As dentist Dr. Jeemol Jaibin walks into her dental clinic in Kalamaserry, fashionably late by 10 minutes, heads turn and freeze. A man whispers to another, “That's Mrs India!” Jeemol doesn't seem to notice the attention. She says as much, “I am the same. What has changed is the attention.”
Jeemol was crowned Mrs India Worldwide organised by Shree Sai Entertainment in Faridabad last weekend. It was the crystallisation of a childhood dream that Jeemol has carried with her. She qualified for the contest when she won the Mrs. Kerala contest organised by Bodycraft a couple of months back.
Also what has changed is the reaction Jeemol's daughter Anna gets in school. The class VI student of Rajagiri Public School, Kalamaserry is the star of her class, says the indulgent mother. “Earlier if she wanted to borrow an eraser she would have to ask around. Now, she just needs to say it and five will be offered for her to pick from.”
It is hard to believe that Jeemol is on, what is considered, the wrong side of 35. In fact she is a lesson for women who have forgotten their dreams and confined to their many roles as career woman, mother, wife, daughter etc. It is not about participating in a beauty pageant, it is about making time for oneself, chasing dreams and making them come true. Her answer to the ‘who is a complete woman' question clinched it for her, she believes. Her answer was that three aspects – professional, personal and spiritual make a complete woman.
Of the Mrs. Kerala contest, she confesses, was a cakewalk but not so the Mrs. India Worldwide contest. “I was confident till I landed there. Once I got there the confidence part was taken care of…I lost it,” she says. What followed was strenuous training, yoga sessions, diets…and then the moment of truth. The next step is Mrs. World which she will get to, once things settle down.
When the first and the second runners up were announced, she had an inkling that the crown might be hers. “But still! When they announced my name I couldn't help pumping my fists in the air.” Apparently all the contestants were ‘taught' how to react when any of them won, that surprised look a la Sushmita Sen. But it was such a fantastic moment that she promptly forgot the rehearsed look.
Good student
As a student she was among those who did well in class. Classmates recall her first fashion show in dental college which was a total disaster as far as she was concerned. Or of the time when her classmates would be glued to textbooks before exams and she would be making concoctions for face packs and yet top the exams. Jeemol laughs at those memories and says beauty in all its aspects has always interested her. By that reckoning her winning this contest is poetic justice of sorts.
So the next stop: films or serials? “No! I went this far because I had my husband Dr. Jaibin's support. Acting is out. What are achievements without a family to savour them with?” She is, however, open to modelling. There is the mandatory contract that comes with winning this contest which ties her to the organisers for a year. But topmost on her scheme of things is setting up an aesthetic dental clinic.
For now Jeemol is sitting back and savouring the moment.
