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Manisha Koirala’s second coming

At one point in her recent TEDx talk delivered in Jaipur, actor Manisha Koirala gives out this sagacious advice: “We have a choice—we can either be consumed by our problems, become a victim and be defined by that problem, or we can turn it around into a platform for our growth.  We can turn the worst situation into a narrative of triumph. The wisdom and courage is all within us already.”
The TEDx talk, which garnered over 645,000 views in two months, marks the reinvention of Koirala—once one of Bollywood’s most beloved stars—as not just a resurgent actor but also a motivational speaker and an inspiring figure for cancer awareness.
The 46-year-old actor was born into the prominent Koirala clan but chose to steer clear of politics and ventured into modeling and acting instead, making her Bollywood debut with the blockbuster Saudagar, in 1991. In the decade that followed, she would go on to star in many more critically-acclaimed roles including 1942: A Love Story, Akele Hum Akele Tum and Bombay, winning four prestigious Filmfare awards in the process.
By the turn of the millennium, however, her career was on the wane. Koirala at the time was also struggling on the personal front with an admittedly unhealthy lifestyle “that attracted the wrong company.” Then, in 2012, her two-year marriage with businessman Samrat Dahal ended abruptly and she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer—a phase of her life the actress has described as the “depths of despair.”
Having spent a year in New York undergoing “traumatic chemotherapy,” and a long hiatus from her acting career, Koirala is now back in a new avatar—a powerful actor, a philanthropist and a motivational speaker

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