Growing up, Malika Singh ‘26 watched her father, an Indian immigrant, move from one dangerous job to another, and she saw the toll that long shifts pulled at the factory and late nights driving a cab in Philadelphia took on him. It made an impact, and from a young age, she knew that she wanted to be her own boss.
“I want to do better for him,” she says. “I want to be able to take care of him. Working for myself seemed like the best way to do that.”
Malika, an Entrepreneurship major, grew up in York and went to Northeastern High School. She caught the entrepreneurship bug early and remembers nights she used to sit up in bed dreaming about owning a mall and all of the stores that she would put in it.
At the same time, Malika was being pulled in another direction. She began to feel a strong extrasensory connection to things she could not define: strange occurrences in the house, feelings that turned into premonitions. “For the majority of my life, I was scared of this,” she says. “It was hardly ever a good experience. But as I got older, things died down a bit, until eventually I began to gaslight myself into believing that what I was experiencing wasn’t real.”
That all changed at age 15 when Malika and a friend decided to go “ghost hunting.” The experience she had that day was so impactful that it convinced her that what she was experiencing was actually happening. “I eventually realized that I didn’t want to be scared of it anymore and that I needed to figure out a way to set boundaries,” she says.
Whatever “it” is has followed Malika her entire life. Growing up Christian, Malika was led to believe that the world of the extrasensory—psychics, tarot readers, and spirits—was taboo. She struggled with this conflict for years until a video she posted on Tik-Tok—a “Who’s Talking Behind Your Back” reading—landed her over 165,000 views overnight. She took that as a sign to embrace a side of her she’d always pushed to the background and started her own business shortly afterward.
That business—The Tarot Hole—primarily operates online, where Malika goes by Didi Deity, a name she borrowed from Hindi in honor of her father (didi means “elder sister” in Hindi). There, she offers psychic readings, tarot readings, and charm castings and sells crystals to clients from all over the world.
Malika is continually surprised by the array of people who contact her. “I see all kinds of people, but I’ve noticed some trends,” she says. Most of the women are interested in receiving “spiritual guidance, mostly career readings, and love readings.” The bulk of Malika’s clients are female; they are, in her experience, more open to the process. Most of the men she sees come seeking ancestral guidance. “I feel like men hold on to a lot of the things that they wish they could have said to their loved ones. In sessions, they often want to reach out to someone of comfort,” she says.
Malika first came to York College as a Secondary English Education major but switched to Entrepreneurship after two semesters. Though she came to the major with valuable practical experience, she found her classes enlightening.
“There has been so much transfer between my coursework and my work as a business owner,” she says. “So much of what I’ve learned has also been great reinforcement for what I’ve learned on my own through trial and error. I’ve found the instruction on the complicated legal aspects of entrepreneurship especially rewarding. I would recommend everyone take at least one entrepreneurship class, even if you aren't in the major.”
Following college, Malika hopes to stay in York and continue to grow the business and the online community she's cultivated. “I just want to see where my business can go,” she says. “I’ve got some big ideas planned.” Some of those big ideas—a brick-and-mortar establishment, an arrangement to set up a stand at YCP events—she hopes are just over the horizon.
For those interested in entrepreneurship, Malika has very clear advice: “Go for it. You should do it because if you don’t, someone else will. Everybody fails. It’s not something you can escape, and you can’t let it prevent you from starting.
“I see a lot of people, especially minorities, who feel like they owe something to their parents; like they have to make a big sacrifice for them. A lot of the time, those sacrifices can be in direct opposition to your aspirations and dreams. Do not believe that you need to give up your passion for stability. Do some inner work. You’ll find that you often have to give back to yourself before you can give back to anyone else.”
