Ritika Raina, the daughter of a migrant Kashmiri Pandit cop is the VLCC Femina Miss India Jammu & Kashmir 2020.In a detailed post on her Instagram, Ms Raina said she participated in the beauty contest at the behest of her father who has been very impressed by the 1994 Sushmita Sen becoming Ms India.“Her story of being afraid to participate in Miss India 1994 because of tough competition and then winning the international title inspires me the most”, she said, adding, she is now preparing herself for the competition at the national pageant.“I always wanted to participate in Femina Miss India but somewhere I knew that I have a bigger responsibility of supporting my parents, so I kept my dream on hold and tried to get a job first so that I can support my parents financially,” Ms Raina said.Currently working as a financial analyst with a foreign bank in India, Ms Raina is preparing for her masters. A graduate from Symbiosis in Pune, Ms Raina has been singing, dancing and gardening while studying but has never been associated with the beauty and wellness sector. Her first photo-shoot has been the one that led her to become the Ms Jammu 2020.Ritika firmly believes in the saying ‘when people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones’ and she did just that. The beauty queen gathered the courage to participate in the national contest of VLCC Femina Miss India 2020, co-powered by Sephora & Roposo, to use this platform to inspire people to dream big and step out of their comfort zone.Ms Raina hopes to start an NGO with a focus on teaching and promoting the handicrafts with the help of technology. This, she believes, will create job opportunities for the women.In her Instagram, Ms Raina also divulged how his family in Kashmir faced ‘forced migration’ in 1990 and their house was ‘set on fire’, following which their family sold their land in Kashmir and built a house in Jammu.“As I grew up, I realized the pain of losing our own house, which made me empathic towards the homeless; all the difficulties we have faced made me grounded and grateful for whatever I’ve received till now,” she has written.For most of the nineties, her father was posted in Srinagar and would visit his family once or twice a year. This, she has said, made her internally strong and independent externally.
