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The Pageant puts India on the world map, said the new reigning Queen of the Universe, Lara Dutta, after her coronation ceremony. Oh my. I hadn't even realised that India had fallen OFF the world map. Nobody tells me anything around here.
Her geography teacher in school recalls fondly how Lara walked up to the blackboard where there was a big map of the world, found the Indian ocean, spotted Pakistan and Bangladesh with a large empty space in between. Little Lara picked up a handful of soil and put it in that empty space. What are you doing, child, asked the surprised teacher. Putting India on the map, explained Lara. She was always so intelligent, beams her geography teacher.
She was also always thin, say Lara's neighbours. That makes sense, if you've seen a picture of her rather well built sister. Lara didn't need to go to Ramma Bans. She just didn't get any food as a kid.
Perhaps that explains the first thing she wanted to do after winning the crown: get breakfast and get some sleep. She hadn't seen breakfast - or lunch or dinner - for many days before the pageant. How do you think she turned out all elbows and thighs, anyway? If America has anorexia, India has blubber. Miss Indias still spend weeks on Anjali Mukherjee diets losing all that cellulite.
 Have you noticed how all the Misses India look the same these days? Tall and brown and slinky, long-limbed, all with the same manifestos, like political parties: saving the whales, saving the children, saving the world. Except Madhu Sapre, who wanted to build a sports stadium, and we all know what happened to her.
Okay, the Lara Dutta websites (yes, there are several) tell me that Lara equals Confidence plus Intelligence. Dutta has Plans. The majority of women in my country are illiterate and uneducated, so we have to start there and educate them, she says of her Plans for AIDS education for women. That is what I will do with India, she says (does that sound ominous, or is it just me?) - and then progress to the rest of the world. World, please wait for Lara.
Meanwhile: silly Cypriots, chuckles my cabbie. Did you see, they were asking for schools and hospitals instead of the pageant! Don't they know that Miss Universe is going to educate the world, once she's done with India? Smart cabbie. Silly Cypriots.
The TV remote stopped working last week. No wonder, for between the Kapil Dev-Karan Thapar weepie, the Lara Dutta coronation, the Bournvita Quiz Contest, the snakes copulating on National Geographic, and the usual other funnies, it was a constant battle about what to see. I voted for the Maharishi on the meditation channel, always my hot favourite, or for the one-man channel who spends twenty-four hours saying that women are evil, but we ended up watching Miss Universe sashay in as Mighty Aphrodite. We saw the Big Basketball Stadium dressed up to look like an ancient Greek amphitheatre. And then we saw Miss Spain dressed up to look like a Large Banana Split topped with oodles of Whipped Cream. Tall and gorgeous women, all flashing leg, all wide-eyed, all smiling like emoticons in a chat room. My husband and my brother were transfixed - yes, the way they're transfixed when Malaika flashes leg on Loveline. "Don't change the channel", yelled my brother while pretending to read a complicated algorithms textbook. I said the Cypriots were holding a vigil to protest the pageant. An all-night vigil, for the men in my life, means a World Cup Down Under. Silly Cypriots, they said and shook their heads: "Don't change the channel".
Now, presumably, that all the dust has settled and the hoo-ha has died down, Lara must be back at home with Daddyji, Mummyji and Dorji, I murmured at the breakfast table. And smiled. In the satisfaction that Lara would have to wait for hot buttered pancakes with maple syrup for a loooong, looooong time. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown but wants breakfast.
Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta is a bureaucrat. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and their two-month old butterscotch Labrador puppy, Whisky
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