Manoshi Kanta Sarkar: The Unbreakable North Bengal Model Redefining Beauty

TINDS Spotlight · North Bengal & Ottawa

She was six years old the first time she left home — sent from North Bengal up into the hills of Kurseong, to a boarding school her parents could barely afford, because they wanted her to have an education they never had. Nobody in that classroom could have told you she’d end up on a pageant stage in Canada nearly two decades later, holding a sash that read “Queen of Humility.” Manoshi Kanta Sarkar wouldn’t have told you either. That’s not where this story starts — but it’s exactly the kind of journey TINDS’ Spotlight series exists to tell.

A North Bengal Model Reclaiming the Woman She’d Put on Hold

In 2025, Manoshi placed First Runner-Up at Mrs Universe Canada and was separately named “Queen of Humility” — a title she says she wears with genuine delight. She told The Daily Star that stepping on that stage “wasn’t about a title, it was about reclaiming confidence and using my voice.” It wasn’t her first pageant, either — she’d already reached the Top 20 at Miss World Bangladesh 2017 and placed runner-up at Face of Asia Bangladesh 2019. But this one felt different, because of everything she’d carried to get there.

Pageantry, at its most cynical, gets reduced to a spectacle — sashes, staged smiles, a ranking system that seems to exist mostly for TV. Manoshi’s account of Mrs Universe Canada 2025 reads differently, closer to something she needed to do for herself than something she did for an audience. That distinction is part of why “Queen of Humility” lands as more than a consolation title in how she talks about it — it was decided by the other contestants, not a judging panel, which changes what the recognition actually means.

From a Kurseong Classroom to the Mrs Universe Canada Stage

The house Manoshi grew up around wasn’t short on creativity — her maternal grandfather was deeply rooted in classical dance and music — but it also carried the weight of expectation. Both her parents were the first in their families to pursue higher education, and that same instinct sent her to Kurseong at six. “North Bengal,” she told TINDS, when asked where her story begins. “I grew up in Kurseong, surrounded by both art and strong academic values.”

Modelling wasn’t the plan. “I never saw myself in it,” she says. “It started with people believing in me before I did” — a scouting moment with Aarong that she still describes as quiet validation. In 2020 she moved to Canada for graduate studies, and somewhere in the disorientation of a new country, an online application for Mrs Universe Canada appeared. It wasn’t part of any plan either. It just felt, she says, like a way back into public life that actually meant something.

That timing matters. Moving countries for graduate studies is disorienting on its own — new systems, new expectations, an entirely new social fabric to build from scratch. Layering a national pageant application on top of that, mid-transition, is a genuinely unusual choice. It suggests less a career pivot and more a search for footing in a life that had temporarily stopped making sense, which lines up with how she describes the decision now: not strategic, just necessary.

The Part of the Journey That Wasn’t Easy

Ask Manoshi what quietly changed her path and she doesn’t reach for a pageant story. “Being judged for my body,” she says. “It affected me deeply, but also pushed me to grow.” She’s also spoken publicly, on the record with The Daily Star, about being diagnosed with PMDD and depression after her move to Canada — experiences she says altered how she understood herself, and that eventually shaped the direction her platform has taken. It’s not a detail she hides. “Honesty,” she told TINDS, when asked what feels distinctly hers. “I don’t hide the difficult parts of the journey.”