{"id":5560,"date":"2008-12-14T17:07:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-14T22:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5560"},"modified":"2008-12-17T21:41:49","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T02:41:49","slug":"parvathy_omanak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/14\/parvathy_omanak\/","title":{"rendered":"Parvathy Omanakuttan: Mallu Mol Just Misses Miss World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Parvathy<\/a>\nKerala’s, I mean India’s<\/em> Parvathy Omanakuttan was almost<\/em> Miss World 2008; in the end, however, it was Russia’s glamazon who won the crown. Just another instance of a brown girl being passed over in favor of some blue-eyed blonde…KIDDING. Sort of. \ud83d\ude09 Here is her biodata, I mean, bio (thanks, nik and mithua):<\/p>\n\n

Parvathy, hailing from Kottayam, grew up in Mumbai. Having graduated in Arts, she has studied Sociology, Psychology & English Literature.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
Parvathy’s ambition is to further her studies in Psychology to learn more about human behaviour in depth…The lanky beauty is an ardent sports fan with a special interest in basketball, badminton and swimming.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
She has a special talent for whistling. She likes listening to music, singing, reading, glass painting, acting, modelling, dancing (varying from local dances to ballroom and Latin dances) and learning new languages.[zee<\/a>]\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I have to ask, why is whistling important? Apart from being extra-able to hail a cab, re-enact the “Whistle while you work<\/a>” scene from Snow White or tell some hottie that he or she is foine–in a rather inappropriate way–what is it good for? Never mind , I answered my own question with that list.<\/p>\n\n

Parvathy is also very fond of a beautiful quote by former President APJ Abdul Kalam ‘Dreams are not what you see in your sleep, but dreams are that, which do not allow you to sleep’,<\/strong> hence her motto in life is ‘Dream with your eyes open’. [zee<\/a>]\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

She might be fond of that dreamy quote, but I’m fond of the fact that she’s athletic. We at SM love us some sporty brown girls<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Speaking of those of us at SM, feast your eyes on this inter-bunker haterade Ennis sent to me, via G-chat:<\/p>\n\n

4:30 PM Ennis: everybody knows mallu chicks are too short to win a pageant \ud83d\ude09<\/blockquote>\n\n

For your information, HATER, she is either 5’8 or 5’9; I’ve seen both heights listed in the 20+ articles I trudged through for this post (which were all filled with the same lame quotes). Either way, she’s tall enough. Oh, when will the North-South hate end? When, I ask? When? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n

Reading the following made me smile with recognition:<\/p>\n\n

Prior to witnessing the event on TV, close family members visited a few temples to offer prayers for Parvathy’s success.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
Those present couldn’t contain their joy when Parvathy’s name was announced in the five semi finalists.<\/blockquote>\n\n
Then followed tense moments as they waited for the winner to be announced, and when the news came that she was the first runner up, not everyone was happy.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
“Anyway, we are happy that she came second. If she had not won anything then it would have been bad. We are happy with what she has won,” Shantakumari said. [Hindu<\/a>]\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Shantakumari is Parvathy’s grandmother, and she wasn’t the only one who had great expectations for her grandchild:<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try my best to make every Indian all over the world proud,<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Parvathy Omanakkuttan had said two days prior to the Miss World 2008 beauty pageant at Johannesburg. [express<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

We’re very proud of you, penne. No need for the gnashing of teeth and bitter agonizing over what could have been:<\/p>\n\n

“I have performed better than others in the personality and question-answer round. This is not just. All those who watched it yesterday felt like that. I feel the jury’s decision was unfair”, Parvathy told India Vision channel on Sunday.<\/blockquote>\n\n
“I had confidence. I could do well. The question-round did not come as a challenge to me considering my background in literature,” Parvathy, who hails from Kottayam in Kerala, said. [NDTV]<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n

She reminds me of one of my cousins in Kerala, a pedantess who once apologized to my Aunt and Uncle for getting a 98 on a test, while simultaneously insisting that the grade was unfair. My father proudly related this anecdote about perfectionism to me, to inspire me to emulate such fastidiousness. I responded, “I ain’t the one<\/a>“. I then received a lecture on how “ain’t” was a word, but that’s a tangent to be abused on a future post.<\/p>\n\n

Miss World is the original and most popular beauty pageant in the world, which was launched in 1951.<\/strong> Each year young women from every country compete to go through rounds such as the Most Beautiful Smile, the Swimsuit round, Miss Talented and the Question & Answer round, etc, and judges select the contestant who has the winning combination of beauty, glamour, poise and intelligence. [Zee<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

Well, I learned something new. I didn’t know that the Miss World pageant is more popular than Miss Universe. I also didn’t know that first runner-up was such a bad thing. I’m lying. I’m Desi. I totally know that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kerala’s, I mean India’s Parvathy Omanakuttan was almost Miss World 2008; in the end, however, it was Russia’s glamazon who won the crown. Just another instance of a brown girl being passed over in favor of some blue-eyed blonde…KIDDING. Sort … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5560"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}