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Past closed chapter for Pamela
By Nedra Wickremesinghe


*Pamela then (right) and now*

She introduced herself as Pamela Singh at the celebrity event she attended in Colombo earlier this month, posing for fashion photographers with easy elegance.

It was only later examining her photograph that it struck me that Pamela Singh, photographer and artiste visiting Sri Lanka on a holiday cum study tour was in fact Pamela Bordes. Pamela Bordes was the Indian beauty who won the Miss India title in 1982 and then went on to hit the headlines through her intimate links with British MPs and Fleet Street editors.

The media hounded Bordes and as new revelations emerged each day, the British press was relentless in the pursuit of the ‘Christine Keeler of the ’80s’. When she could no longer take the intrusion and invasion into her private life, the Indian beauty went into self-imposed exile and emerged later as Pamela Singh, professional photographer.

Her career as a serious photographer has seen her travel the world, working in Southern and Eastern Africa. She also studied architectural design at the Parsons School of Design in New York and later economics and international relations in Paris.

Talking to The Sunday Times, just before she left the island, she made it obvious that the past was a closed chapter. She lives both in New York and Jaipur and now specializes in art design.

Her work is mainly in mixed media, and she switches from photography to painting and sculpture. She works on her own, she says, and her much-sought after designs are supplied to well known boutiques in New York. ‘Art pieces’ is how she describes her work, which comes in many forms, furnishings, fabrics, jewellery and clothes.

An interest in architectural design was what brought her to Sri Lanka, seven years after her last visit. “I am fascinated by the work of the late Geoffrey Bawa,” she says adding that the legendary architect’s use of light, space and the outdoors equals the best in the world.

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