By Dr. Satish C. Aikant
It is a flashback to the 1980s. Pamella Bordes (nee Choudhury) was all set for her exploits in the continent of Don Juan, beating the French at their own Parisian games, albeit after giving her name a French savour by inserting an extra ‘l’ to Pamela and adding a surname Bordes, to boot, courtesy of her husband of three months duration. But that is as long as a marriage of convenience would last. She might have found her name as sonorous as Lolita, but schooled herself in more diverse ways than Nabokov would have ever imagined. It was a homage to the body beautiful. With enough arsenal at her command, she began her conquests far away from the prying prudery of her own people. In her own inimitable fashion, she got into the swing of the British society long thought of as an impregnable bastion of morality and social mores, and set about to exploit its seamy side.
After being crowned Miss India in 1982, the aspiring model arrived in New York where she is said to have made contacts with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the Emir of Qatar – wealthy men who reportedly vied for her attention. Those who know recall that she met Khashoggi through the controversial Indian godman Chandraswami, Khashoggi’s one-time guru.
Pamella’s rise in London’s social circuit had been nothing short of meteoric. It was a brain drain of sorts. Let us not think it is only our scientists who feel constricted working in India, and would avail of better facilities abroad. Nor are the brains a prerogative of scientists and computer whizz kids alone. Beauty can lay an equal claim to it. Come to think of it who else but the bewitching Pamella would have so cleverly operated in the crème da la crème of British society with such finesse. India gave her the Miss India crown, but that was all as far as her pickings in the subcontinent go. The greener pastures beckoned from abroad where she could abandon herself and wallow in her voluptuousness, wearing glittering paraphernalia and expensive clothes with money talking through every seam, all the while keeping up a respectable façade, even wangling a House of Commons pass from a Tory MP for some ostensible research work, a cover for her scandalous exploits which could have worrying security implications. Never mind if her peccadilloes couldn’t long remain hidden from the public view. British tabloids have a way of their own in digging up the private lives of the public men (and women) and cater to an inquisitive readership for their staple diet of lurid scandals. So, the irrepressible ‘Sun’ of the British empire snooped on Pamella’s unsuspecting lovers. A theory also went around that it was Pamella who engineered the tabloid blitz to make a quick buck.
The list of the lady’s lovers was a legion, from the cabinet ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s government and newspaper barons to the virile Libyan characters. In her promiscuity she leaves the other queen Christine Keeler of John Profumo (ill) fame a shade behind. This was on her own admission. She must have enjoyed the discomfiture of those elite political big wigs, even cocking a snook at them with her provocative bare all insinuations for a million-pound fee, that could make the Thatcher government crumble like a house of cards. What a seductive saboteur from the exotic East ! Whoever said woman was a weaker sex must be living in a fool’s paradise. Let it be known that the scruffy girl has arrived and made her mark, enough to send jitters across the prim social circles. Call Pamella what you will but at least give her credit for her formidable potential. If Helen of Troy could launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Ilium, why, our own femme fatale could set the Thames afire. Helen was a legendary beauty, but Pamella is a contemporary phenomenon. Is it life triumphing over art, or maybe it is the glitzy and murky social media world that scores over both life and art. Will our Netflix debutantes take the cue? Or are they already waiting in the wings?
Where is Pamella now? From leading the life of a society girl, the sultry Indian beauty reportedly fled to Bali, the erstwhile haven for hippies and flower power generation. Thereafter the media stopped reporting on her. Understandably she withdrew into herself keeping away from the unstoppable paparazzi and the intrusive public glare as did Greta Garbo though the latter was in an entirely different league. Common to them is an inscrutable silence which is tantalising in itself.
(The author is former Professor and Head of the Department of English, H.N.B.Garhwal University and former Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla)
