There is a proliferation of brands-many of them a new breed of retailers on the internet-that now cater to the large and underserved category of large-bodied men and women. For in the last four years, Rajat has managed to become a model in a marginal but new segment of fashion in India-the plus size.įashion, it seems, is becoming accessible. Rather, it appears, he is just the right overweight. Today he weighs 120 kg and has a waist size of 42 inches.īut Rajat is far from being too overweight to become a model. And in the next few years, he began to pile on more weight. But there was some truth to what the model had told him. Rajat let that comment pass and moved on. But that was a little odd, I felt,” he says. But the model only glanced at him and said what surprisingly no one had ever told him before: “You are too overweight to be a model”. He asked him, Rajat says, how he should start his career. Rajat managed to make his way backstage, where he found what he was looking for-a model.
A college festival was taking place in Delhi, and there was a fashion show by professional models as one segment. It was only in college that he first got the opportunity to ask someone from the industry for some tips.
Over the years, as relatives, struck by his growth spurt (Rajat is now six foot one inch tall), began to comment that he should think of pursuing modelling as a career, as college friends impressed by his sharp and clear facial features began to make similar suggestions, and he himself began to idolise the model-actor John Abraham, working out in a gym and at one point developing “four packs”, doing the usual routine of participating in auditions for commercials and TV shows, and once even coming close to joining a grooming school for aspiring models, Rajat began to fancy himself in the fashion world. Rajat speaks of that early memory with a deep fondness. And, as he would make the exaggerated twirl of runway models, his father, Rajat remembers, would break out into the words, “ Arre, mera beta model hai.” He would have his parents sit in the living room and then, as the TV crackled with the noise of a distant fashion show and his indulgent parents applauded him, the little boy would walk with the swagger and icy strut of a supermodel, one long stride after another, pushing his hips out, walking to and fro in the living room of this middle-class Delhi apartment as though it were the ramp at the Milan Fashion Week. Several years ago, when the channel Fashion TV first began to beam into the Khanna household in Delhi, Rajat, then just a boy of about six years, developed an odd habit.
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