Bela Bajaria

You can tell it was a long time ago.

No, you are gorgeous.

Yes, you are.

You know, look, I think it was a really... Looking back, which I didn't realize until much later, it was a really...

powerful part of sort of who I became in my story because when I did Miss India, it was interesting because I didn't want to be an actress or a model.

A lot of people kind of wanted to do that.

Oh, I didn't want to do that.

But I knew I wanted, like I had sort of, I was always like at the shows, like, oh, people are running cable.

Who's filming what?

Let me be with the camera guys.

I was always more interested in how the thing was made.

But it was a very interesting thing for me because I really feel like it was the time that I really became Indian on my own terms.

I wasn't the Indian girl of my parents.

This was my culture because I am that.

I really sort of found the power of my identity, which was complicated in the U.S.

I wasn't American enough and I wasn't Indian enough.

I wasn't Indian enough for Indians in India and I wasn't American enough for Americans.

So you're kind of between the middle.

And that really, that time of meeting these amazing Indian women around the world and

doing the pageant that was very steeped in, you know, our, you know, my culture and really just owning my own Indian is so much in there was really, and it was during kind of that era that I was like, Oh, if I combine the Indian part, um,