| "Look,
I did my best. I prepared intensively, worked out, ate the
right things, watched my diet strictly, was very motivated.
Then I go to Nice and find the contest dominated by 14 and
15-year-olds who have been modeling for some time already
and are even more frighteningly focussed than I was. The winner
was a 15-year-old Rumanian girl who was perfect to look at
and even thinner than me. My roommate was 14, an American
girl, who knew exactly where she was going and what she wanted
to do with her life. So…'' she laughs, eyes crinkling
up, enjoying herself hugely inspite of everything.
Has
being the sub-continental Look of the Year changed her life
in any way? "Not as much as people tend to think,"
says the young lady drily. "For one thing, people aren't
exactly falling over themselves to sign me up for television
or print. I'm too dark, most of them feel. I talked to Noyonika
(Chatterjee) about it and she said 'Talk about it to people,
to everyone'.
The
family is small and close (one brother), her extended family
is also very much around, college is high on her list of priorities
and she knows modelling can't last forever. She's smart enough
to say that if she had to choose between a high-profile fashion
show and her final exams in March/April 1999, she'd pick the
latter because she doesn't want to lose a year. First the
degree, then possibly an MA and then, who knows, a PhD in
child psychology. Because that is what she'd like to do, work
with children, not in the Misses World way but permanently.
She likes them, she likes the subject and while confessing
to being a pretty average student, she has that extra edge
now that winning a major looking-good contest gives young
women nowadays. She could go anywhere, do anything, and she
knows it.
She
calls herself fun, predictable, crazy and naive! Loves children,
her friends, food and music.
|
