Bear hug: Delphine Marbaniang, the contestant from Shillong at the pageant, visits a Calcutta store on Thursday. Picture by Pabitra Das

Calcutta, May 26: One of Delphine Marbaniang?s earliest memories is of strutting down the passage between her bed and the dressing table mirror wearing her mother?s oversized heels. As the petite beauty from Shillong practised her dance moves at a Calcutta club on the eve of the Vatika Honey and Saffron Soap Sananda Tillotama beauty pageant today, she looked every bit the winner already.

Delphine, along with four other girls from the region, have been in Calcutta for the past one month, adhering to a rigorous schedule of ramp walk, dance and grooming.

The Northeast will make its presence felt for the first time at the Sananda Tillotama contest, 10 years after it came into existence.

Rochelle Zochuani Darkin, a contestant from Mizoram, can hardly believe her luck. As an event manager based in Guwahati, the glamour world is not new to her. But the elaborate grooming programme organised by the Sananda Tillotama contest organisers has left even the seasoned manager awestruck. ?Beauty pageants are also very popular back home. But none of the organisers bother to put together such an elaborate grooming session,? says Rochelle.

If ?beauty with brains? is what the organisers are looking for, Zodiki Darkin believes all the girls are queens in their own right already.

A student of Class XII, Zodiki intends to concentrate on her studies, and dabble in modelling as and when opportunities come by. Delphine?s interest in the glamour world is more than a just a hobby. With two pageant titles, Miss Shillong and Miss Scotland of the East, already under her belt, Delphine harbours the ambition of making it big on the national fashion scene. A management aspirant, this girl from Shillong hopes to mix business with her passion for fashion.

While home beckons, an innate sense of fashion, the determination to succeed and a lack of opportunities in their home states have pushed these girls to Calcutta. And this is just the beginning.

If the region?s models are making forays into the Calcutta modelling scene, so is their culture.

The choreography for the big night is a combination of moves picked up from Manipuri dance and the traditional Manipuri martial arts form, Thang ta. Choreographer Sukalyan Bhattacharya, who wanted the dance to be perfect to the last detail, has even imported traditional swords required for Thang ta from Manipur.

An exponent of Manipuri dance with schools in Toronto, New Jersey, New York and Atlanta, Bhattacharya sees great potential in Delphine. While all the participants are working hard to get the moves right, the girls from the Northeast, including Bharati Hazarika and Priyanka Laurembaum, certainly have the edge over their Calcutta counterparts when it comes to grace.

Grooming expert and model Noyonika Chatterjee couldn?t agree more. Grace and style come to them naturally, says Noyonika, as she readies to give catwalk tips to the contestants. While she admits that the height of girls from this part of the region is a problem, nothing can beat grit and hard work.

As the five girls prepare for the final night, the Northeast will spend a night praying for their queens.