Gladrags chooses "mama"

From being a full-time mama who filled the house with very practical toys for her 10-month-old son (as he’d grow out of them) every time she went on an errand to a ramp scorcher is quite a change for Jaysheel Anand. The Bengaluru girl won the title of first runner-up at the Gladrags Mrs India contest and it has been a roller coaster these past few weeks. Kavita Sachdev from Mumbai was crowned Gladrags Mrs India while Karishma R Mookhey came third.
Originally from Mangalore, Jaysheel worked at Dell before motherhood changed everything. “Never in the history of the contest has a woman with a baby less than a year-old come in the first three!” she recalls. Tall, lissome, fair and completely bindaas, even as Jay (as she is fondly called) takes it all in, it’s hard to believe that she has a nine-month-old son!
“After I had Dhruv, I kept asking myself many questions and battling different thoughts, I realised that life would be different as a mother and wondered what next? I decided that a platform like the contest would give me a sense of purpose. I was anyway on a sabbatical so I started working at it with my actual target being contesting in 2010. I took six months to loose 23 extra kilos!” she reveals.
This was about the same time that the Gladrags auditions were taking place. “My husband, Vinay was very insistent on applying this year. He even downloaded the forms and the rest is history,” she says.
From 1,200 girls, Jay was among the 20 chosen and the only South Indian entry. “There are very few finalists from South India and it would be great to see more girls from this part of India compete. The show was in the format of a reality TV series that took all the girls through some serious rigours. Workouts, speeches, confidence, discipline, fashion, camaraderie and lots more,” she pipes.
Calling Maureen Wadia a power house, she feels that the contest is a true platform for the complete woman as it is much more difficult for a mother to get away from daily demands and do something like this. “You feel more confident and fulfilled. After a baby, most women start to compromise as life changes,” she adds.
And having a husband who egged her on and a family that supported her helped though the two months she was away from her baby.
“Once you decide on something, solutions appear automatically. You just need to identify what you want,” says the pretty lass, adding. “In the 28 years of my life, going away from my son was the toughest decision.”