Geetanjali: From ramp to road!
While most girls her age were occupied with trivial things, Geetanjali knew that fashion was her forte. A Navy officer’s daughter, she studied at the most reputed institutes, Mount Carmel and Lady Shri Ram College. She went on to study fashion design at South Delhi Polytechnic.
Seems like Geetanjali always knew that flashbulbs were what she was meant for. What she didn’t know was that midway, one wrong step would put paid to a promising career and start her on the downward spiral.
Human memory is short. And fickle. Few designers or models claimed to remember Geetanjali. Why just designers? Her own mother and sister have not laid eyes on her for the past two years! Nor have they come forward to claim her since her rescue.
Gitanjali was always the experimental, creative type. Recalls a friend,”She would mix two shades of lipstick to create a brilliant new one. She would try out different eye make-up, she liked to do alternative shoots in black and white – Gitu was always different. She loved the tanned look and would come back with a beautiful bronze tan every time she went to the beach”
Mated locks, dirty clothes and unhygienic conditions. Was it the pressure of a demanding career or bad company that took Geetanjali towards the dark lanes of drugs? Her life is known to have become merely a passage for men, walking in and out. She married Robert, a German, against the wishes of her family and had a son, Arthur, with him. And then, one fine day she walked out from here too in search of that elusive freedom .
For anyone who has known Geetanjali, it’s nearly impossible to believe that the girl who begs the dhabawala for food and sleeps in a temple is really her. Almost always spotted in a black top and skirt, she went about the streets carrying a bundle of books and sometimes even walked in to the fashion stores of Hauz Khas village
Maybe it was the fast life of Mumbai that she couldn’t cope with or maybe it was something else – but Geetanjali did lose her best years, spending them away from the glitz and glamour she had always dreamt of, in grit and grime. Her son Arthur is nearly five years old today and is unaware that he has a mother walking the streets of Delhi somewhere. His father Robert is trying to get tickets to fly down to India for her. This sure is one fairytale that went very wrong…
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