‘Viveka Babjee was sweet, adorable, loved cats!’

She spoke English with a quaint accent, this I will always remember. When I met Viveka Babajee in Mauritius, too long ago to tabulate (13-14 years ago perhaps) her accent was the first thing that struck me. Musical, the way the French speak, but then she was Mauritian, she said, with some Maharashtrian blood. I was there as part of a group of models, for a show event organiser Sharmila Khanna was choreographing.

And there we met Viveka, fabulous bone structure, sunny, vivacious, with that accent. We were all won over. Which is what makes her suicide, ostensibly from depression, so unbelievable, so unreal.

“I was the one who asked her to come to India to model,” Sharmila recounts. “I told her it would be tough, but it would be a great career.” And Viveka did come, just like that. Viveka’s rise was certain, with Sharmila introducing her around and the models making room for her, with warmth. In fact most of her contemporaries were bowled over by her sunny persona. “She was so happy, friendly,” model Nethra Raghuraman reminisces. “And funny, so funny.”

Nethra remembers Viveka always had a hard time remembering stage cues. “Why do they keep asking me if I know. Obviously, I don’t know!” she had giggled with Nethra backstage about her muddling up stage choreography. “I teased her so much later, because she became a choreographer,” Nethra says. “I asked Viveka, ‘Will you remember your own choreography?!”’ Viveka loved cats especially. “She was forever picking up cats,” recalls Nethra. “She owned 7-8, I remember! She was sweet and adorable and always laughing.”

Recalls former beauty queen Queenie Singh. “I first met her when she won Miss Mauritius… she was a gentle, affectionate girl.”

However, this happy-go-lucky model lost touch with the glamour world that embraced her so easily. “We connected when we met at parties, but not otherwise,” Nethra says. Sharmila adds, “I haven’t been in touch with her for five years now.” But Viveka  will be missed for she garnered much affection and popularity  in an industry used to showing its claws, more than its softer side.