Photographs by Saajid Husani
National Director of three pageants: Miss and Mrs India Guyana and Miss Global International, Hashim Alli finally sat down with The Scene to speak of his passion for entertainment and culture and his journey from reserved to where he is today.
Hashim’s academic life began at Prospect Nursery School and continued with him attending Eccles Primary, Richard Ishmael Secondary and the Cambridge University. As a boy, Hashim was an introvert and part of a close-knit family for whom attending mosque was a huge part of life. He is still a devout Muslim and with Ramadan having just commenced, is currently fasting. His rare involvement in school activities was confined to a handful of spelling bees and the Christmas concert during his time at primary school. He went on to become the head of the Indian Society in secondary school never at all imagining that it would be the first of many to come.
Having grown up in Little Diamond, Hashim would accompany friends from his village to dance rehearsals looking on as they practiced. Whether he secretly desired to be among them onstage he never said. However, one day when one of the dancers didn’t show he was asked to fill in. His friends and the choreographer were so delighted with his performance that he was encouraged to take up dancing and so he did. Being shy, dancing was a huge accomplishment for him. It allowed him to better express himself and aided in him becoming a more social and disciplined individual. He was the first one in his family to take up the art form.
Hashim was expected by his family to someday work at a prestigious business firm, which he did follow through with and is a manager with Massy Distributions Inc. He had been dead set on becoming a flight attendant, but never followed through with it though he didn’t share the reason for not doing so. He did confide though that he believes it was all for the best as he finds that he always gets sleepy on flights and would end up napping through most of them, even the 45-minute flight to Trinidad.
Hashim made his debut with the Sitare Dance Troupe led by popular television personality Dimple Mendonca, performing across Guyana and the Caribbean. In 2004, he decided to join another league of the industry and manage his own television shows. “The Blue Jeans Unit” and later “Rhythm Blast” were designed to showcase and promote local talent.
In 2007, he added drama to his list of talents when he played the lead role as ‘Prem’ in a dance drama titled “Not Just Another Indian Movie – Prem and I”. Hashim went on to act in Murder at Giuseppe’s, directed by Gem Madhoo-Nascimento; The Parika Market Starboy and Dancing Bells of Rekha, both directed by Ramesh Deochand of the Nirvana Humanitarian Society.
In 2008, Hashim took a break from his television profession to focus on his marketing career but his love for the arts brought him right back to entertainment when his Rakhi sister, Devi Ramcharitar, decided to enter the Miss Guyana Sari Pageant; this would mark the beginning for him in pageantry.
“… I worked closely with Devi who would go on to finish as the queen. I read a bit about the Miss Diwali Pageant and abstracted what I thought was the important aspects of the pageant and had her work on those areas,” Hashim recalled. “She excelled in poise and elegance when displaying her sari. She came to me and said she was interested in doing the pageant. It can be a little clichéd to say that maybe she was looking at the prize because the return of the pageant saw the winner’s prize as a brand-new car. It was huge for a little country girl who was raised by a single mom. After that I got involved with the Miss India Guyana Pageant.”
The Miss India Guyana Pageant was directed Apsara Entertainment from 2009-2015 and under the Miss India Guyana Organization which was spearheaded by Uma Bux from 2016-2017. In 2011, Hashim acted as the manager for Shivanie Latchman who was contesting the competition that year. He directed and choreographed her talent piece, which saw her being awarded ‘Best Talent’. Getting involved with the dancing industry again, Hashim became a member of the Apsara Group which exposed him to a wider market and allowed him to work closely with the Miss India Guyana contestants. He also attended the Miss India Worldwide 2013 Pageant in Malaysia.
With a whole new perspective of the pageant industry, Hashim decided to get more involved in pageantry and was awarded the National Director for the Miss Global International Franchise in 2014, which he ran along with his wife, Melicia, of Nachle Designs. That year Guyana’s representative, Onesha Hutson, finished in the top five of the international leg of the pageant and walked away with the ‘Best Smile’ award.
The following year, Alicia Bess represented Guyana finishing as 2nd runner-up. In 2016, Poonam Singh was awarded 1st runner-up and carted off five other awards. 2017 saw Cynthia Dookie being crowned the local queen. Cynthia had said she felt as if all eyes were on her and with Poonam gaining just a place away from the crown, she knew she was expected to bring the crown back. She did and was also awarded the most prestigious award of the pageant, ‘Miss Most Aware’.
