Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

Ac­claimed as “one of the most glam­orous events in the world,” Miss/Mrs/Teen In­dia World­wide is the on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al In­di­an pageant with af­fil­i­ates in over 35 coun­tries. A record num­ber of In­di­an-ori­gin con­tes­tants from around the world are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate along with celebri­ties from Bol­ly­wood.

Win­ners of the lo­cal leg of the Miss In­dia World­wide Pageant are all set to rep­re­sent T&T on the grand stage in Pune, In­dia.

The pageant, which is cel­e­brat­ing its 30th an­niver­sary, is sched­uled to be held from June 13 to June 19 with the grand fi­nale on June 18. The event will be host­ed at what has been de­scribed as one of In­dia’s most beau­ti­ful and ex­clu­sive five-star re­sorts, The Corinthi­ans.

The Miss In­dia World­wide T&T (MI­WTT) Pageant was staged in Jan­u­ary 2023 at the Hilton Trinidad un­der the di­rec­tor­ship of Ne­ha Ka­ri­na. This pageant not on­ly em­braced the beau­ty and brains of our women but al­so saw all 28 con­tes­tants adopt­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal stance. This ini­tia­tive earned us the sup­port of iCARE TT and Sad­hgu­ru’s Save Soil. The pageant leads the way in en­sur­ing there is an en­vi­ron­men­tal com­po­nent in the par­tic­i­pants’ train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

The win­ners of the three cat­e­gories (Teen, Miss and Mrs) are cur­rent­ly prep­ping for this ex­cit­ing jour­ney to In­dia where they will rep­re­sent our coun­try. Con­tes­tants from all oth­er coun­tries in the di­as­po­ra will meet in Pune.

T&T’s Mrs Del­e­gate is Anis­sa Ali, an at­tor­ney and for­mer Shiv Shak­ti per­former with a love for dif­fer­ent cul­tures, new lan­guages and trav­el. She sup­ports end­ing the pro­duc­tion of sin­gle-use plas­tics.

Dan­na Seep­er­sad is the Miss del­e­gate, she is a clas­si­cal dancer and a stu­dent of sci­ences. She be­lieves in con­ser­va­tion via car­pool­ing, plant­i­ng a home gar­den, sav­ing wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty and com­post­ing.

The teen rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sagari­ka Sankar is a vi­brant and ad­ven­tur­ous young la­dy who loves sail­ing, na­ture hikes and swim­ming. She is a stu­dent of St Joseph Con­vent.

Ka­ri­na be­lieves the pageant should not just be viewed as a com­pe­ti­tion. The vi­sion of the pageant, she said, is to “pro­mote and en­cour­age women in so­ci­ety to fol­low in their foot­steps as lead­ers and trend­set­ters of the per­fec­tion of con­fi­dence, em­pow­er­ment and grace.”

The pageant, she said, has an im­pact on dif­fer­ent stages of women’s lives, “TEEN–be­ing the start of plan­ning or be­com­ing your fu­ture; MISS–the defin­ing time of your ca­reer; and MRS–where you are tak­ing the next steps defin­ing your fam­i­ly life and bal­anc­ing ca­reer goals.”

Ka­ri­na be­lieves in giv­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to young women who nev­er had a chance to find and mould them­selves in­to what­ev­er they as­pire to be­come. She shares, “It’s nev­er too late to be­come the re­al ver­sion of you. A per­fect ex­am­ple is the KFC own­er, Sanders, who start­ed his busi­ness at 65.

“Our mot­to is to pro­mote not on­ly In­di­an cul­ture but to pro­mote our coun­try Trinidad and To­ba­go and the di­ver­si­ty that is what we are known for, our girls are lead­ers and brand am­bas­sadors for our coun­try in the In­di­an di­as­po­ra and world­wide.”

Best wish­es to the par­tic­i­pants.