A Model LIFE

Varma is entitled to spout some philosophy. Bollywood might have just cottoned on to the fashion industry and its stories of giddy ambition but few have lived that life like her. Shyamoli or Shy was India’s first supermodel; the first Lakme girl, the original diva to storm on to the fashion scene in the ’70s and change it forever. Expectedly, the fashion world also irrevocably changed this small town girl. From working as a telephone operator in Pune to being spotted by an assistant to fashion choreographer Jeannie Naoroji, bagging a contract with Pierre Cardin and moving to Paris, it was a juggernaut of success that she had stepped on.
That heady pace has slowed down. Varma is far away from the fashion world, living the life of a self-taught painter in her hometown Pune. The mother of a 13-year-old daughter, she is also a woman who has fought off her demons.

It’s the smile that had made her a household name when Lakme, then the biggest brand in the cosmetic world, signed her on for its first exclusive contract in the early ’80s. “For a princely sum of Rs 30,000 for three years. God, the fashion industry was so different at that time,” she says as she remembers that day in 1979 when Naroji’s assistant spotted her selling jeans in a store in Mumbai and offered her a modelling assignment. “I always had to work, right from college days when I took up a job as a telephone operator to fund my education to later when my aunt brought me to Mumbai. I worked as a receptionist at Taj and then as a salesgirl and sent my mother money from the salary earned from these jobs. Modelling, of course, took me to a new high. I still don’t quite know what they saw in me. It couldn’t be my height which at that time was not really a big plus. Maybe the fact that I was a trained ballet dancer worked,” she says.

... contd.