Grace Undimmed

Athlete, beauty queen, actor, social activist, politician, army wife and doting mother. Nafisa Ali Sodhi is the original boss lady.

- Anindita Ghosh

It is late afternoon when I reach Nafisa Ali Sodhi’s home in Defence Colony, Delhi, and there is a somnolent heaviness in the summer air. I let myself in (there is no doorbell to announce my arrival) and find Ali Sodhi reposing on the sofa with a book. She looks relaxed and every bit as radiant as I had expected her to be, a head of grey hair and a few lines doing little to detract from her luminous beauty. There is no makeup on her face, her hair is tied in a casual updo, and the overall atmosphere is happy and laidback. “I never go to the beauty parlour. I have never had facials, pedicures, manicures… nothing. I just massage my face with cream after I bathe and that is it,” says the legendary beauty, who was crowned Femina Miss India in 1976 and was second runner-up at Miss International in 1977. “I have always been fit and athletic, but now that I have got thyroid, I have become fat and I feel bad about it.”

Champion’s league

Ali Sodhi is far from fat, but we must remember that she was an accomplished sportsperson, and her standards of fitness are very different. Born in Kolkata on January 18, 1957, to renowned photographer Ahmed Ali and Philomena Torresan, she was an outstanding athlete in school, who went on to become West Bengal’s swimming sensation in the early Seventies and a national swimming champion in 1974. Ali Sodhi was also a jockey for a while at the Calcutta Gymkhana in 1979. “I had an idyllic childhood in Kolkata. We used to stay in a lovely colonial bungalow on Jhowtala Road. I learnt swimming when I was very young. I used to be called the ‘sizzling water baby’ in those days because I would win all the swimming championships.”

Natural star