A Brush with Glamor

How could I even have dreamt of becoming a beauty queen, given my temperament and unpreparedness for the event when I participated in the Femina Miss India beauty contest a few years ago? If anything I was a perfect misfit for the fashion world and a brush with glamour was all I needed to realise that it was not my cup of tea.
I watched with pride the crowning of Sush and Ash as Miss Universe and Miss World respectively, even as my mind wandered yet again to my hilarious fiasco at the Siri Fort Auditorium not so long ago. Reliving those moments was not so much amusing as painfully embarrassing initially, but with time I came to look upon the experience as one that cured me of the glamour bug.
For a person given to stage fright, my biggest folly was to give in to the coaxing and cajoling of my friends who were of the opinion that a pretty face and attractive vital statistics was all it took to be crowned a beauty queen.
Big on natural beauty, I use make-up rarely and then too sparingly. Diamonds are definitely not my best friends and glad rags have their uses but give me pyjamas any day. That I was an introvert with a penchant to be politically wrong completed the picture.
So, unprepared and very green, I set off to New Delhi with the barest of bare war-paint, a sari that did nothing for my curves and a pair of brand new stilettoes that I hadn’t had the forethought to break-in.
The interview with Ms Vimala Patil, the then editor of Femina, was an informal affair, and after sizing up the young women I was to rub shoulders with at Siri Fort Auditorium, the friend accompanying me assured me that there was no competition to speak of in the gathered coterie.
It hit me that I had done nothing to enhance my natural looks as I entered the green room teetering precariously in my high-heeled sandals. Poured in dazzling ensembles and sporting elaborate hairdos, with faces done up professionally, the girls-next- door seemed to have transformed into angels overnight. Now I know why “Kaya-Kalp” is a popular choice of name for beauty shops.
In the minutes before I went on stage I know I got a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes activities of beauty contests and fashion shows. The obsession of people in this line with their looks would have been hilarious if it were not so disgusting. Some would spend ages before the mirror practising catwalk and perfecting facial expressions till they got it just right. The haughty look, sexy pout, innocent charm—they could do it all.
Even before I went on stage I knew I could never be part of this world but a dignified exit was not to be. If friends in the audience are to be believed, for all the poise and grace I displayed on stage, I could have been trying to avoid puddles in a street in monsoons, what with one hand clutching the pleats and the other trying to keep the “palla” of my sari from falling off. Not that it did me much good and my worst nightmare came true when one of my sandals came off and I actually tripped on the stage. (No, it did not make headlines like Ash’s famous slip.) That I had forgotten to put on my one and only smile all through this misadventure seems a minor offence in retrospect.
Never been known for diplomacy, I could have made Madhu Sapre’s faux pas in the crucial poser round at the Miss Universe beauty pageant seem trivial, but as it so happened I was eliminated in the preliminary round and an incidence of national shame was averted.
Experiencing first hand the nervous energy, tension and chaos behind the glitz and glamour of the fashion world revealed that people in this profession are hardworking, ambitious and highly competitive. It was also an environment I could not thrive in, if my life depended on it.