She’s more than just another pretty face

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This is a classic case of beauty for a cause. Chennai-based IT professional Deepali Phadnis has just returned to the city after being crowned Mrs Asia-International at the Mrs International pageant at Chicago and she is already raring to get started on her anti-diabetes crusade.

Deepali competed with 57 other married women from across the world to win the special title at the 25-year-old beauty pageant that does not assess contestants based on their looks alone.

This year's winner, an American, is a burns survivor “The Mrs International beauty pageant is like none other; the judges take the women’s family values, career, social work and personality into consideration over their looks and vital stats. In short, they look for ‘inner beauty’,” says Deepali, who also runs an NGO called Green Queen.

While Green Queen dabbles in several different causes, including environmental protection and community health, Deepali’s pet project is a diabetes prevention drive.

“Almost my entire family is diabetic— I lost my father to diabetes-related complications and my late grandfather had both his legs amputated due to diabetes. My mother also has diabetes; in fact the entire generation before mine suffers from the disease.

My siblings and cousins are now trying their best to keep fit and make wise diet choices to avoid the disease,” explains Deepali, who admits battling with her weight.

“It is now my responsibility to maintain good fitness levels as this title will make me a role model; however I will never over-do it.

I believe in projecting a healthy body image, in being a realistic woman and not a plastic size zero,” she adds.

This year Deepali aims to conduct a diabetes screening and awareness camp for 10,000 people and raise funds to adopt 10 BPL children with Type-1 diabetes to provide them with free insulin and other medication.

“Participating in the pageant exposed me to mature, dignified women from different cultures. They do so much for their respective societies; the level of social work that some of those women are involved in, is remarkable,” she says wistfully.Adding that she would do as much as her 9 to 5 job would allow.