In another couple of weeks, the media and the fashion industry will move on to a fresh face and figure, which has to be pummelled, poked and re-invented into the next new glamor goddess. There was real excitement when it happened for the first time. When Sen, the daughter of an armed forces officer, and from an ordinary Delhi suburban colony, clapped her hands to her mouth in joyous ecstasy in Manila, the image sizzled off television screens into the staid Indian consciousness, and changed it forever. In a country where beauty has traditionally been put on a pedestal and worshipped from afar but aroused great unease from up close, Sen's victory was an assertion of a new confidence among Indian youth about the body - about having it, and flaunting it. The sheen of respectability became the basis for what is now indeed big business.
Television shows trawling metropolitan India for local beauties became roaringly popular.
The biggest social impact they had was to remove the tag of tawdriness from all things related to modelling, and beauty contests. It became cool to enter contests where one had to reel off bodily vital statistics to a row of judges comprising models, designers, film stars. It was not long before the winner was invited to join the judges' row herself. By now, India's beauty industry has turned out two more Miss Worlds - Diana Hayden and Yukta Mookhey. Another supermodel, Madhu Sapre, nearly won, but her jaw was too square, and her accent was not quite the thing.