I opened every toy I was given. Not to break them, because I couldn't believe they actually worked. I would yank out the motor, wire it to a battery, and wonder what else it could do. Tiny vacuums. Little boats. A lot of things that never worked the first time. My parents saw a mess. I saw something I hadn't finished yet.

That kid never really left. But somewhere between the broken toys and the working ones, fun stopped being enough. I didn't want to build toys anymore. I wanted to build fixes. A machine that could help a farmer who can't afford labour. A robot that finds fire before it spreads. Problems people had accepted because nobody had bothered to try.

That shift cost me more than I expected. I have burnt through roughly Rs. 10,000 in wrong connections, dead components and ruined solder. Money I wasn't earning yet, saved from my own snacks. Some weeks I'd skip lunch to afford a sensor. There were nights I sat with a circuit that refused to work and told myself to stop. That this wasn't for me. That I was wasting money I didn't have on something that might never work.

But every time a single part came alive, one sensor, one motor, one small click in the dark, it felt like something worth protecting. Worth not giving up on. I've never spent a single rupee of my prize money on anything else. Every award goes straight back into the next build. That's not discipline. That's just what it costs to keep going.

Then, after Class 10, I had three months off. Most people rested. I picked up a camera with my brother and started learning videography and editing. I wasn't the one on screen. I was the one watching. Watching how light falls on a face, how a cut changes the meaning of a moment, how a story is built one frame at a time. I learned how the people behind the camera think. How they wait. How they make everything look effortless when nothing about it is.

That three months taught me something I didn't expect. The person on screen is only as good as the people who built everything around them. And that made me want to be on screen even more. Which scared me.

Because here's the truth. I was always interested in presenting myself, but I was scared of standing in front of people. Actually scared. The kind where your hands shake before you even start.

So in Class 11, I joined Pokhara Theater. I wasn't sure I belonged there. But I knew if I didn't face the fear now, I'd carry it for the rest of my life.

The schedule was ugly. College from 10 to 5. Then straight to theater. Most days I didn't eat between them. I trained next to people who'd been on stage for 10, 12, 15 years. People who moved like they'd been doing it since birth. I listened more than I spoke. I copied. I asked questions nobody else was asking. In three months, I learned more from them than I had from any class I'd ever sat in.

My first performance went better than I expected. Not perfect. But better. And I remember standing backstage afterwards, still shaking, thinking: if I run from this now, I'll run from it forever.

So I didn't run.

Then came Kaji. Three of us auditioned for the junior lead. I did a scene, waited, and got the role. Standing on set with Bipin Karki and Keki Adhikari, actors I'd grown up watching on screen, was surreal. Sharing scenes with Prakash Ghimire was terrifying. I was the youngest one in the room. But I watched. I learned how a real production breathes. Nothing is loud, nothing is rushed, everything is prepared long before the camera rolls. I still use that discipline in every project I build.

Later, my college asked me to give the welcome address to the incoming batch. I said yes before I could talk myself out of it. Then I panicked. Then I rehearsed. For hours, alone, out loud, until the nerves got bored and left. The day of the speech, my voice didn't shake. Not once. That moment taught me something I'll never forget. Fear doesn't disappear. You just get better at carrying it.

Robotics taught me patience. Performing taught me presence. One showed me that nothing is impossible if you sit with the problem long enough. That the answer is always in the details you skipped. That the people who win aren't the smartest. They're the ones who don't quit at the boring part. The other gave me the calm to stand for what I believe, out loud, in front of people, without shrinking. It showed me that the voice that shakes the most is often the one that most needs to be heard.

Those two things aren't separate for me anymore. They feed each other. The engineer in me plans the speech. The performer in me presents the build.

I'm not scared of failure anymore. If something breaks, I don't stop. I build the next version. That's the whole game. Nothing is wasted. Every burnt component, every dead sensor, every rehearsal that went badly, it all goes into the next attempt.

In five years, I want to be standing on a stage in front of a full room, talking about something I built that actually helped someone. Not chasing the people ahead of me. Not trying to catch up. Just moving like I'm already two years past where I am, and using everything I've learned to solve the problems nobody's had the patience to solve yet.

That's the plan. I'm already halfway there.

— Aarav Baral