“I had a happy childhood but just that in the school I studied, there was a lot of racism and partiality. I mean they wouldn’t know if it was that or not till, we know it’s that. I would question myself every day as to why I am dark-skinned. What can I do about my color, my weight? I never had friends in school. I was always this shy girl who just went to school and came back. Most of my friends for life were from my college and I owe a lot to them.”

“I had flunked a few subjects in my PU and my sister told me to join Fashion Designing course in Surana College, ours was maybe the first of the batches to study Fashion Designing. Least did we know that I would end up here today? I topped the college there and I was this 18-year-old wanting to do something. I think I began being the rebel me when the Turkish boss of mine commented that my name was difficult to pronounce and I told her it’s just that she didn’t know how to pronounce it. I never knew that side of me till that day because till then.”

“The first celebrity I styled was Sudeep. First time when I met him, I was shitting bricks, my confidence was at minus. I was a huge fan and that was my first film. I took all the clothes, went in for the trials, and showed it to him. I was kind of confident that he is going to like it. He was like all are shit and I didn’t know what to do. He sat me down, got me a cup of tea and he told me something, he said ‘When you speak something, you got to stand by it, if you change it, nobody is going to trust you.’ Those lines are stuck in my head ever since.”

“In this process of working and making a career, I have missed some important moments of my son’s life but, I make sure every birthday of his, we travel and he is educated a lot more outside a classroom than he is inside. We both write journals together in the night before we sleep. This is his first birthday where he has spent it at home with his friends. I am stronger than ever, prettier, a mother, a solo traveler, and the most beautiful person inside out! I never feel conscious saying this out loud because if I don’t appreciate myself then its stupidity expecting people to. I am Tejaswini Kranthi.”