Source: Daily Mail
When Preeti Desai was four years old she made her mother a promise. "I'll make you proud even though I'm a girl,' she told her.
Now at 25, as she comes to the end of her reign as Miss Great Britain - the first woman of Indian extraction and the first Hindu to hold the title - she feels she has done just that.
But, as that remark as a little girl reveals, there has been much anguish along the way as Preeti has fought for a freedom that was firmly denied to her mother, a first-generation immigrant who was ostracised by her husband's family simply for not producing a male heir.
"She had a traditional Indian arranged marriage and her in-laws expected a boy to carry on the family name but she had two daughters,' says Preeti.
"She was really upset because people were disappointed in her. I picked up on that at a young age. But if anything, it made me more determined to succeed."