She is splashed all over the billboards in Mumbai and in top fashion magazines. Yet, the 27-year-old model’s lived her life discreetly back home in Kashmir. Rouhani Syed prefers to talk more about the art and her struggle, and avoids any spotlight on her family background in Kashmir.
When I meet her at one of Srinagar’s popular coffee joints, she has a crinkled mustard yellow headscarf firmly in place. There is nothing, except perhaps her stylish haircut, to mark her out as one of Kashmir’s few successful fashion models.
But the story she narrates of her journey into Mumbai’s glitzy fashion circles has all the makings of a Bollywood potboiler: she ran away from her madrasa at the age of 17, was spotted by a top fashion photographer at a party in Mumbai, and was later hounded by a politician from home.
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Fiery spirit
Rouhani describes how her family enrolled her in a leading all-girls madrasa in Gujarat, hoping the rigorous regime would tame their rebellious daughter.
“I had once slapped my teacher in a Srinagar school,” she says. “He asked my classmate an indecent question about her body. I decided to stand up for her. But the principal complained to my family and they packed me off to the madrasa.”
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She was to train with 400 Muslim girls in Quran recitation. The rules were strict. Rouhani claims she was bullied and beaten up, and asked to wash over 300 dishes as punishment one night. “I wrote to my parents that I would die here. I was paying a price for being flamboyant.”
She stayed at the madrasa for four-and-a-half years, during which time she tried to escape more than once. When her father finally noticed her “pimpled face and broken spirit” during one of his visits, he decided to take her back to her home in the Valley. But Rouhani had no formal schooling and could not enrol for higher education in Srinagar; she decided to opt instead for a computer course in Mumbai.
Healed by art
Once in Mumbai, everything changed: Rouhani was spotted by a film director and well-known advertising and fashion photographer. “I was speechless when he said ‘You have the face of a model’. A part of me felt so liberated.”
Waiting in the trial room before the shoot, Rouhani was suddenly gripped by fear: “I thought ‘what if I get sold’ or ‘what if I am asked to act indecently’?” But the photographer put her at ease, teaching her to see the camera as a friend, she says. “When my shoot was over, no one would believe it was my first.”
Soon she started shooting for Rohit Bal and Satya Paul collections, and Maruti and Grasim campaigns. In no time, she was being featured in Elle , Grazia and Cosmopolitan .
She has finally made peace with her family as well, who now reluctantly support her career. But in the Valley, few people know Rouhani is a model.
“I know what is right and what is wrong,” she says, but is afraid to reveal her identity in Kashmir. “In our society men are allowed to climb walls like monkeys but women can’t even venture out,” she says. Painting helped her heal. “I painted a lot for three years. Now, when I look back, I feel proud.”
Rouhani now owns an art studio in Mumbai. She has come out with a satirical video, ‘Moorakh duniya’ (foolish world), about her bitter experience with the politician, which has been released in Tel Aviv. “One medium is not enough to express myself. My relation to art is that of a butterfly to a flower,” she says.
peerzada.ashiq@thehindu.co.in