hi guys is the josh high still i'm the last speaker but i guess it's still not the least i've still got a lot more to share so got your attention here right so don't lose the grips on the dreams of your life you must fight just to keep them alive these are the lines from one of my favorite songs called the eye of the tiger a soundtrack of one of my favorite films rocky something that i can relate to in my life because if there is one word to describe me i'm a fighter it is in my genes i am my parents so let me start from the very beginning my father colonel b.r chaudhary was the first ever army officer from his village a very hard-working man and a simple kind woman with endless resilience defines my mother nirmala chaudhary from having born in a army hospital to having spent my childhood in cantonments to studying in army schools the army life was a part and parcel of the springtime of my life in fact when i was born my dad was posted in lay at the time barely managed to reach the hospital just in time for my birth because he wouldn't miss that for the world how he managed is another story altogether so i've always been a very good student you know good in studies good in academics studies sports extracurriculars i've represented my state in swimming and in badminton and like every other army kid i was disciplined so yes i was that kid that every auntie in your neighborhood would compare their kid with you know like sharmajika beta i was that however contrary to the usual belief that army kids usually lose out on a lot of childhood fun i've actually enjoyed every bit of it every transfer that we've had and every new person that i met along the way for me fun meant learning and exploring new things and thanks to my army background i got oceans of opportunities to do that so my parents always emphasized and made sure that we were given the best education in and out of home the right values and made sure that we were always connected to our roots that is the reason every summer vacation was spent in my village haripur punjab where my brother tanveer and i would water the fields play around in the tuples and even make cow dung cakes something that my friends back in the city never understood and could relate to so from having you know getting transferred to a new place every two years to making friends wherever i went to the calmness ruggedness and the freshness of the village life all of these places and the memories became a pit stop in that fun journey of my life and i learned to adapt something that actually helped me uh you know to be able to straddle the entire gamut of being in a city as well as in the village life very comfortably something that i was supposed to face in the near future which i'll be talking about i've always wanted to be a doctor you know doctor menakshi chaudhary in fact as a kid i've always had these three things that i wanted to be doctor miss india and an ies officer but let's be real now the only way i'm being an is when i play one in the film but soon after school i cleared my vds exam which is bachelor's of dental surgery and got admission in one of the reputed dental colleges life felt like a smooth ride on my way to achieving all of my dreams one by one but we all have tossed a coin at least once in our life guessing whether it's going to be heads or tails when when it lands that moment when it is suspended in the air in that space flipping and flipping that is life the coin lands only when we cease to exist so the coin of my life was about to flip for the burst that completely turned my life upside down my father was diagnosed with brain tumor and despite all of our efforts to cure him he passed away in january 2018. i was completely shattered because he was everything to me you know i was very very close to my father i remember how every annual function he'd be there cheering the loudest and clapping the loudest whenever my name was announced on stage be it for sports or extracurriculars you know he was my biggest cheerleader my biggest fan so me being good in studies and good in sports all of that amounted to just one thing on that one day of the year to see him in the audience being proud of me and cheering for me so after losing him i had no clue what to do you know the darkness that came into my life pushed me into an abyss and i was thinking my mother was lost he was the only earning member of our family and you know she cursed herself for not being able to study enough so that she could help us financially my brother was dealing with his own grief everything was going downhill but remember how i mentioned in the beginning that i'm a fighter and i get that from my parents my mother stepped up then she started picking up the pieces because she wasn't going to let herself and her kids go down so here is where i have to tell you this very amazing thing okay my mother comes from a background which is as conservative as conservative can be okay we were protected in how so she comes up to me one day with a newspaper in her hand and points at it and says you're going for this i said going for what she said you're going for miss india and you're going to win it i was shocked here is this woman with a very conservative and patriarchal upbringing telling her daughter that she's gonna go for miss india that i'm gonna go away from my home stay alone in a big city and make a name in place for myself it hit me then that if i could deal with the hardest and toughest things that life had to throw at me i could deal with anything and that set my philosophy in life quite a simple one really that if life throws something that is tough at you you face it deal with it and move on and if it throws something that is beautiful you embrace it and you move on you cannot let whatever happens in life no matter what knock you down because when life pushes you to the ground the only way is up so i applied for miss india and i would practice walking in heels in the hostel corridors much to the annoyance of my seniors i would learn how to pose and smile you know looking at all the models in the magazines i would also learn how to apply makeup something that i was an amateur at through online tutorials what most people don't understand is that miss india contest like any other competition transforms