🇮🇳 Punjab, India

I was born on March 15, 2005, into a Punjabi household that was loving, loud, and honestly kind of messy in the way most families are. I'm the second child. My sister is nine years older, which basically makes her my second mom. She was in third grade when I was born, and she named me. If you ask me what my name means, I still couldn't tell you with confidence. Google says "one who is well-guided" or "someone who upholds moral values," but I doubt a nine-year-old was thinking that deeply. She probably just liked how it sounded, and lowkey, I respect that.

My mom wanted a son, so when she found out I was a girl, she cried. I learned this when I was 9, and it stuck with me more than I realized at the time. I think that's why I grew up trying to never disappoint her, to prove that daughters aren't burdens and that girls can carry families forward just as much as sons can. My dad, on the other hand, was really happy when I was born.

My family wasn't what you'd call "normal." My dad had been diagnosed with a nervous illness even before I was born, so my mom became the main provider, carrying two kids and a household that didn't always feel emotionally safe. Looking back, I think I grew up faster than I should have. I learned early that my "job" was to do well in school, because education felt like our only way out. I liked it, though. I liked studying and being first in class.

But money was always a concern, and even as a kid, I wanted to help my mom somehow. Since I couldn't legally work, I searched online for ways to make money, and that's how I started a YouTube channel around age 12. My first videos were bad. Bad camera, bad editing, bad everything. I barely got any views and eventually stopped.

I still liked making things, though. I used to make handmade gifts for my sister every year, scrapbooks, cards, small DIY projects I learned from YouTube. When her friends saw them, they started asking if I could make some for them too. That's how my first little business, Artistholic, started. I sold scrapbooks, explosion boxes, Spotify plaques, and paintings. I didn't have a lot of customers, but it was the first time I realized something I made could actually have value to other people.

That feeling kept showing up. A lot changed in 2019, when my sister got a job in Gurgaon and saw how sheltered my school environment was. She pushed me to move to a better high school in the city for 9th and 10th grade, and that decision changed me. For the first time, I wasn't the smartest person in the room. People spoke fluent English, and I didn't. I'd grown up around Punjabi and Hindi, and even though I could read and understand English, speaking it felt uncomfortable and unnatural. Academically I was fine, but socially it was hard. Over time, though, I learned how to talk to people, how to be more confident, and how to exist in spaces where I wasn't automatically comfortable.

That's also when I went back to YouTube, more seriously this time. I figured if I wanted to improve my English, I needed to actually speak it, and since I couldn't really do that at home, I did it in my videos. I taught myself how editing works, how algorithms work, what makes people want to watch something, all of it from YouTube itself. I treated it like a full-time job, and the channel started growing.

In 12th grade I had to slow down, because I was applying to universities abroad and prepping for board exams at the same time. I applied to 43 universities across different countries. My main filter was financial aid, since my family couldn't afford international tuition and I didn't want to take a loan. I didn't even know what I wanted to study. I just knew I wanted more exposure, more independence, and a different kind of life than the one I could access in the system I grew up in.

I got a lot of rejections. A few acceptances and scholarships too, but nothing that made studying abroad actually possible. I also realized I'd started way too late. People around the world had been preparing since 9th grade, and I was figuring it out in the summer of 12th. So I took a gap year and decided to try again. It was risky, but I felt like if I didn't take the chance, I'd always wonder what could've happened.

That gap year ended up changing the trajectory of my life. It was the first time I worked real jobs, made my own money, and saw how teams and companies actually function. It taught me what kind of work I enjoy and what I definitely don't. And more than anything, it made me more independent and more sure of my ability to figure things out on my own.