Sonia Yadav, the first contestant of Kaun Banega Crorepati, shares how her mother has always been an inspiration for her. By Ayushi Sharma
If there is one show on television for which fans wait with bated breath, it is Amitabh Bachchan’s cult show Kaun Banega Crorepati aka KBC. Ever wondered what happens to the amount that a contestant wins at the KBC show? Or what struggles they go through to get to the hot seat? Are they also helped with the questions they are being asked?
Sonia Yadav, who made it to the hot seat becoming the first contestant of KBC’s season 10, hails from Haryana and has served the Indian Air Force as Squadron Leader in their engineering branch for the past 10 years.
Struggles are part of human lives, but the question lies in how fiercely one sails one’s boat through the storm. The officer shares her #KabTakRokoge moment that finds its inspiration from her mother. “My mother has worked hard for me and my siblings. Being kids, we never realised her role and what she did for us.” She reminisces sharing an event from her life, “Me and my family had just shifted to Rewari, Haryana in 1999 and my father, an army officer, had been posted to Kargil for the war. He couldn’t see the entire house been built for us and just managed to get one room and a kitchen built.
And he left for the front. The surroundings weren’t safe. The house didn’t have a proper entrance gate. We were four siblings, all girls, and Haryana hasn’t been in the list of the safest places. Keeping herself awake, my mother used to do some household chores every night outside the room to guard the house and her four young daughters.”
Talking about her journey to the hot seat, she says, “My sister saw an advertisement in newspaper about the preliminary auditions for KBC. I thought of participating in it. It was just for fun.”
She shares how she quit Indian Air Force, taking a voluntary retirement, to work for the empowerment of women and promote education for girls.
“Being in the armed forces, I want to serve my country with 24x7 duty. I could not get into other ventures along with that, which is why I thought of leaving the Indian Air Force. Politics is not my motto. I want to empower women in any manner possible and take a step towards girl education. Residing in Haryana, I feel strongly about how education can change one’s life as it did to me.”
She adds, “I’m currently trying to connect with a few social entrepreneurs in Haryana, so that we could meet the sarpanchs of each and every village. We would need to get a data of the state of education in those villages, specifically near Rewari, from where I belong.”
Sonia talks about how wonderful a platform KBC is, especially for the people with inspirational stories.
She says it’s not just a game show but more than that. “I will not talk about myself but the stories that I heard there were very impactful and influencing. I think knowledge is power. For instance, a girl, highly ambitious, from Amritsar had come along with me. Her father ran a cart (thela) for selling plants and had been a daily wager. She was trying since 15 years to fulfil her parent’s dream of buying a house for her family. Stories like these really help to see that there’s the other side to the world as well.”
Is the show scripted or is a contestant being told what is to be done during the show? She answers, “I am not aware if the show is scripted or not but when I went there, there was a question related to Air Force. Since I belong to the field, they expected me to know the answer that question. If a candidate has struggled and has a story, the producers try to pose related questions.”
She quit the show at the question for Rs 25 lakh, ultimately drawing Rs 12.5 lakh as the winning amount. She lost all the four lifelines, phone-a-friend, 50-50, audience poll and ask the expert.
