No Catwalk This

The girl had never worn an Indian outfit until designer Rohit Bal spotted her in Goa. “Walk for me,” he told her,she reports. It took two weeks for her to get her first few assignments,all for Rohit Bal. Two commercials followed.

Yet for the tall,cat-eyed Persian,the real challenge will be walking the Delhi runaway. “I still have to watch my steps,” she says. Though the three years on the road in South East Asia — Malaysia and Thailand — taught her some tricks that might sustain her.

Her name kept changing to suit the dialect of the land she was in. “The Malaysians found Mandy easy,India likes Mandana. This is me,now,” she says.

The real Manizeh Karimi was born in a small town,Saveh,on the outskirts of Tehran. With her mother,she moved to Tehran,for small town life in Saveh was stifling,she says. Karimi remembers the first time she fought with her mom. “My mother tied a white scarf around my hair,but I loved my hair,” she says. She was only six then — she wore the scarf until that flight to Malaysia,more than a decade later. It was Tehran that exposed her to fashion. When she was nine,she committed her first crime — an underground purchase of a Russian red lipstick. She painted her lips,not once but five times,so that the colour would stay,but couldn’t step outside.

Soon,she told her mother she was going on a holiday to Malaysia. She had USD 300 and vowed never to return. She walked the runaway in Malaysia,modelled in Bangkok and fell in love with Hong Kong.

But assignments ran out. That was when an Indian agent in Thailand spotted her. She was world weary,but the gypsy in her decided to keep moving on what,she believes,is the roadmap of her rebellion.