‘I used to chant chapters of the Bhagavad Gita’

Femina Miss India World 2026 Sadhvi Sail reveals her secret to being calm and composed in an exclusive chat with The Free Press Journal

Anita Aikara

Femina Miss India World 2026 Sadhvi Sail's win is a beautiful amalgamation of so many different stories of people who saw the potential in her. Born in Goa, she was raised there for a bit before moving to Karwar, a city on the outskirts of Karnataka and Goa.

"When I came to the Miss India platform, I had the honour of representing my janmabhoomi, which is Goa, but my karmabhoomi has also inspired me in plenty of ways," she reveals in an exclusive interview with FPJ.  

As a child, she had the privilege of attending a school that taught her several life skills and mythology. "I was a kid full of imagination," she exclaims. "I used to chant 2-3 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. The practice of meditation was also instilled in me, because of which I'm a very calm person today."

Sadhvi, who has studied economics and international relations, considers Dr Gita Gopinath as her inspiration. "She has closely worked with the IMF and is the first woman Chief Economist there. She is a person of colour and represents Indian soil on such a big scale, and that's what truly inspires me," shares the beauty queen. There was a time when Sadhvi had a lifestyle that was not quite sustainable.

Around that time, she was 10 kilos heavier, and it was her friends who pushed her to get fit. "This was the reason I didn't want to audition, but my friends came with me and sat for the auditions for 6-8 hours. I failed. But that's when I realised that rather than fitting into a prototype, it is about feeling my best in my own skin."

Credit goes to Sadhvi's grandmother, who has organically instilled the qualities of self-empowerment in the beauty queen right from her childhood. "My parents were busy when I was growing up, so I often spent a lot of time listening to the stories my grandmother told me about her life and my parents' lives."

"My grandmother raised four girls in a time when daughters were seen as a burden. She did that with her simple skills like stitching and cattle-farming. She kept herself busy with anything and everything she could get her hands on to feel empowered to provide for her children," she shares.