Stilettos, swimsuit and stethoscope Mansi Choksi, TNN Jan 29, 2012, 06.29AM IST Tags:
In the Christmas of 1966, when the Vietnam war was at its peak, thousands of American soldiers were gathered in Thailand. Cigarettes dangling from mouths and sunglasses in tow, the armed troops thundered with applause as the golf club-toting American entertainer, Bob Hope, gambolled and cracked his audience up with jibes comparing Vietnam to Playboy Club East. The guest of the evening, a woman in a tightly wrapped zari saree and danglers, was called on stage after a warning for the audience: no fainting in the aisles. The girl, who Hope described as "the most beautiful girl alive", offered to check his pulse. "If you're a medical student, every one of these guys is in need of operating," Hope roared. As Reita Faria, the first Indian Miss World, made American soldiers laugh as part of her Miss World contract, an ocean away at home, Indian government officials were unamused with her appearance, given the state's neutral position during the war. "There was a bit of a controversy but it settled down soon. No one had expected me to win and that's why there was no advice on the signing of the contract," she says. But Faria, who is currently in Mumbai for the fiftieth reunion of her college, was always an unlikely beauty pageant winner. A student of Grant Medical College in Mumbai, she submitted her photograph as a prank after Eve's Weekly, a woman's fortnightly of that time, released an advertisement. "I was just having some fun. I was six months away from becoming a doctor and was certain that I was going to return to my studies. Within two months, I had won the Miss Bombay, Miss India and Miss World title but the glamour world was not for me," says Faria, who refused both modelling and acting offers after her tenure and now lives in Dublin with her husband, David Powell, an endocrinologist. Five decades ago, when the Matunga girl with Goan roots was crowned Miss World, beauty pageants were different. There was none of the hype that exists today: no personal trainers, no make-up assistants, no crash dieting, no designer wear, no predictable winner and no assuming that the next logical step was showbiz. When Faria landed in London for the final competition with a borrowed swimsuit and flat shoes, she was rudely ordered to buy heels. "I was tall for an Indian girl and I always wore my swimsuit with flats but they insisted that I needed heels. From the three pounds of foreign exchange that the law permitted me to carry, I had to buy heels with one pound. I still have the heels but I have not worn them since," she says. But that one pound paid off well. On a tiny black-andwhite television set in a hospital in Ireland, her to-be husband David Powell watched her answer a question about her medical background with great articulation and poise, after which she got the crown. "I saw her and thought, 'I'd like to meet this girl'," he says. And soon enough, in a few months, Faria was in Dublin for the opening of a shop. "I was even invited to the reception because a classmate was appointed her chaperone. But we did not get a chance to speak then. A year later, we were at King's College together. We worked alongside in Boston and then moved to Ireland," he says. The pageant well behind her, Faria refuses to get drawn into questions on the politics and commerce of beauty pageants today. While the memory of her youth is immortalised in the sepia photos of the time, there is a certain concern about death, brought on anew by the passing of 10 of her classmates. "I would always tell David to just shoot me once I turned 65. I don't want to be lumbering around," smiles Faria, now 70. "I'm still learning to deal with old age but it's a hard reality to cope with." http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-29/mumbai/30675798_1_heels-indian-girl-pageant --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
