Standing Too tall

The dark side: Ten-year-old Yukta finds herself on the last bench in class. Not for sticking a divider up someone's ass, or failing in all...

The dark side: Ten-year-old Yukta finds herself on the last bench in class. Not for sticking a divider up someone8217;s ass, or failing in all subjects, but because she is tall. Other girls can8217;t look past her navel. Vision problems follow and she soon aquires a thick pair of glasses. As the days went by she grew, and she grew some more. And then puberty hit; that really ripped it. Picture young Yukta on her first date. After a fun day at the movies, she and her date returned home. He climbed onto a flower pot to kiss Yukta goodnight. The pot disintergrated and so did her love-life. Even after she started dating disco dancers, because they wore platform shoes she never did get that goodnight kiss. Boys have such big mouths.

Then along came Femina. As her parents had already given up any hopes of getting her married to an Indian, they gave her the green light to enter the Miss India contest. Who knew? Maybe there was some nice, tall firang waiting to marry someone just like her. Poor Yukta! She had to go through a lot. Corrective treatment for removing her stoop, cosmetic lenses instead of the thick glasses, cosmetic dentistry for a brand new plastic smile8230; And then during training for the contest, Mickey Mehta noticed that she wasn8217;t exactly the pencil-thin kind. Alas! The world now knew of her eating disorder that had stemmed from her unsociable school days. But Lady Luck finally gave Yukta a weary smile and presto! She was Miss India World 1999.

And then Yukta had a problem. In India, her fat, eating-disorder induced figure didn8217;t cause her any problems. Indian men like their women to be healthy. Silk Smitha is a case in point. But Yukta was going to the phoren. She could never achieve that waifish, anorexic international model look. Yukta tried. She tried hard8230;but to no avail. She just had to win the contest. If she didn8217;t, she couldn8217;t even enter Bollywood, dammit! Their heroes were too short8230; Mickey Mehta took one look at her and decided it was time for drastic measures. It was time for8230; Manish Malhotra.

Then of course, came the blue dress. No, not the stained one. The other blue dress. And the rest, as they say is history. But Fate had a last trick to play on poor Yukta. One look at the 6-feet plus heights of the firang contestants and she lost all her self-confidence. So much so that instead of the well-practicedI-want-to-be-like-Mother-Teresa-and-fight-world-hunger-and- take-destitue-Brazilian-street-children-under-my-wing line, she blurted out that Audrey Hepburn was her role-model. Stupid Yukta, no one likes dead Hollywood actresses anyway.

THE BRIGHT SIDE: Every dark cloud, as they say, has a silver lightning. So did Yukta8217;s life. It was more light grey than silver, but hey! It was better than nothing. So Yukta escaped the trauma of being bullied on the playground because of her towering height. What bully in his right mind would stand up to a person twice his size anyway8230;She was the princess of the playground, especially when it came to basket-ball. That no one played with her after losing the first 20 times or so is a different story. Later too, in her pursuit of zoology, her height helped her gain an insight into the psyche of animals, especially giraffes. And CY8217;s own resident fortune-teller, Zelda von Apfeltropf predicts a long, promising life for her: On the international circuit Yukta Mookhey will later look straight into the eyes of Naomi Campbell, platforms et all, becoming the first Indian to do so after Indira Gandhi. Still later in life she will be awarded the Padmabhooshan for raising India8217;s name to new heightsnaturally, pun intended!. As a fitting end to a long and high career in modelling, she will become the only woman in history to have kissed Michael Jordan full on the lips, without using a foot-stool8230;

This is a spoof. If you had any doubts about that8230;you are just plain dumb, pal!