The winning beauty

World, hold on!

Single parent child wins the crown again

Remember the times when we gaped in awe at the three beauty queens on the Femina magazine cover, year after year. There was Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutta, Dia Mirza and then memory fails me to keep a check on who else's face can be recollected off the cover. Well, quite obviously that craze of Miss Indias has definitely mellowed down, what with girls (like us, we'd like to believe) around looking just as confident and beautiful. But in a population of 7 billion, a renowned title like 'Miss India' matters and can turn out to be quite a launchpad for any smart girl.
And so on April 30 in Mumbai, it was the Pantaloons Femina Miss India 2010 pageant finale, out of the 18 finalists who walked the ramp, talked the 'compassion' talk, three dusky beauties whisked away the titles amongst 18 finalists. The winners were: 22 year-old Manasvi Mamgai (crowned with World title) from Delhi, 20 year-old Nicole Faria from Bangalore with the Earth title and 24 year-old Neha Hinge from Madhya Pradesh, who took along the Miss India-International title. Are you wondering about who bagged the Miss Universe title? Well, that's going to announced later (in June maybe)by actress and former Miss Universe - Sushmita Sen at her pageant 'I am She'.
At the finale, I realised that the most fascinating aspect of this pageant is that these girls came from various cities in India and have their own struggle to narrate. Most touching was the fact that Manasvi Mamgai confessed that she has been brought up by a single parent - her mom and that it's been a struggle to make it here. When Manasvi won the crown, her mother kissed her forehead in such gratitude to God that everyone around felt their throats choking. While other winners gushed about their win and wanted to indulge in chocolate cake and butter chicken, Manasvi in a coy voice said, 'I've lost my appetite. This crown's for my mother'.
It was a sense of deja vu, I recollected that incidentally, last year, Pooja Chopra who walked away with the Femina Miss India World 2009 title was also a single parent child. And when she had won the crown, she dedicated it to her mother.
This was the Miss India bit but if we do a day-to-day reality-check, every mother (whether a single parent or not) finds her daughter a complete Miss India right from the day she's born. Does a pageant really prove anything, well, nothing much to a mom, surely.

Girl With the Blue Scarf says: It's Mother's Day on Sunday and I want to thank my mom for showing me a path of simplicity and beauty in acceptance in life. As she always maintains: 'If my heart's clear and my intention's right, which God can deny me the fight'.