your life in a multitude of ways but it is also physically mentally emotionally and spiritually draining but i kept at it and gave it the time effort and respect that it deserved and then the coin of my life which was still flipping flipped for the better this time i was adjudged as the first runner-up but i only felt like i had achieved something when i saw my mother make her way through this massive crowd of people with tears in her eyes trying to get to me who had just been crowned as the first runner-up in a coveted femina miss india contest there were deals of joy there was happiness and all those unsaid and unspoken emotions that only a parent could feel you know that is when i realized the importance and the magnitude of the crown and the title that i had won so i represented my country internationally and was adjudged as the first runner up there which is the highest ever placement that india has got in that particular pageant but i wasn't happy you know everybody said you'd achieved so much this is a great thing but i had wanted to win and i'd done everything that i could so while the euphoria of the pageant world continued i knew it was short-lived so i started exploring all the other opportunities that came my way one of which was the film industry but little did i know what it entailed i had no clue how to go about it what were the necessary connections that i was supposed to make and how to grab the best of opportunities i was alone and kind of lost in mumbai which is also known as the city of dreams maya nagri you know trying to make my way through and trying to find a place for myself and a hope for my soul so all of this starts with having to pay my own rent and my own expenses i managed to find one place which was affordable not that great but to do child tiger comes sort of a place but i have skipped meals just to be able to save money to pay rent i have hung out in coffee shops to be able to save the money and you know to save the electricity bill you know there is one thing that i have to tell you that if you want to be an actor be ready to face humiliation and rejection on a daily basis i don't want to get into the details of it but but it is something that if you're not mentally strong it is going to break your spirit and you so i worked very hard and i remember i would be attending a lot of acting workshops i would go for auditions daily and i would also do modeling to be able to earn something so that i could pay rent you know i was doing all of that there were days when i would cry my way back home from an audition because all of it would just get so overwhelming sometimes not having any clue where the city is going to take me um but i kept at it and you know i did not give up till the very end because i knew one thing that as long as i am in mumbai every single day away from my family i am going to make the most of it so i would gather the strength every morning and go for the day no matter how challenging no matter how frustrating or exhausting it would get i had to do it for my family for myself but most importantly for that dream of mine that i had seen for myself and i'd envisioned as remember how i had mentioned before that during the darkest times of my life i had to take a year break from my studies so while i was modeling and auditioning and taking workshops i was always determined and i wanted to finish my degree and so i picked up my books again and started studying people were all often surprised you know when i would tell them that i was studying bds i guess these were the kind of people who had coined this term beauty with brains um which in itself is very dedicated in my opinion it's like saying a girl is beautiful you can't be intelligent or smart i mean i've never heard the term handsome with brains for a man i am just saying okay but anyways while i was juggling with my modeling and studies and auditions um it was during one such workshop that i was paired with a fellow actor who was working in a telugu film at the time and who actually happened to be from one of the prominent families of the telugu industry which i only got to know later on by the way little did i know that my workshop videos would act as my acting audition for the film and paved the way for my first ever debut so impressed by my work the actor recommended my name to the director and he felt i was a complete fit for the role and that's how i got my first ever full schleged lead role in a film but little did i know what i was going to get into i did not know he was the funny part i did not know a single word of telugu okay so i would learn my lines in telugu work hard try and mug it up as much as i could improve but if there is one thing that my parents had taught me was that never give up so there were days when i was juggling with shooting schedules exams practicals early mornings late nights all of it would reach to a point where it was so overwhelming for me that i would literally reach the point of breakdown but i kept fighting you know i i did not give up the fighter in me just somehow kept going uh because if there is one thing that i know about life that is life is that one coin that is going to flip over and over again irrespective of what you do what you say what do you try the only thing that is in control is you cliche as it may be but what pays off persistence and hard work be at it keep on doing it don't give up it is tough but nothing in life ever is easy let me tell you that it is the choices you make and you can lie to the world but you cannot lie to yourself every single day when you put that head on the pillow and when you're alone no matter who next to you you're alone in your head and you cannot light yourself and when you're at peace with that head on your pillow and your conscience is clear you are successful i've always wanted to be a miss india a dentist and an actor and i have achieved a fair bit of it but i did all of that with dignity hard work and honesty and every single day when i put my head on the pillow i'm at peace but as robert frost wrote in one of his poems which is my favorite by the way is that the woods are lovely dark and deep but i have promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep and miles to go before i sleep thank you [Music] [Applause]"