International physique sports medallist Hillang Yajik has lifted much more than weights to get to the podium

Hillang Yajik moves with the ease of someone who’s done a hundred cover shoots before. One minute, she is power posing in Louboutins and an absurdly large glass of milk, and in the next, she is lifting a rock prop, Hercules-style, almost symbolic of everything she’s had to carry to get here. Very patiently, she sits through hours of hair and make-up and then shows up and shows us what “showtime” really means—happily murmuring assent each time she is asked if she’s alright amidst the endless parade of outfits, accessories, and directions that get increasingly elaborate and contrived as she goes along.

As I watch her at the shoot, I have more questions than the ones I had prepared. How did a girl from far-off Arunachal Pradesh end up here, looking like she was born into the spotlight? What went into the discipline that makes her look like that? Was she always this composed, so in control?

I conjure up a background to the sound of camera shutters going off in rapid succession—perhaps she had been a confident child, born after the internet had been around for a while, used to preening in front of the camera. It would explain how naturally all of this came to her. I could not have been more off the mark.

“When I was little, if you asked me my name, I couldn’t say. I would shiver,” 25-year-old Yajik confesses. “But this whole journey gave me a lot of confidence, and I can speak in front of people now.”

The journey she’s referring to is her rise in the world of physique sports—a realm she stepped into almost casually. “It was not a very interesting story, to be honest,” she shrugs. “One of my brothers, a gym coach I affectionately address as ‘brother’, just randomly told me that there’s going to be a bodybuilding competition in the state. And he said, ‘Your physique is genetically good, so you can participate.’ That’s how I started.” She placed second in the competition. And there’s been no looking back for Yajik since.

What followed, however, was by no stretch of imagination an overnight success story. It was a kind of burning determination—the sort that can’t be faked or fast-tracked. “In 2022, I participated in a national-level event—the IBBF Federation Cup. I came fourth in the nationals. I cried a lot. I thought I should’ve been in the top three...but I did realise that I have to work harder.”

And so she did. Yajik didn’t win the second time either. But the third time? She took silver. The same pattern played out internationally. It took three attempts before she broke through to win gold (and a bronze) at the South Asian Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championships 2025, making her the first woman from Arunachal Pradesh to achieve the feat. Her wins are historic, sure, but what really defines her is what she did before they came.

“There were a couple of years when I didn’t get any medals. I was in the top five,” she recalls. “I was under a lot of pressure...it all felt very negative. People would say, ‘Oh Yajik, why didn’t you get any medals?’ I felt as if I was losing sight of my purpose. But I thought to myself, if I give up now, it will be my loss. It will be a waste of my time and money. I have to be the one to do it. That’s how I kept going.”

This steel resolve became a recurring theme in my conversation with Yajik. She lives alone, supports herself financially, and juggles competing at the highest levels alongside being a personal trainer and a dance instructor, all while holding a Master’s degree in political science and ambitions to become a police officer. It’s the kind of life that leaves no room for half measures. Everything she does—training, working, studying—carries the intensity of someone who knows she has no safety net and no time to waste.

Still, she does it, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not because anyone told her to. But because she has no interest in being average. “I have this thing that I don’t want to fail,” she tells me, conspiratorially. “In every circumstance, I dislike failure. Obviously, no one likes it, but I really dislike it. So I work hard, even though I might not get the medal, I still want to be the star of the show. I want people to think, ‘There is a girl, she amazed us.’ I want to hear that.”

She does hear it often. From fans, peers, and the growing fitness community in her home state, who see her as a legend-in-the-making. “They say, I’m an inspiration to them. And I tell them that they are actually the ones who inspire me.”

Of course, there have been moments of doubt. She tells me a story about how her body resisted her once and how it changed her. After a shoulder injury in university, she had to stop training for a month. “That one month, I kept feeling like my body was getting worse. But everyone around me, including my physiotherapist, kept telling me that it was alright, that I’d get through it, and to listen to my body.” Eventually, the shoulder healed, and Yajik learnt a bigger lesson: “Your body needs rest when it’s injured. Don’t feel pressured. You will get back to where you were.”

But rest has never come naturally to someone as driven as Hillang. “I don’t like resting, to be honest. Maybe I don’t feel the need because my work is quite flexible...” She says it lightly, but I get a sense that slowing down makes her uneasy, as if momentum is something she can’t afford to lose.

The one guilty pleasure she did allow herself is her sweet tooth. Last year at a competition in the Maldives, she overindulged. “Ice-cream was always my favourite, and I ate so much of it. I can’t even express how bad it was. So, this January, I made a New Year’s resolution that I will not have ice-cream this year. And I will not have pastries, cake, or chocolate.”

It’s almost funny and so charmingly human: the idea of a physique athlete, whose great nemesis is ice-cream. But I can tell she’s as serious as she is when she answers my question about what she’d tell the many young women who look up to her. “It’s very important,” she says, “to have a goal and stick to it. You might have lots of distractions in your way, but you know what you want, you know how far you have come, what you have gone through. Especially for girls like me who don’t come from privileged backgrounds, I want to tell them, ‘Don’t pity yourselves...’ So many girls have told me, ‘Oh, we can’t do anything, we don’t have any connections.’ I want to tell them that you have to just work hard. Your time will come.”

She says all of this with the conviction of someone who has waited for her time, worked for it, earned it, and refused to let go of it when things got hard. Back at the shoot, we all notice how seamlessly she transforms in front of the camera. She holds every pose, owns every frame, and smiles through it all. You can’t teach that. You can only do it.

 

Editor: Rasna Bhasin (@rasnabhasin)

Digital Editor: Sonal Ved (@sonalved)

Photographer: Nishanth Radhakrishnan (@nishanth.radhakrishnan)

Stylist: Samar Rajput (@samar.rajput05)

Cover Design: Mandeep Singh Khokhar (@mandy_khokhar19)

Editorial Coordinator: Shalini Kanojia (@shalinikanojia)

Make-up Artist: Kiran Kiran Denzongpa (@kirandenzongpa), Agency: Feat Artists (@featartists)

Hair Artist: Shivani Joshi (@sculpt.ing_), Agency: Feat Artists (@featartists)

Set Design: Janhavi Patwardhan (@artnut_j)

Hair Artist Assistant: Yaikhom Sushiel (@sushiru_)

Make-up Assistant: Sharmila Gurung (sharmilagurung469)

Fashion Assistant: Aditya Singh (@adityakamalsingh)

Hillang Yajik is wearing a cut-out dress, Rui Zhou (@ruiofficial.m); Brooch (worn as headpiece), House of Umrao (@house_of_umrao)