From being bullied to becoming a beauty queen: The story of Miss India USA 2021 Vaidehi Dongre

Miss India USA 2021 Vaidehi Dongre is set to represent the United States at the Miss India Worldwide pageant on June 23 and 24th in New Jersey and she can’t wait for the big day as she thinks that it validates her existence as someone who didn’t give up on her dreams. “It validates the way I operated and also it changed my life in terms of the opportunities that I have received,” she told Firstpost when asked how her win at the Miss India USA changed her life. She says that it also opened her eyes to understand why these pageants exist. “It is really to promote Indian culture and make sure there is a role model for young girls to follow, especially those who are on the cusp of finding answers to many questions including what tradition do they follow or do not follow? Who are they and other things especially in a country that is completely different from India,” said the 25-year-old.

Started by New York-based eminent Indian-Americans Dharmatma and Neelam Saran under the banner of Worldwide Pageants around 40 years ago, Miss India USA is the longest-running Indian pageant outside India. The competition is for young women of Indian descent who are residents of the United States. Vaidehi, who graduated from the University of Michigan, majoring in international studies and working as a business development manager, says that she can’t wait to meet Miss India from different countries like Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, etc at the main event. “I am really excited to meet these girls who are Indian but came from different parts of the world. I think that’s going to be a great friendship,” said Vaidehi, who also won the ‘Miss Talented’ title when she gave a flawless performance of Indian classical dance form Kathak.

Vaidehi is also proud to see how far Indians have come, globally. “I came here in 2000 with my parents and I can say that the atmosphere was definitely a lot different then. There were maybe one or two Indian kids in the entire school district but now it is 8 percent Indian and Asians. Just the sheer volume of Indian students who immigrated here speaks a lot. At the end of the day, the biggest thing about we Indians is that no matter where we are in the world, we hold on very tightly to our culture. “Even though we were small in numbers, we stood in our programs. I am a Maharashtrian so we had a small Maharashtrian community and I speak fluent Marathi because of that community. It has just grown over the years and it’s amazing to see how Indians are getting involved in everything. Whether it is politics to movies, any type of art form, or even law, it has evolved a lot and I am proud of how far we have come,” she said. However, her initial days in America were not so exciting. “People‘s struggles are relative to what they knew before, what they knew after. I would definitely say that my parents had struggled a lot. We only had one car and even though my mom and I knew English, we didn’t know the accent so my mom would walk me probably 3 miles per day to school. She is actually the person who got me engaged to pageants when I was 5,” she said. Vaidehi says that her mother thought that participating in pageants would help her make friends and build confidence. “At that time, I didn’t know any better so I said yes to her. However, at that time there were only white American people in the pageant and I think they didn’t really understand who we were and where we were from so they tried to cut me out of the pageant. They lied about how many rounds there were so we didn’t bring enough clothes and then my dad had to rush back to bring clothes. I just remember that and I also saw how my mom for the first time probably realized that people aren’t always on your side here so that was pretty tough," she said. In the school too, she had to face bullying. “I think throughout schooling, everyone faces bullying and I did as well and I give full credit to my parents for making sure that I knew and understood how important it was to hold on to my language, to hold on to my tradition, and that all came in the form of learning Kathak for me,” she said. Vaidehi recently hosted the DDN Legends dance competition for ZEE5 USA. She introduced NAAIS (North American Association of Indian Students ) and ZEE5 first and then conducted a trivia quiz that was based on Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu content and she also made some students and their parents dance in the audience. The competition was held on April 9, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois at Harris Theater for Music and Dance and Vaidehi says that it’s amazing to see that there is a streaming service for south Asian content, and this shows why south Asian representation matters. She said that she got the opportunity to participate in it because she is a board member of NAAIS. “That’s how I got a chance to host the final competition which is called legends. I have been in these competitions when I was in college so I have a little bit of exp of what it’s going to be like. The experience was incredible,” she said. Finally, did she ever think of acting in days to come? To this, she said that she is a kathak dancer, and that’s her first and foremost form of expression. However, more than acting, she likes storytelling. “ I have been part of several Marathi plays so I really love theatre and stage but I don’t know about acting,” she sums up. Nivedita Sharma’s work experience includes covering fashion weeks in Milan, Pakistan, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Dubai, and award functions like IIFA, and TOIFA.  Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.