Model Diana Hayden who made London her home still feels the connect with the city she was born in. But she’s sure about not coming back to live here for good. “It is not viable for me. Hyderabad is my home and I cannot break ties with this city but coming back to live here is not in my plans,” says the leggy lass who was in the city to announce her latest venture. “It is a book. A Beautiful Guide is an encyclopaedia on grooming and also deals with personality development and confidence building,” she says. Diana took over two years to complete the book and is relieved at the thought that she can heave a sigh of relief as the book hits the stands. She was in the city for a series of book reading sessions and the reason she chose to do the book reading at Hotel Ista was because she “loves the spa and the ambience there”. She was heard gushing about the spa treatments she had at the hotel.
So what is the book’s focus? “It is a guide to grooming and confidence building and has personal anecdotes from my life for the readers to know that there is a way to change and improve the way we present ourselves,” she informs. The book has everything from the way to shape your eyebrows to the shades you should wear and the amount of perfume to be used.
What made Diana pen the 256-page book is the lack of a complete guide on grooming. The model who regularly delivers lectures on grooming, fitness and well being says she it is partly her students who made her decide on writing the book. “After my classes I would get requests from the students about notes. I would make notes of what is required and give it to them. Then it struck me that I should create something which can be accessed by everyone. That was the time when I also realised the difficulties I faced in finding a complete guide when I was preparing myself as a model. What we find in libraries and book stores are separate chapters and the internet was not always right. So I started working on my notes and by the time I finished I realised I gathered too much information. It took me two and half years to compile my notes. During that time I became a complete recluse, and my friend’s daughter who was a few months old when I first saw her was more than two years old,” she laughs.
But when her friends saw her hard work in its final stages, they said, ‘it was worth it.’
There are chapters in the book where Diana adds personal touch as she discusses her days as a struggling model with no money to buy make up and “And had holes in my shoes. I have made all these sound very funny to show the positive side of life. And they understand the need of the right spirit and the urge to present themselves better.” Diana, dressed in an almost python print short number, looked stunning and when compliments came her way on the ways she looked, she says, “I am very strict about regulating myself. I do have my binging days. There are days when I don’t refuse my kalakand and biryani but after all that I restrict myself and wait till the time I can allow myself to binge.”
Diana credits her mother and grandmother for her ‘teacher instinct’ in her that helped her make the best of her grooming classes. And she resisted the temptation to use specific brand names in the book. “I didn’t want to make it commercial. I wanted my readers to make their choice.”
