PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Four formidable women, Bobbi Brown, Padma Lakshmi, Alison Roman and Christene Barberich, play muse to Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who recently launched his ethereal jewellery collection at the iconic luxury store Bergdorf Goodman in New York

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PADMA LAKSHMI, TELEVISION HOST, AUTHOR, MODEL

BY Barkha Dutt

Before I knew her and began to count her among my dearest friends, my impressions of Padma were probably what most of you still think from afar. A stunning, beautiful and poised presenter with a glamorous and luxurious American life. Padma is all that. But she is so much more. She has depth and gumption and passion—and above all—authenticity and courage. I do not know another woman (or man) who’d have the courage to bare their innermost conflicts like Padma did in her memoir (Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir). Or open herself to the possible wrath of her influential former husband, Salman Rushdie, by writing about her marriage. Rushdie stopped speaking to me once Padma became a friend so I have some sense of what she took on. She has worn her tumultuous personal life on her sleeve with a rare equanimity and confidence. She is aware perhaps that women and men may both judge her and she doesn’t give a damn if they do. It is this comfort in her own skin that makes her a truly empowered feminist. Not just because she has always stood up for women, gone public about her own experience of being raped as a 16–year–old and spoken searingly about her battle with endometriosis; but because women are scrutinised and evaluated and morally reprimanded—and Padma has a Zen like strength that simply rises above all that noise. She is a celebrity but in so many ways she is still that young girl who lay under her grandparents’ cot in a modest home in Chennai dreaming of being able to buy the next cone of ice–cream. That simplicity of sentiment and pureness of affection is what defines her when you strip away everything else.