it’s happening for the

longest time

if you’re like me who did not take

shower for 16 days

if you’re someone like that who’s

lacking self-confidence

who’s lacking motivation who is not

taking care of themselves

because of some trauma or something that

happened in their life if you’re having

some mental problems you have it

let’s go take professional help let’s

just live happily

because it’s possible and with this i

i’m pretty much done thank you so much

everyone i hope i hope you enjoyed

today’s event i’m the final speaker

thank you so much ted for having me

thank you