Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS Miss Afghanistan, Vida Samadzai

There is one question that Vida Samadzai is constantly asked: “How is Osama and are you his mistress?” Vida nonchalantly shrugs it off, with a reply that “plays along” to the tune. She answers: “Yeah, he is fine – didn’t you know that we had a relationship?”

Vida Samadzai was crowned Miss Afghanistan in 2003, defying and breaking stereotypes that both her home and adopted country have of Afghanistan and its people. She was born and raised in Afghanistan till she moved to the U.S. with her family, when she was in her early teens. She was related to the royal ruling family – the late Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of the war-ravaged country. She recalls her childhood in the 1980s: “It was wonderful and we were happy.” Vida recounts when she and her family were forced to leave everything they had worked hard to achieve and build in their home country, and move to Orange County in California.

Four years ago she just gave an attempt at the Miss Afghanistan contest and won. At the Miss Earth pageant, she wore a “70s style red bikini” that created a huge stir back in her home country – and since then she’s been banished from visiting.

And for the last one and a half years, she has been living in Mumbai trying her hands in two things close to her heart — Bollywood, and social work — after a stint in Hollywood. Vida works for a women rights organisation called “Afghan Woman Organisation” that makes women aware of their rights She also met fellow Afghan-American and author Khaled Hosseini. “We’ve exchanged ideas and discussed controversies. ‘The Kite Runner’ is an amazing book – it brought tears to my eyes. I was offered a role in the movie but my mother didn’t pass on the message,” she laughs.

She adds, “Of course, I also want to get married, have six kids and live close to my family.”

AYESHA MATTHAN

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail