Dressed in a traditional Indian dance costume, her face painted and feet bare, four-year-old Avanti was part of a tribal Lambadi dance performance. Among the dozens of schoolchildren present, it was little Avanti who captured the Princess’s heart. As soon as she noticed the child sitting on the ground after the performance, Diana walked down from the stage, picked her up, and gently cradled her on her knee, an image that would later become one of the most iconic photographs from the royal tour.
“I don’t have a daughter, so today you are my daughter,” Diana told her.
Those words Avanti remembers vividly, even decades later. The Princess, moved by the child's innocence and charm, refused to let her go, choosing to keep her close throughout the visit. When she noticed Avanti had a cold, she wiped the child's nose with her own handkerchief ; a simple, maternal gesture that embodied Diana’s deeply empathetic nature.
That moment sparked a bond that continued even after the royal had left India. Diana and Avanti exchanged letters, and the young girl treasured each word, proudly showing the signed photograph the Princess later sent her.
“She was a very motherly figure,” Avanti recalls. “I was too young to understand fully then, but as I grew older, I realized what she meant to the world and to me.”
Avanti, now 36, became a trained dancer and primary school teacher. The daughter of a dance teacher, Japamala Rani, she was born into rhythm and grace. Her journey in dance later took her to Leuven, Belgium, where she performed at various schools in 1997. At the end of that trip, her family had planned a reunion with Princess Diana. Tragically, just days before their intended meeting, Diana’s life was cut short in a car crash in Paris. Avanti was only ten.
“I performed the day she died,” Avanti recalls with a heavy heart. “I remember the funeral... it was very sad. We were just days away from seeing her again. That moment never came.”
Despite the years, Diana’s memory remains etched into the fabric of Avanti’s life. Her framed photo with the Princess still occupies a place of pride in her home. Her fondness for Diana’s kindness and style even wanting to replicate her signature layered haircut reflects just how deep the connection ran, even across continents and time.
Princess Diana’s visit continues to be remembered fondly in Hyderabad. The former Director of School Education, Pronoti Suhasini Kavoori, who coordinated the visit, still cherishes the memory. She recalls how captivated the Princess was by Avanti’s confidence and grace. “All my bosses were worried when Diana picked her up,” Kavoori laughs. “They offered to carry the girl for her, but she wouldn’t let anyone else near her.”
Ms. Kavoori even keeps a piece of the indigo silk she bought to line the Princess’s chair safely stored in a plastic bag adorned with heart motifs, a family treasure she plans to pass down to her daughter.
Over three decades later, the brief but powerful connection between a beloved Princess and a young dancer remains a story of empathy, innocence, and the unspoken language of love. In that fleeting moment in 1992, amidst the crowd and ceremony, Diana saw something special and made a little girl feel like royalty.
Source / Image Credit : Daily Mail , The Daily Star