At 3 pm on Saturday, a day before Diwali, the doorbell kept ringing. It was the Amazon delivery boy. Amidst a pool of guests, relatives at home, Nidhi came down running across the stairs through the lobby and reached the door. She was just a few seconds away from receiving her parcel. It was then that she realised the reality.
No sooner did she seek the help of her cousin, that her people burst into laughter. Loud laughs that were echoing in Nidihi’s ears all her life. She crossed the door and received the parcel. It was her favourite wall hanging diya. And she was in need of help again. This time she was surrounded by sarcastic smiles. Sarcasm was too much to be ignored for her eyes.
She ran upstairs and locked up herself in the room, and stood in front of the mirror. Nidhi was gorgeously glittering in a golden velvet blouse and a beautifully painted blue saree. She painted it all by herself. Nidhi is a girl of remarkable academic excellence and all-round performance. She’s bold, brainy and beautiful. It was her lifetime dream to contest and win the beauty pageant crown of Miss India, Miss World and Miss Universe. In fact, she deserves it all.
She is nothing less than a beauty queen. She has it all to be crowned and coveted. But she’s been declined an entry, rejected and mocked for her ineligibility. Yes, Nidhi is short as per global beauty standards. She’s just 5’2. Eighteen years of dreams, upbringing, career building made this sociology graduate sob in sorrow forever.
She stands tall apart from everyone in every aspect of life but she falls down to the abyss when it comes to height. She’s inferior, weak, shy and guilty of her height that resulted in her rejection of all beauty pageant entries. She needs an assistance of a ladder or a stool or a taller person to complete her daily routines. All her attempts to grow taller went in vain.
She has discovered beauty pageants and could win all her possible dreams but the coveted crown still is far from her reach. She paused the thought of contesting and decided to start fighting by writing on the beauty standards of the world. She writes, “Beauty is a boon by nature. It has got no benchmarks. It’s not right to be biased towards height.” She continues to write for her right. She still writes….
Hope with time her writings revolutionise the benchmarks of beauty pageants.