Indian beauty queen Barkha Madan who became Buddhist nun

News East West

MUMBAI: Her own life could be the subject of a Bollywood movie.

Barkha Madan was the Miss India finalist along with Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen and Swetha Menon in 1994 and she went on to the become the runner-up at the Miss Tourism International the same year.

Then she entered Bollywood and the super-hit Khiladyon Ka Khiladi in 1996 was her debut film.

Barkha continued to be in films, setting up her own production company and doing two films Soch Lo (2010) and Surkhaab (2012).

Then in Nov 2012 she suddenly renounced Bollywood and became a Buddhist nun.

Today, this former beauty queen is known as Ven. Gyalten Samten. She has gone far away from the glamour world.

However, Barkha tells Mumbai Mirror that she will be back briefly in the glamour world to promote her last film Surkhaab about illegal immigration and shot in Toronto and Punjab. In the film, Barkha plays the role of Jeet, a Judo gold medallist who is forced to flee her country.

“It was shot in Toronto and Punjab in just 25 days with a skeletal 10-member unit on a shoe-string budget. I was the co-producer, the lead actress, and the chaiwallah,’’ she says.

The actress-turned-nun tells Mumbai Mirror that she enjoyed being a Bollywood actress, but there was some nagging restlessness inside her all the time.

She narrates her visit to Dharamsala in 2002 to listen to the Dalai Lama. She says she was instantly drawn to Buddhism and asked if she could be accepted as a nun.

But at that Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked why she wanted to become a nun. “Why? You fought with your boyfriend?’’ he asked her, adding that “joining the monastic order isn’t about escapism. You need to embrace Buddhist philosophy and reflect on why you want to walk the path of Divination.”

So, Barkha was back in Bollywood. Time went on. “Everything was going well but I felt something was missing,” she says.

So in 2012 she again went to a monastery – this time in Kathmandu – and asked them to admit her to the Buddhist monastic order.

And Barkha was admitted as a nun.

Today, the former Bollywood diva lives almost in monkish poverty. She has only two sets of robes, some woollens and a pair of flipflops.

“My only worldly possessions are my cell phone and laptop. I live off my savings but I’m blissfully happy,” Barkha tells Mumbai Mirror.

She spends her time either meditating at Dharamsala, or with HIV positive kids at the Tara Children’s Project in Bodh Gaya.

Right now, she says she is praying for the Nepal earthquake victims.

Her aim is to start a nunnery in India. “If you want to make movies you go to a film school. If you want to become a doctor, you go to a medical school. But where does an aspiring nun go to?’’

READ ALSO: Tamil actress Monica converts to Islam