Mumbai slum girl Maleesha Kharwa transforms into teenage model. Three years ago, a curious American tourist encountered a small, cheerful girl while exploring a Mumbai waterfront slum.
Maleesha Kharwa, now 15, is still diminutive and has the same endearing smile. Her family still lives in a hutment on a shoreline littered with trash. They also rent a one-room apartment nearby that has a toilet and running water.
A high-end Indian cosmetics company Forest Essentials chose Maleesha. They want her to represent its Yuvati campaign which honors young Indian women.
Before that, she posted a photo of the cover of Cosmopolitan India, which read, “Guts! Guts! Guts!”
Maleesha intends to focus on her studies until she graduates from high school. But she hopes that these accomplishments will serve as a launching pad for a career as a model or dancer.
Maleesha told a Reuters photographer at her home, which was lined with walls covered in posters, “I feel good because I look different on camera and in real life.”
“More people are now recognizing me and taking pictures. She continued “I feel very proud of myself at that moment, but some days I feel people take too many pictures.
Her story has been compared to the Mumbai-based, Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire.
Her success also illustrates how attitudes are slowly shifting. She belongs to a nation where Bollywood movies, popular culture, and advertising promote fair skin as the ideal of beauty.
When American actor and choreographer Robert Hoffman posted videos of his time with a girl and her family on YouTube and Instagram in 2020, Forest Essentials must have observed something similar to what Hoffman did.
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Maleesha is cheeky and polite, but her voice, which is bursting with joy as she speaks, belies the hardship she has experienced. Her mother passed away when she was very young, leaving her father to juggle his day job while raising two children.
Hoffman assisted her in starting a “Go Fund Me” campaign because he was aware of the Internet’s potential.
Since then, Maleesha has developed a following on social media and occasionally refers to herself as “the princess from the slum.” Her Instagram account currently has 367,000 followers, and that number is growing.