Father's Day Special

FATHER’S Day is not something that Miss India-World Pooja Chopra will be looking forward to. Her mother is both dad and mum to her. “I was the second girl child born to my mother, and my father did not want me. When I was 20 days old, my mother had to make a decision – either me or her husband. She picked me. When she left home carrying me and my seven-year-old sister, she turned around and told her husband, ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’,” Ms Chopra told The Times of India recently.

No wonder then that she dedicated her win to her mother. She considers her mother her guiding force, her mentor and her friend. When she started to take part in local pageants in Pune, India and began to model on and off, her mother told her she could model only if her grades did not drop. “One year when my grade dropped to 75 per cent, I had to stop modelling for six months until my next grade came and I proved that I could make it up. My mother has lived every inch of this dream with me.”

Her father, whom the beauty queen has never been in touch with, has not called to congratulate her after her win. Shortly after her mother moved out he remarried and had two sons, she said. “That’s all I know about him. I don’t even know if he knows this is me, his daughter, who stands as Miss India-World today,” she told The Times of India.

In an interview with IANS last month, her mother spoke about her decision to part ways with her husband. “He was not happy because I could not bear him a son and so he wanted to remarry,” Mrs Neera Chopra said of her ex-husband. She said all efforts on her part to please him had failed and in the end she walked out with dignity. “I saw him going around with many girls, but I kept mum because of my family. However, when things became really difficult, I image knew I had to make a choice and I chose my daughters over him,” she said. She says life hasn’t changed much since her daughter won the Miss India-World crown on April 5. But she gladly acknowledges that “people now don’t know me as Neera but as Pooja Chopra’s mother and it is a great feeling.”

The win has made her daughter Pooja Chopra a household name in India. She is frequently featured in the media and people have not stopped asking her when she is joining Bollywood. But she says she has only the Miss World competition on her mind. “I am tired of answering this question. I can’t tell you how busy I am with Miss World preparations. It demands full concentration and at this moment winning the crown holds top priority in my life,” she told IANS at a function in New Delhi recently. This year the Miss World contest will take place in South Africa in December.