PRAVEENA SHARMA
She’s a mother, a homemaker, a budding poet and a performer, a radio jockey, a wellness counsellor; and now she’s also a beauty queen. Shruti Ajay, winner of this year’s Aura Mrs India first runner up crown, slips into all her avatars with ease.
Two fixations define this beauty with soul; the first is the compulsion to prioritise her son (who will turn six soon) over everything else and the second is her passion for Goa, which she has made home for the past fifteen years.
It’s because of her undying love for the balmy coastal state and, in small part, due to midlife crisis setting in “early on” that she decided to participate in the beauty contest, on a lark.
“I was going through a midlife crisis. It has hit me very early on. This (beauty contest) was happening in Goa. So, it was natural for me to jump on to it,” says Shruti, who enamoured the judges with her exceptional wit and sashayed her way into their hearts to win the titles of Mrs Intelligent and Mrs Best Ramp Walk.
After cornering the crown in Goa; without a second thought, she opted out of travelling abroad for the Mrs World contest as she does not want her son “out of (her) sight” or left without a “support system”.
While the two men in her life – her father (worked with ministry of defence) and husband (is with Indian Navy) – deal with defending the country’s border, Shruti is expanding the boundary of creativity with her poetries. Two books on her poems have already been published; one – Yakamoz - Musings Of my Heart – in 2022 and the other – Yakamoz: Musings and Learning – won her the Emily Dickinson award for languages this year.
Beyond the glittery realm of beauty pageant and her grounded personal space, she’s giving a helping hand to underprivileged women to educate them on nourishment and wellness of their family. According to her, it’s the women of the house who are largely responsible for a family’s overall physical and spiritual health. She sees the outcome of her regular interactions with them when they smile “a little more”.
Shruti takes her time to call someone beautiful because beauty is not skin deep for her. She feels “attractiveness” is a far more important element than physical traits in defining beauty.
And it takes time to discover someone’s attractive ways that instil confidence and good feelings in others. At the same time, she sees being well groomed as a pre-requisite for raising the attractive quotient in a person.
Today, her mottled reality includes Goa that paces down her life to suit her sensibility and has helped her leave behind the rat race to create a harmonious environment around her.
That done, she’s now turned her gaze to the future which includes a wellness centre (with no gym equipment) that promotes conscious breathing and taking up performance art and acting more actively.
Ajay’s beauty crown has seen opportunities knock on her door and, even though she’s elated by them, she’s not rushing into them.
Meanwhile, she’s donned her ‘eco-vist’ (environmentalist) cap to spread awareness on how garbage strewn around by tourists/trekkers find their way into paddy fields of local farmers and injure them.
“Locals visit some untouched-by-tourists trekking point at the waterfall, make merry and leave glass bottles, which break and flow down to paddy fields, where the farmers and the helpers who walk barefoot to tend the crop get foot-pricked. This can very easily be avoided with a little consciousness by trekkers,” she avers.