“Miss Global International was quite a risk because it was completely out of my comfort zone. It was completely out of culture; it was completely out of what I was exposed to and was very challenging but what stood out to me and encouraged me and allowed me to overcome that challenge was the fact that the pageant was based on tourism,” Hashim said. “Their aim is to unite the world through beauty and tourism. That was what really captivated me because I believe that Guyana has a whole lot of tourism activities and much to offer when it comes to culture. I used this as my motivating factor to basically take up the challenge.”
A life of a pageant director in the whole, Hashim said, is challenging as it relates to pulling off a production and more so as it regards sponsorship.
Miss World Guyana 2017, Vena Mookram was another one of the persons Hashim would have worked along with also. It was a shy Vena who went to Hashim and having been an introvert himself in his earlier years, he had a fair idea of what it took to build someone’s level of confidence. Hashim admitted to sometimes getting stern with Vena, which would have caused many heated arguments but in the end, she was very grateful.
Hashim said, “…It’s definitely not an easy task. I would tell any girl who wants to be involved in pageantry they need to multiply their normal daily duties by five times and that is the impact and time they would need to bring towards pageantry because it’s definitely a challenging journey. A girl entering a pageant needs to learn to manage her time and know how to multitask and direct her energies towards her goal. Your goal is not always to win a prize or not always to win a title but what your goal should be is to see yourself developing.
I always use Vena as a solid example. Vena was quite introverted as a kid. She would go to school, come back home and stay in her room studying. She won’t socialize much. Vena is a family friend so we’d sometimes visit for social events and Vena would be by herself and you won’t hear her speak.
“One day she called me and said I’m doing Miss World Guyana and I was shocked. I asked why it was she wanted to do this, and she said she wanted to become a better version of herself. Prior to this she had become a dancer with Apsara, so she was already testing the waters. Yet when she told me what she wanted to do, I thought it was a big move for her. It goes to show when you really want something and you work towards it, anything is possible. She had many breakdown nights, but she was determined.
“I will have to say that all of this wouldn’t have been accomplished without the support dedication of our pageant coach, Alicia Bess. She worked hand in hand with me… I would say Alicia Bess is Guyana’s best pageant coach. [She] has a book of pageant-related questions which she asks the contestants at point during the rehearsals, which at first catches them unprepared but of course which prepares them for the Intelligence Segment.
“Going back to the young ladies contesting these pageants… People think that a young woman wakes up and suddenly decides she wants to do a pageant, but it is being ready. A pageant needs maturity and a lot of dedication. Basically, it takes a lot of you and if you haven’t figured out who you are then it’s going to be much harder for you to show the audience that side of you because it does not exist.”
He went on to say that while a girl should know what she wants in life she doesn’t have to be perfect to enter a pageant. Even if she doesn’t win the title or a prize, she is never the same after that. The knowledge she takes away, along with a higher self-esteem, he said, is a more than worth it. These are the benefits that find women participating again and again.
Hashim and National Director of Miss World Guyana, Natasha Martindale along with other directors of the various pageants in Guyana are now looking to form a Pageant Society in Guyana. The society’s main objective is to govern the operations of pageant productions and the process. It will be transparent so that each franchise that is involved will be able to sensitize the public as to the core values, aim and mission of a pageant. One of the strongest effects of the pageant society will be to protect the contestants and their rights.
Hashim mentioned that he and his wife have been talking about having a pageant school in the near future. For now, they are looking to have classes after work hours, working with contestants on their etiquette skills, public speaking, their poise and talent and everything else that pageantry entails. He believes the reason particular countries are walking away with the international titles is because they have been preparing for pageantry most of their lives. In particular, many of the Venezuelan participants have gone on to win international titles.
Pageantry he noted, affords any country more on tourism and marketing for their resources.
Hashim is dedicated to improving pageantry in Guyana.
His free time finds him with his wife, Mel and their son Zayid or reading, editing music, graphic designing and having fun doing anything outdoors.
He loves to eat pasta, grilled meat, and chicken curry.
Hashim can be followed on Facebook at Hashim Alli or Miss & Mrs India Worldwide Guyana.
