WITH HER 5’ 7” height she has touched the sky and earned an enviable distinction, brought pride to her state and is an ideal for aspirants in the fashion world. An engineering graduate who had never walked the ramp ever, the 21-year-old Gladrags Megamodel 2009 Ankita Mohapatra became the first model from Orissa to win a national model hunt with the belief that dreams are attainable. ‘‘It feels amazing and euphoric,’’ says the damsel who is excited to see the response from her home town after her victorious homecoming.
‘‘I didn’t expect people here would be proud of my winning. But my friends had been calling even when I had not reached Bhubaneswar,’’ says Ankita who has her feet firmly on the ground even after winning the title. ‘‘I’ve always been fascinated by glamour, glitz and adventure but never drifted from my studies,’’ she says.
A 2008 electronics and telecommunication graduate of Silicon Institute of Technology, Ankita is a product of DM School of the city. The delay in getting the appointment letter from an IT major she was selected for during the campus placements due to the recession gave Ankita some time to prepare for management entrances. ‘‘This was the time when my Mom researched online about the model hunt and convinced me to participate in the contest,’’ she says. Soon Ankita cleared the initial auditions and landed in the city of dreams, Mumbai to get a reality check about the glamour world. ‘‘I had expected that it would be a journey full of fun and I would be treated like a queen being one of the 20 contestants from north, south and east India. Infact all of us (contestants) had the same notion,’’ says Ankita. But from tough physical exercises to ramp walks to confidence training she had to slog it out from eleven in the morning to one in the night. ‘‘We were trained by well-known names including Maureen Wadia who would guide us with the ramp and dance. There was no regional bias; it was all about hard work and talent.’’
The bootcamp as they called it was a month long rigorous training and simultaneously the short listing went on. Of the 20 girls, soon only 15 were contesting which then reduced to five from among whom Ankita won the race. There was the swimsuit, casual and finally the Q & A round where the showman of Bollywood, Subhash Ghai asked Ankita if actors were born. With her spontaneous wit the Oriya beauty was quick to reply, ‘‘Yes, some people are born talented but one should always believe in dreams and should work hard and with the right grooming, dreams can come true to make great actors.’’ That was enough to grab the crown.
‘‘She has made us proud,’’ say parents Dr Saudamini Mohapatra and Sangram Mohapatra. Despite numerous modeling offers Ankita plans to pursue an MBA. ‘‘I love studies and really do not want to be a dumb model. But since the contest kept me busy I could not join any management institute even with good percentile scores,’’ she says.
Trained in Odissi and classical music Ankita loves playing tennis and swimming. Enchanted, Legally Blonde, Dil Chahta Hai are her picks in movies while the Alchemist and Harry Potter series is what she loves among books. ‘‘I would quit everything to work opposite Hrithik if offered a movie,’’ says the die-hard Hrithik fan. John Abraham and now Imraan Khan rank top in her crush list after him. As an advice for aspiring models of the state, ‘‘Complete your education and if possible workout and get good training to make a career in fashion,’’ she suggests.
