All roads lead to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport tonight. Manushi Chhillar, 20, who put India back on the global map of beauty pageants, is returning home with the Miss World 2017 crown. And reports are that the medical student from Haryana will be felicitated with a heroine’s welcome at the airport before she is whisked off to the St. Regis Hotel in Lower Parel which will be the Miss World HQ until Monday.
Manushi, who tweeted “I am so happy that I have done my nation proud and I am very excited to begin a new journey”, got India the Miss World title 17 years after Priyanka Chopra sensationally won it last in 2000. She defeated 108 women across the world to become the sixth Indian woman to win the Miss World title. The other four include Reita Faria (1966), Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (1994), Diana Haydon (1997) and Yukta Mookhey (1999).
https://twitter.com/ManushiChhillar/status/933974587628404736
She has a packed schedule tomorrow. Manushi has meetings lined up at the St. Regis with her fashion director to decide all her homecoming engagement fittings in the morning. After lunch, a tentative activity has been lined up at the Bombay Gym at which the Miss World will pay tribute to victims of 26/11 at a solemn ceremony. There are other private meetings being hastily chalked up for her in the hotel itself so that she does not tire herself out crisscrossing the city.
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Monday will begin the actual ‘Homecoming’ celebrations for Manushi. After a long session with her hair and makeup artistes, she will do one-on-one interviews with editors of leading newspapers, channels and online platforms. These will continue after lunch. A general press conference to which all media in Mumbai has been invited will be held in the evening. Then Manushi will retire to her room, rest, be restored by the hair stylist and makeup person, and step out quite the Belle of the Ball for a party hosted by the Miss India organisers at the St. Regis ballroom.
Hints are that the Miss World 2017 may attend the eight Global Entrepreneurship Summit being held at Hyderabad on Tuesday by India and the US. The American delegation is being led by US Presidential Advisor Ivanka Trump. This year’s summit will highlight the theme ‘Women First, Prosperity for All’. Manushi is expected to address the gathering of emerging entrepreneurs, investors and supporters from around the world on the importance of supporting women entrepreneurs and fostering economic growth globally.
From Hyderabad, where she is also likely to address the press, the Miss World 2017 will return to Mumbai and on Wednesday fly to Delhi in the morning. There will be another grand reception waiting for her at the Indira Gandhi International Airport and then a Homecoming Parade at the Defence Research and Development Organisation. Manushi will spend the day doing another round of interviews with the media at the Taj Mahal Hotel. The next couple of days will fly past in a whirl of activity among which will be a reception hosted by Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar at the state-run Kurukshetra Mahotsav and a felicitation at her Bhagat Phool Singh Government Medical College for Women in Sonepat. But undoubtedly the icing on the cake will be the party organised in her honour on Friday, December 1, by Filmfare in which Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar will be introduced to Bollywood!
