- By THAKUR AMGAI

Ani Choying is a name that gained instant popularity amongst Nepali audiences.

‘Phoolko ankhama phoolai sansar,
Kandako ankhama kandai sansar’

The song above, which translates as “the whole world looks like flower, in the eyes of a flower, the whole world looks like a thorn, in the eyes of a thorn”, speaks out the mind of Ani Choying - the singer of this song – more than the feelings of lyricist Durga Lal Shrestha.

Indeed, it is a proven fact that perception and interpretation of same stimulus can differ from person to person depending upon the nature and state of individual consciousness. And Ani Choying, it seems, the world is a ‘flower’ for she views everything with utmost altruism.

Ani Choying, who is known worldwide as a Buddhist singer, is a new name in the Nepali music industry. Yet, she has become very popular with this one song. The reason is perfect melody blended with carefully chosen words. She has a different set of listeners for her Buddhist hymns and a different identity as a social server, but this is one song that has raised Ani to this height as a singer of Nepali modern songs. As beautiful as her thoughts and deeds, is her woice. “To build a mansion or board a chopper is not my aspiration. So, I thought the best utilization of the money that I ‘earned’ would be used for some social cause”, said Ani Choying.

A Buddhist nun in her early thirties, Ani Choying is these days more busy with a school that she has founded for underprivileged women of various age groups who want to study Buddhist religious studies in addition to the curriculum taught in ordinary schools. Born in Kathmandu to Tibetan parents and trained as a nun at Nagi Gumba, in the forest of Shivapuri on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley by guru Tulku Urgyen Rimpoche. Ani Choying had had a bad experience of male chauvinism during her childhood which actually led her to join a monastery to become a nun.

Today Ani Choying is a widely listened singer, highly esteemed lady and widely sought guest at social functions. In the Buddhist community, she commands more respect and is already an established Buddhist singer around the world. She started her journey of music formally after she recorded her first Buddhist hymn in 1996. Before this she had a lot of practice singing Buddhist hyms in the Gumba (monastery), which helped her polish her mellifluous voice.

After 1996, she traveled worldwide to participate in Buddhist concerts where she raised a lot of fund, which was utilized to set up a school to teach underprivileged girls in Nepal and founded Arya Tara School in 2000. Now, there are more than fifty students between seven to twenty three years old studying at the school. She brought out her first album in the year 2004. The album was an instant hit. This was all achieved in less that a decade. In that, there is a lot that the world can expect from Ani Choying both as a singer and as a social worker. The audience of Nepali modern music who are already held spellbound by her first album ‘moments of bliss’, hope many more songs of similar taste from Ani Choying.

The lady with the soft voice has shown enough promise to become one of the great singers of the country.