Delicately Poised: Memories of Nafisa Joseph

I passed by the Radisson on the Delhi-Gurgaon Road, and suddenly recalled that is where I had met Nafisa Joseph, former Miss India, now dead. Here is a piece I had written on the day the news of her suicide appeared.
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So she’s dead.
I met Nafisa Joseph at the launch of Pepsi’s campaign for the World Cup cricket, 2000. After some banter with the likes of Kris Srikkanth, I saw her, sitting nearly alone. She was pleasant and attractive in an anorexic way and was nice to get along with.

Your Hindi is good, I said.

Punjabi father, she replied. We eased into a pleasant conversation.

She was not like Sushmita, with her self-conscious cleverness, nor like Aishwarya, who knows the power of her pout.

Nafisa was delicate, poised and elegantly confident. Or so it seemed.

There was her chirpy video jockeying, of course. The kind you stop to watch for a minute as you surf through channels and move on with a sigh at the youth and energy of it all. Nafisa seemed made. One knew she was different. Animal rights was in for her, and Bollywood seemed ruled out. Modelling and veejaying, yes. But was I imagining when I saw that this was no glam-struck girl.

I saw her again in Bangalore, a year or two later, but this time as part of the audience of a show. What was it? A car launch? Or was it a soap? I don’t recall, and perhaps it is symbolic. As years roll by, and India crowns at least three beauty queens every year, and as they all seek rehabilitation after the usual rounds of soundbites and goody-goody causes, the beauties seek alternatives and slowly, The Title gives way to less enchanting presences.


I haven’t seen any of these babes host a tambola show yet, but I won’t be surprised if I see one. The laws of demand and supply make them the Fast Moving Consumer Girlies.


Some of the rouge comes off.

At the launch, or whatever, I saw Nafisa with what I thought was a fake American accent, an extra drawl, and somewhat less esoterically simple the way she was when I met her. I made no attempt to talk, and her car passed mine as I left the hotel, and my mind flashed a thought: OK, she is doing a job.

Just a job.

When the show is over, and the show-woman leaves with her mom, with no cheering urchins to run after the car and memorise the number plate, it seems like a day-job.


Then the news came of her impending marriage, and one of those Page Three stories was the stuff delectably romantic gossip is made of.

It seems she was in a bar, where she saw this guy saying something less-than-charitable.

She goes to him, taps his shoulder and says: “You shouldn’t have said that.”

She then falls for his apology.

And perhaps the fact, professed or otherwise that he didn’t seem to know who she was.

It all seemed so nice. Pretty celeb girl, fights for causes, finds a guy in a Mills&Boon plot.


Then you hear she is dead. Of her own will.

Suddenly, it seems to me: A woman who can tap a stranger suddenly and tell him he is wrong can move as fast to the next room, and see a rope in a dupatta.