It seemed desperate but she claims it was only honest and heartfelt.[break]
Few weeks later, I asked her if anybody asked her out yet.
She nods nay. The reason, she assumes, is because it’s hard to date in Kathmandu “since most of the good men are taken!”
“And there is a serious shortage of youth because everyone has left,” she quips. At her age, and she looks a lot younger for her a 28-year old, most people are “either already in a serious relationship, getting married, or already married.”
So whoever is left is either getting off a relationship or on a visit to Nepal from abroad, not interested in a relationship, just not interesting at all. “There is lack of good single men and women in Kathmandu at the moment,” Malvika claims from her plush office in Sherpa Mall, a new hangout for urban Kathmanduites and yuppies (young urban professionals).
Here, she works at a real-estate developer as their sales and marketing manager running an all girls team, of which three members are former beauty queens and models. She says it’s not because of the beauty but of brains that they are in real estate business.
“We are smart and good-looking and we work hard. In marketing, you sell products. If there is a face attached to it - nice looking people – it always adds an edge. I don’t see it that way just because we are a pretty looking bunch, we got this job. We are here because we work. If we do not, we get kicked out,” she says.
The switch from a glitzy showbiz life to a dull corporate world is an eccentric and deliberate decision because she had reached a saturation point in the media sector. “I was not growing in television anymore,” the former TV queen who was on the tube for seven years and hosted shows like Call Kantipur, Tathasta Tarka, amongst others, said.
“Nepali television is not professional and there is no money in it,” she complains. “The only good thing about the industry is that the people in (television) have this camaraderie culture. We work in a family environment.”
Television was hard according to Malvika, unlike the common notion that dumb and easy comes with TV. “The industry is small but the reach, very high. There is so much expectation from people. The years have been very difficult, from being Miss Nepal to a media personality. If you have to be under people’s radar 24/7, it’s quite an ardent task,” Malvika says.
To take a break from the daily drudge of the valley, she went to India for a while. “I’d had it with my life in Kathmandu, I said when I left.” She was prepared to be an unknown struggler in the city of dreams, Bombay, with eager youngster trying to break into the industry.
Malvika says that the move was to challenge her after being “too comfortable in my own skin. Life was granted and easy for me. I was scared but very ready when I left.”
She worked as a Producer and Host for Voice of India, a Hindi channel that covered Bollywood and Page Three (lifestyle program on celebrity and socialites) content based in New Delhi. She claims that she learnt a lot in Delhi and experience taught her the valuable lessons she did not know as a “big fish in a small pond.”
“Being a beauty queen in Nepal meant nothing in India. I had to reintroduce myself in the industry. There, unless you have high contacts, you are nobody. Thousands of people, equally beautiful and talented as you, throng to compete in the mean market,” Malvika says who, as a native Nepali speaker with schooling in English language, had to overcome the barrier of language too. “Hindi was the primary language and I had to prove myself every day,” she says.
“You can’t risk any shot or any show. You have to be the best every time. They don’t care whether you are a beauty queen or not. They always have so many options. It was a struggle,” she reflects.
***
It’s been seven years since Malvika was crowned Miss Nepal. “Feels like ages ago,” she says. “Sometimes I forget I was ever a Miss Nepal.”
Maybe because the crown does not come with a lot of perks, but it definitely opens up the road for an interesting journey. “I have learnt a lot and in the process grown a lot. I have achieved what I have achieved and it’s been a good journey,” says the girl who had “no big dream when crowned Miss Nepal.”
“Maybe that was the reason why I do not feel like I have to achieve anything. I wanted to learn a lot, travel, and work on television; and I did do them all. I didn’t have too many plans then, and still don’t have many now,” she says.
She agrees that the crown has helped her to be who she is and where she is at now. “I think the identity of Miss Nepal is very ingrained in me and I cannot ignore it.” And it has opened floodgates of opportunities for her. “It opened opportunities, both monetary and professional.”
Since last year, the Miss Nepal beauty pageant has been stalled due to Maoist intervention. She is a vocal advocate for the pageant. “Its bullshit of an idea that the Miss Nepal contestants are being used as a product,” she says, and adds that in a country where a girl’s life is limited to school, home and friends, “beauty pageants like Miss Nepal gives you dreams apart from those ideas. It gives you confidence beyond bound and I am an example of it. I changed in more ways than I can count,” she shares.
