The summer of 1999 will ever remain very special to me, when life unfurled its diverse facets, transforming the very way I look at the world. It was a hot summer in Vellore and my troubles seemed never ending after I suffered a severe crush injury at my right hand. I was also suffering from the various complications for infected blood transfusion at a local hospital. Those days my friend Mathew did a great favour by visiting me every Saturday. In every visit, he would come with new Books and cassettes. Mathew was an insatiable reader with a fabulous sense of book selection. One Saturday, he brought me a copy of the book “Desert Flower” written by Waris Dirie, a supermodel, with the help of Cathleen Miller.
How do you envisage the life of a supermodel? The swanky lifestyle, the parties, the catwalk in posh and exquisite hotels! No, there is nothing of this sort in this book. Here Waris tells about her journey from the nomadic life in the desert of Somalia to the pages of the Vogue. It’s not a common rags to riches story. It is a saga of a determined woman who fights against all odds and prejudices to accomplish success and then her yearning to make the world free of all those which she underwent.
Waris grew up in the desert of Somalia in a nomadic family. The family lived in a tentlike domed hut woven from the grass of about two metres in diameter. Every morning, she used to take out the herds of sheep and goats for grazing, braving the wild animals like Lions and Hyenas. She grew up like the flowers which blossom in abundance after the first rain in the desert till the arrival of time for womanhood and face the gyspey woman for a ritual called infibulations- a practice widely followed amongst the Muslims of Africa.
Clutching a piece of root between her jaws, she laid on the rock, drenched in her own blood as the gypsey woman cut her genital and sewed with the thorns from an acacia tree. Her lust for life helped her to survive the ordeal unlike her sister who died of the infections after the ceremony. At 13, she had her fill of all the traditions and decided to run away from home when her father announced the news of her impending marriage. A destiny’s child, Waris survived the tortuous journey through the desert after being nearly raped and killed by a Lion. Eventually she landed up at London as a maid and was discovered by a photographer named Terence Donovan to work for the Pirelli magazine with Naomi Campbell, then an upcoming model. Thus took off the spectacular modeling career of Waris who had her childhood in the desert of Somalia. In 1997, Waris left her flourishing modeling career and became an UN ambassador against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She started the Waris Dirie foundation in 2002 to create mass awareness against this tradition. Surprisingly, there are about 75000 victims of this evil practice in a country like Great Britain itself. Her book Desert Flower has been one of the best sellers and an eye opener to a different world hitherto unknown.
The life of Waris was a great stimulus for me at a very difficult time. It helped me to revitalize my dropping self esteem. My new found lust for life helped to endure and in healing my wounds faster than the expectations of my doctors. After almost two years, when I finally left the hospital in the summer of 2001, I felt much stronger and resolute to face the world. Much latter, one evening, I wrote an email to Waris lauding her grit and work and also about my experience in reading the Desert Flower. Waris replied back to me on 2nd June, 2006- Dear Kamaljit Medhi - Thank you for the encouraging words! Emails like your gives me the strength to keep up the fight! I am wondering if you saw my manifest, which can be signed online in my website. If you want to support my campaign, please
go ahead and sign it and spread the word about it to your friends. As soon as enough people sign up my manifest, I will confront the European Union and Governments with it.
Together we can change a lot! - Love, Waris
"A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us,
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter,
And that is life!"
- A poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
How do you envisage the life of a supermodel? The swanky lifestyle, the parties, the catwalk in posh and exquisite hotels! No, there is nothing of this sort in this book. Here Waris tells about her journey from the nomadic life in the desert of Somalia to the pages of the Vogue. It’s not a common rags to riches story. It is a saga of a determined woman who fights against all odds and prejudices to accomplish success and then her yearning to make the world free of all those which she underwent.
Waris grew up in the desert of Somalia in a nomadic family. The family lived in a tentlike domed hut woven from the grass of about two metres in diameter. Every morning, she used to take out the herds of sheep and goats for grazing, braving the wild animals like Lions and Hyenas. She grew up like the flowers which blossom in abundance after the first rain in the desert till the arrival of time for womanhood and face the gyspey woman for a ritual called infibulations- a practice widely followed amongst the Muslims of Africa.
Clutching a piece of root between her jaws, she laid on the rock, drenched in her own blood as the gypsey woman cut her genital and sewed with the thorns from an acacia tree. Her lust for life helped her to survive the ordeal unlike her sister who died of the infections after the ceremony. At 13, she had her fill of all the traditions and decided to run away from home when her father announced the news of her impending marriage. A destiny’s child, Waris survived the tortuous journey through the desert after being nearly raped and killed by a Lion. Eventually she landed up at London as a maid and was discovered by a photographer named Terence Donovan to work for the Pirelli magazine with Naomi Campbell, then an upcoming model. Thus took off the spectacular modeling career of Waris who had her childhood in the desert of Somalia. In 1997, Waris left her flourishing modeling career and became an UN ambassador against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She started the Waris Dirie foundation in 2002 to create mass awareness against this tradition. Surprisingly, there are about 75000 victims of this evil practice in a country like Great Britain itself. Her book Desert Flower has been one of the best sellers and an eye opener to a different world hitherto unknown.
The life of Waris was a great stimulus for me at a very difficult time. It helped me to revitalize my dropping self esteem. My new found lust for life helped to endure and in healing my wounds faster than the expectations of my doctors. After almost two years, when I finally left the hospital in the summer of 2001, I felt much stronger and resolute to face the world. Much latter, one evening, I wrote an email to Waris lauding her grit and work and also about my experience in reading the Desert Flower. Waris replied back to me on 2nd June, 2006- Dear Kamaljit Medhi - Thank you for the encouraging words! Emails like your gives me the strength to keep up the fight! I am wondering if you saw my manifest, which can be signed online in my website. If you want to support my campaign, please
go ahead and sign it and spread the word about it to your friends. As soon as enough people sign up my manifest, I will confront the European Union and Governments with it.
Together we can change a lot! - Love, Waris
"A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us,
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter,
And that is life!"
- A poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
