The Beauty Queen

"Silence.................. Silence"

A woman in her late 30's was addressing an audience of a couple of thousands. The popular beauty queen contest that was conducted in the Rani Women's college was an important event for many young girls in that college. Few participants also came from other colleges in that area.

"Today we will be announcing the results of our beauty queen contest. We have had five rounds in this contest before deciding who will be the best beauty for this year"

With a brief pause..

"As you must be aware of, one participant Vindhiya, a student of our college who may have won any of the top 3 prizes, failed to attend the last round that was conducted yesterday. She managed to reach the final round comprising of only five, of the total 32 participants of this contest. We regret for excluding her from the contest as she could not complete the final round"

"Now the results...This year's third prize goes to Madhu.."

There is a brief applause. The audience felt Madhu was not even as beautiful as last year's consolation prize winners

"The second prize goes to Rohini.." There was a stronger applause.

Latha, one of the participants was tensed whether she might win the first prize or not. Vindhiya, the girl who was missing, may have won the first prize if she was present. Both Rohini and Madhu didn't seem to be much better than Latha so in all probability latha could win now. Who could be more threatening than Vindhiya for Latha? Latha was the leader of her class. Vindhiya a student of the same class was a newcomer who never seemed to care about Latha, the Latha who was admired by all the class students for the last couple of years. The students all liked her talents and her beauty. They have raised to her such a level that she felt threatened and humiliated if she was ignored. Some people have started to say this newcomer Vindhiya is fairer than Latha. Possibly she is intelligent too, were few of the remarks. Recently someone even said "With the beauty queen contest we will know who is more beautiful. I heard they also check the intellect of the participants when deciding the winner". These words were like hell for Latha. Could these same people who praised her be so cruel now? Did she ask these people for the recognition that she has now? It’s like taking you to a high position and pushing from there. Just a few days before Vindhiya joined it all seemed like heaven for Latha. Even people she never met before in her college seemed to know her as they approached and spoke to her with smiles in their faces. What caused people to show so much hatred as much as they loved and praised her so generously earlier?

But Latha could not tolerate this anymore. She decided to end it all. Already some rounds of the beauty contest were over. She can't delay this any further. Maybe if she gets this girl Vindhiya out of this contest she could put a full stop to this hell. Vindhiya, a few days back, when she didn't attend the classes for a day, told the teacher in front of the students that her father suffered from some heath problems and that she had to be with him the other day. With this is mind Latha went to a public telephone booth and with a toned down voice, mimicking someone, made a call to Vindhiya saying her father was in a Bad condition. Vindhiya's father who lived in the adjacent city for reasons of Business, generally used to come twice in a week to visit his daughter. Vindhiya without thinking for a second had to rush now after hearing the news. She took her car and went ahead. But Latha did something more. She disconnected the wires from the car break mechanism so it would fail. She didn't know or care if this was ethically right or wrong and did this in a detached manner as if she had no conscience, just like a robot that had no reasoning power or didn't wanted one. What could be good or bad, there could be only action or no action and ethical or moral interpretation was subjective wasn't it?

"The first prize goes to Latha.." announced the contest organizer

"I have to mention Latha scored the highest in all the five rounds and by a wide margin was ahead of all others. At the third and fourth rounds we were sure she would end up the winner of our contest"

The applause lasted for half a minute. Latha herself was rather calm and had a bare smile in her face. She was unsure and puzzled not knowing what to say. She felt like wanting to restrain the full expression of her happiness. She didn't want any glory now as she had unnecessarily undervalued herself and hurt an innocent person. She could not hear the applause of the people now as it appeared to be more humiliating than appreciative. Does she deserve all the applause?

The audience cheered as Latha received the prize, a highly decorated crown, made of part gold and part other metals. As Latha received it she looked at the doorway and there was a familiar looking figure. It was Vindhiya, with bandage in her hands and legs!. Next to her was her father and just behind her were some policemen. Apparently someone from the college had seen Latha in the public phone booth at 11.30 am in the morning, the same time when Vindhiya received the telephone call. Vindhiya has also admitted that the voice on the phone resembled Latha's voice. The police have good reasons now to suspect Latha considering the conflict between these two. Amidst so many people, the police start moving towards the stage to arrest Latha, the beauty queen of this year, as she falls down on the stage unconscious unable to bear it all