Tanaya Shah shed her burqa, changed into something like a wisp of a panty and became a supermodel. That’s the story. Well, almost. Kavita Daswani’s Salaam, Paris reads like a Cinderella tale. At least Cinderella had two stepsisters who offered some sinister possibilities. In this Mumbai-Paris saga, Tanaya Shah is a winner from the moment she leaves her mother’s womb.

She is the apple of everyone’s eye and she has the famous “Shah beauty” genes in her. She has good food (goat simmered in tomatoes and saffron rice if you may), good friends and a good education. All this under the orthodox eyes of her ‘Nana’, who wouldn’t let her use a public bus to school for fear of “body-grazing” and “flesh-pinching”.

Everything is conservatively fine, until one day Tanaya rents the DVD of Sabrina and wants to live the life of Audrey Hepburn in Paris. Of course she makes it to the fashion capital and makes it real big. The only worry is that her family disowns her once the ramp discovers her curves.

Kavita Daswani has been a fashion correspondent and a fashion editor and she knows the industry inside out. She is also familiar with many fashion fallouts. For instance, she knows that the poodle the model carries on the ramp might pee in her hand, and that a successful model has to be involved in a PR-managed “relationship” with an A-list hottie to stay in the limelight.

It is interesting to take a peep into a Paris model’s life, who shares a room with three girls, where the rules read— “No men overnight.” But it is hard to believe that Elle and Vogue would wait at Tanya’s door just because she is a Muslim and has a pretty face. Daswani makes her protagonist so stunning that catwalk is a cakewalk for her.

There is also an obvious effort by the author to portray Tanaya as an ideal package of beauty and virtues. The 19-year-old doesn’t mind stripping to her bare minimum for the camera, but “saves” herself for the wedding night.

Everything is so perfect that there is no scope for surprise. And it is this fairytale quality of Salaam, Paris that forces you to put it in the ‘casual-read’ bracket. You know that Tanaya will turn heads wherever she goes. and Playboy can’t be blamed if it is charmed by Tanaya. But as expected, she turns her back on centre-spread nudity. She is a well-bred Indian you see. Salaam, Paris would have been interesting had Kavita Daswani bothered to look beyond Tanaya’s vital statistics.

Salaam, Paris
Kavita Daswani
Penguin Books
Pages: 218, Price: Rs 225