KATHMANDU: Perhaps, not in the wildest of his dreams, Sarlahi’s Karna Raj Giri thought he would enter the right gate and walk straight to the top of the musical chart and experience a musical popularity.

But, he had the dreams somewhere, concealed.

Prior to appearing on the singing reality show ‘The Voice of Nepal’, Kathmanduites called him a “taxi driver”. Yes, that was his identity then.

The reality musical show changed his life. From an ordinary taxi driver, he got a meteoric rise that propelled him into the world of fame and celebrity status.

Nonetheless, Karna’s stories of struggles are very different than his current reality.

For him, establishing himself as a taxi driver in Kathmandu itself was a Herculean task.

“We all know the hardship that people coming from outside the Valley undergo in Kathmandu,” he quips.

Karna’s interest in music grew when he was a child. He listened to Radio Nepal during his childhood and grew up humming songs like ‘Deu Mayalu’, ‘Hajar Ankha Herne’, and ‘Parkhi Basay’, among others, with his elder brother, Yagyaraj.

Yagyaraj, too, was a musical person who loved music, sang songs, and propagated a musical atmosphere in Karna’s house. That influence had touched Karna. Therefore, he fully embraced it.

As Karna began singing, his elder brother (Yagyaraj), sadly, had to abandon singing due to health reasons. Gradually, the elder brother began to see the younger one embracing his musical dream.

“Little by little my brother’s dream became my dream,” Karna says.

At a very tender age when children should be going to school, Karna’s singing dreams brought him to the capital to fulfill his and his brother’s shared dream. The struggle began early on for Karna.

Back then, the struggle to become a singer started with selling goods in shops and sometimes even on roadside carts. Survival itself in Kathmandu was beyond words for the youngest son of the family.

Having been a truck driver and later a taxi driver, Karna’s dream of becoming a singer was finally fulfilled by ‘The Voice of Nepal’.

As he was appearing for a blind audition in the reality show in Kathmandu, his mother was fighting death on a ventilator. “My mother could not see my journey to success; she witnessed only my hardships,” he misses her.

While the son stood on the stage as a contestant in ‘The Voice of Nepal’, the mother bade farewell to life. Karna came to know about his mother’s passing only after some time.

His mother, towards the end, had told him to pursue his singing career, he recalls. She had hoped and wished Karna to make a name in the music industry. Therefore, even though his mother left the world, Karna did not leave the stage. These days, he sings for his mother’s dream as well.

After leaving the reality show, he has already released a song titled ‘Ama’ and dedicated it to her.

Now on, his only path forward is music because it represents not his dream but also his mother’s faith and his brother’s success.

His destination is music and only music. “Music has established this ordinary boy from Sarlahi into a singer, and thrown him into the world of dreams.”

Karna has, to some extent, overcome the struggles and sufferings of survival, however, he continues to struggle in the musical field.

“I must reach the destination of the dream trusted by my mother and seen by my brother,” he says.