Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?
Umm… Quite a difficult place to imagine yourself in.
However, it’s also true that you find love in a hopeless place. And as Allan Dare Pearce says, “Having something forbidden is exciting, don’t you agree?”
Sometimes love is not a person, but a road you want to walk on.
Sherap Gyaltsen Lama, 24, a native of a remote village of Gorkha, was born to be a monk. Yes, belonging to a family where being monk is a rite of passage, as a middle child, Sherap had to come to Kathmandu for the same. This was after the sudden death of his father when he was four. However, one of his relatives advocated for his education, arguing that he was too young to be a monk. Fortunately, one of the Buddhist schools offered him a scholarship and he went for it. Receiving scholarships from Buddhist schools and high schools continued and he even completed his undergraduate studies with the help of a sponsor.
With all these favors, the pressure to become a monk was piling up. However, the shy child was deeply fascinated not by maroon robes but by stylish designs flaunted by actors and models in newspapers and magazines. Life continued at its own pace and so did his journey. He could neither express his love for his passion nor work on it as the profession had its own set of skills required.
With a lot of confusion in his head, he went around searching for inspiration from different workshops. Treading along these lines, he happened to get into Mentorship Pathway’s 10 Week Mentorship Program. The sessions probed him to ask deep questions about himself: the choices he was making and the dissatisfaction he was facing in his life. One of the sessions on attitude management touched him deeply. It motivated him to put grit above subject skills and knowledge and try things out in life. He realized it was modeling that he wanted to try his hands on. Yet still, he was afraid of the reactions he would get from his family, relatives and most of all from his society.
Determined, he decided to be a part of ‘Mr and Miss Glamour Icon, 2017’ and at least get the idea of what it feels to be a model for some weeks. But as one can expect, when you get the taste of the forbidden fruits, you want them even more. The same happened with Sherap. He gave his hundred percent and also bagged the title of the best model of the event. This achievement not only awed the people who knew him but Sherap himself.
He was always afraid to go after his forbidden love imagining the reaction it would evoke from society. But then, now when he has actually gone for it, his community members are felicitating him for actually daring to break the chains of societal pressure. These days Sherap is happily walking on the forbidden road with some interesting opportunities awaiting him.
Yes, you may be just one step away from your forbidden love if you dare to express. Sherap’s story certainly suggests it.