“The idea of Miss Nepal is not winning an international pageant because those beauty pageants are very political. Miss world and universe are very political. In Nepal, it’s giving a Nepali girl a platform to spread her wings,” she says.
But sometimes, she says, she wants to run away from this very identity. “I wish sometimes that I did not have that tag along with everything I do, everywhere I go,” carps Malvika. “I like to be not recognized at times. I like to walk freely where people don’t stare at me. I want, for once, to feel like I am not being judged every second of the minute.”
Maybe that is the reason why the idea of a relationship has been a pain in the butt for this beauty queen. And the reason it’s hard to be in a relationship is because “the guys already have a preconceived notion about me,” she complains. “When you meet someone, you know nothing about them. And so the fun is to know them in bits and pieces. But with me, they already know of me. They already form an opinion about me based on what they have read, seen or heard of me.”
“This is me, not what you saw on TV, heard about me in gossips or read about me in the press. This is me!” she struggles to affirm. The idea has not been easy to get into guys’ heads.
Maybe that is the reason why she has not been in a relationship for last three years. But, just before she became single, Kathmandu was abuzz with her relationship with 1974 AD’s guitarist Manoj Kumar KC.
“As a couple, we had problems of our own, like everybody else,” she thinks back. “Both of us were a ‘popular’ figures, and being known by everyone else was a disadvantage of a kind. Ours was so much under the limelight because both of us were young public figures and very few relationships like that existed.” The parameters for relationship were different for them.
And they broke up perhaps because they were “growing up.” When it was over, she was not ready for another relationship for a long time. “It would not be right for the other person if I was hung over my previous relationship. I wanted to be sure that I was over,” she says and adds that she now finds it hard to find a guy.
Looking back at their ‘celebrity relationship,’ they think of the “happy moments shared together.” She claims that she has moved on and reached a point where “we are very good friends and have no hard feelings for each other anymore. We do keep in touch. We have grown,” she says.
The hardest thing Malvika finds in a relationship is not to start a relationship but to continue with it. “For Nepali men, and because I have not dated any foreigners I can’t speak for them, it’s hard when a women is so out there, popular and recognized. Everywhere you go, people whisper,” she says.
As celebrated faces, random people come and talk. It is bound to create a level of insecurity amongst men. “I totally understand if they feel insecure and awkward and not know how to deal with it. Some men are very private and maintaining that fine balance between the private and public life is very hard,” she says, expressing an opinion not much different from most other public figures.
Nepal’s celebritydom is very small. A lot of “celebrities” disclose that they are just normal people who more than normal people would know. Malvika believes that that popularity gives people the right to judge and rip you off the right to privacy. “Normalcy has a different variation. People make mountain out of a mole hill all the time. And they do not let you be,” she whines.
She even divulges how she stopped going to weddings because people were more interested in her than in the bride. And she laughs a laughter that hides an anguish of solitude and anxiety.
***
“People have funny ways of approaching me, if they do. Like calling me but not talking to me, sending me text with wrong spelling, which is a big no-no for me,” she grumbles and opines that guys in Nepal lack luster for romance and suave. “Nepali guys don’t know how to woo girls. They suck at it. They don’t send flowers, love notes, presents and gifts. They are not romantic at all. They don’t make an effort, except for few exceptions,” she comments on Nepali guys and explains that she is “an intensely passionate person” but not looking for puppy-love.
“The world does not revolve around one person. Relationship for me now is more of an adventure together, of knowing and discovering each other and seeing the venture as a partnership and how compatible you are with each other, how much you enjoy each other,” she says.
And then there is the issue of family pressure for marriage. Malvika, who still lives with her mom (but secretly tells me that she is going to move out soon), does what she wants to do and family “has to understand that.”
“My family is used to me and my not-listening to them. I do what I want to and family understands that. I have done nothing, and would never do anything, that would hamper my family,” Malvika says, who is in the habit of “informing,” her parents rather than taking permission from them.
“I am very individualistic. And it works fine. They have been very supportive to what I do and who I am.”
And then she tells me that one of the reasons to “run away to Delhi was partly because of the pressures from family and relatives to get married.”
“Now, I just ignore them.” Just like all the other 28-year old single females in the city.
“If I don’t have a relationship which is not strong enough to culminate into a marriage, it’s not a risk worth taking,” she says, confiding that she almost opted for a single-mom life. “I reached a point where I thought of living a single life and have kids but not marry. In Delhi, I read about an article on single mom, very successful, but different.”
“Personally, that is still a strong option for me.”
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