Padma Lakshmi, the Chennai girl who made news on the fashion ramps of Milan is back in the news again. As the media feverishly speculates on this ‘Chennai-girl’ who has been seen accompanying writer Salman Rushdie, 53, to parties and premieres in New York city, Chennai itself, seems unperturbed. The tall, dark-haired South Indian beauty, who has a degree in theatre, wandered into the glam world of modelling quite by accident. “I was studying in Spain for my bachelor’s degree and was in my last semester,” she said to this paper in an exclusive interview, on her visit to Chennai last year, “A modelling agent saw me and gave me his card - I didn’t want to call him and ruin my degree.” But fate intervened when a friend who ensured that she met the agent. And Padma made her way to the ramp, and into the limelight.
Padma remembers summers spent in Chennai. “I was here until I was four,” she said, “And I have come back every summer without fail for three months. In ’78, I studied in St Michael’s Academy in Adyar for a year.” But she was not sure whether she would assimilate into an Indian way of life as an adult. “I am used to having independence,” she said, “My grandfather does encourage that type of independence and I am largely who I am because of him.”
She is the heroine of The Caribbean, a mini series made for Italian television set in the New World, the Americas. This pirate tale set in the 1600s, is the story of the brother who migrated to the New World and falls in love with an American Indian tribal queen. “It’s a story of two brothers... and there is a duel, and one of them travels to the New World and the first thing he sees is me on the beach...,” she says.
Padma is also the heroine of Sandokan, the Darkness and Light, the sequel to the Kabir Bedi film Sandokan, that tells the story of the son of Sandokan. The film had Bedi playing Sandokan, and Marco Bonini playing the son.
Her foray into acting was quite another chance. “I co-hosted a TV show live for six hours,” said the model who is fluent in Italian and English, “I am a classically trained actress and I have studied a lot of modern American playwrights.” The model-actress was not averse to a foray into film-making a la Deepa Mehta. “I have script ideas,” she said, “But if I do make a film in India, I would like total control. I would write, I may not act...” At the time of interview, Padma talked of a script in progress, set in an Indian scenario.
Padma has also written a cookbook, Easy Exotic - A Model’s Low-Fat Recipes From Around the World. The cookbook, amazingly, like everything else in Padma’s life, just happened. At a party for the premiere of a film, she got talking with the head of Miramax films who remembered a friend who had been to dinner at Padma’s house and had loved it. “I said yes, I love to cook and it’s always been a fancy of mine to write a cookbook, I just said it out of my hat and he said, why don’t you.” Miramax had just acquired a publishing concern and Padma went on to meet the editor concerned with ten pages of text about her childhood in India. “I wrote about how I would sit on the floor while the women would cut vegetables,” she said, “Cooking is so much a part of my cultural upbringing.” It turned out, quite coincidentally, that all the people who worked on her book, from the editor to her assistant, were women!
The cookbook contains recipes culled from Padma’s travels as a model and an actress - all tuned to a basic ‘Indianness’(“They call it ‘fusion food’,” says Padma.). The dishes featured are low fat, one dish meals that are nutritious and easy to cook, and coming from a model, that isn’t surprising!
The girl who wished to “make some sort of creative product” on her own, is as individual as they come. “When you are satisfied, you are dead,” she declared, as she talked about her journey into creativity and creative satisfaction.
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