“I didn’t have many friends, either,” she says. “It was because I was very reserved and less social.” According to her, it is because of the entertainment industry that she opened herself up to the world at large.
Her older sister Manju was her only good friend in her schooldays, and she is still to this day. With her sister, Anju did some mischief that she thinks are worth mentioning.
She remembers the hole where birds used to live behind her family home. Once her sister took out some eggs from a nest and played with them. So Panta went to the alcove and took out the bird itself. She and her sister together tied the leg of the bird so that it could not fly away. Despite their care and effort to keep the bird alive, and hiding it from their mother, the bird died in a few days anyway.
“I remember how we cremated the bird ritually as we were guilty,” she says.
She says she was very fortunate to be loved and cared by her family in every way. “I remember my brother getting expelled from our school because he beat up the girl who used to bully me,” she says.
Panta was very serious in her work. In her teenage days, she used to be an outstanding student in her class and was very fond of music even then.
“I used to blast the radio and work in the kitchen. As soon as the songs I would be waiting for played on the radio, I used to rush upstairs to my room and write down the lyrics of the songs,” she says, mentioning that she could not afford to buy the cassettes of the songs in those days. “If any words of the songs were missed, I had to wait for them to be broadcast again.”
Then she remembers something funny and laughs. “Manju and I used to steal radish and carrots from our own vegetable garden. Some were not yet fully grown, and we had to save ourselves from our mother’s watchful eyes.”
The darling singer of Nepal thinks it was because of her sister that she involved herself in these naughty things. Otherwise, she would just be happy to be into her studies and with music.
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