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Proud parents Rupal and Karan Kohli looked on as their daughter Karina Kohli, 18, a student of acting at New York University, was crowned Miss India USA 2015, at the Dec. 6 pageant held at Royal Albert’s Palace, Fords, New Jersey.
Close to 500 guests and family members of the contestants attended the 34th annual pageant organized by the India Festival Committee, where apart from Kohli, another 54 contestants took part, a record according to organizers.
Aanchal Shah, 16, from Florida was crowned Miss Teen India USA from among seventeen contestants for this position; Neha Multani Verma, 29, a real estate executive from New York, was crowned the Second Mrs. India USA in the same pageant.
Kohli, who was born in New York and brought up in Chicago, told Desi Talk she switched from wanting to study marketing to acting just this summer after attending a rigorous five-week acting program at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City. A classical Bharat Natyam dancer since she was 5, Kohli is far from stage-shy so it was almost natural for her to change tracks. Last year, she placed 1st Runner-up at the Shakespeare competition in Chicago organized by the English Speaking Union of the United States, where she did a monologue from the play The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and a sonnet.
She is now a student at the Atlantic Acting School in downtown Manhattan.
Her biggest influence in life are her hardworking parents, a beautician mother and a businessman father, she says. She loves reading plays and one of her favorite playwrights is Annie Baker whose “The Flick” won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. Kohli recently read “Ruined” by Lynn Nottage, which she describes as a “very, very strong and powerful story.” She loves Thai food because her the family celebrated important occasions by eating at a Thai restaurant, and of course, the Punjabi food she was brought up on.
Her musical tastes are strongly Indian. “I am a diehard Bollywood fan,” she said, though she listens to other genres depending on her mood, country, Pop, reggae. But for her exercise regime she strictly listens to “very fast salsa.”
Kohli will be representing the U.S. at the 25th Annual Miss India Worldwide pageant in September next year, also organized by IFC, Dharmatma Saran, founder and organizer of that pageants, told Desi Talk. Founded in 1974, the IFC began with staging fashion shows in Central Park. “In 1974, we started holding fashion shows in Central Park, and those used to attract 10,000 visitors, a good number of them non-Indians. So we decided it was a good idea to get into pageants, which we began to hold from 1980,” he said.
Other winners included Nandini Iyer, 27, of New Jersey and Visakha Sundar, 21, of Virginia, first and second runners up respectively for the Miss India USA 2015, from among 20 contestants. The other two finalists were Karishma Malhotra from New York and Nicky Kandola from Virginia.
In the Teen category in which seventeen participants contested, the first runner up was Akila Narayanan, 17, from Massachusetts and the second runner up was Rhea Manjrekar 16, from New York. The other two finalists were Manjari Parikh from New York and Shirin Bakre from Massachusetts. In other categories within the Teen section, Parikh was crowned Miss Talented, Aanchal Shah – Miss Congeniality, Akila Narayanan – Miss Social Media and Simran Kota – Miss Photogenic.
In the “Mrs.” category, the first runner up was Sheetal Kelkar, 36, from New Hampshire and the Aradhana Thawani Padilla, 24, from Texas took the second runners up position. The other two in the top five were Radhika Treon from Massachusetts and Protyusha DasNeogi from Washington State. The sub-contest winners in the Mrs. Section were Chhavi Gupta as Mrs. Congeniality, Aradhana Thawani – Mrs. Photogenic and Pavana Gadde – Mrs. Social Media.
Winners of the other various sub-contests were Miss Congeniality – Visakha Sundar, Miss Social Media – Nandini Iyer, Miss Photogenic – Akshaya Vijaykumar, Miss Bollywood Divya – Spoorthy Bharadwaj, Miss Catwalk – Ishpreet Gill, Miss Beautiful Hair – Aishwarya Balaji, Miss Beautiful Smile – Karishma Malhotra, Miss Popularity – Nandini Iyer, Miss Beautiful Eyes – Anita Ganesan, Miss Beautiful Skin – Piyali Nath.
The panel of judges included Raissa Nagapin, national director of Miss India Guadelope, Chandra Mouli, film producer, Neetu Thomas , a fashion designer, Subbu Sundaravelu, director of SAP Managed Services at ProMorphics LLC, and Ines Hernandez, a fashion designer and political activist.
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