Cover girl commutes to campus

As Princeton students scramble to secure the best jobs possible beyond the gates, Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri '01 is able to take a less pragmatic approach toward her time here. "I'm not going to school for a future career," she said. "I'm going to school because I love it. It's really what I look forward to."

She is the co-founder of the fashion photography company Cyborg, an organization that capitalizes on digital technology to retouch, alter and enhance photographs. The company's diverse clientele includes such well known magazines as People, Mirabella and Detour.

For Pal-Chaudhuri, life is a great balancing act. She runs a company, travels between school and New York every week, goes to class and gets her work done — which this year entails the additional responsibility of writing a junior paper.

Though she said she enjoys her fast-paced lifestyle, her many obligations can sometimes overwhelm her. "I work and live out of the same place in New York, so there's always people there. There's really no time I have to myself," she said.

Nevertheless, Pal-Chaudhuri said she finds solace in meditation techniques that she learned in Hindu monasteries in England and her native India.

But that is not her only source of inspiration. Pal-Chaudhuri and her father are in the process of converting her ancestral family home — a place of palace-like proportions near Calcutta that boasts 350 rooms and dates back about as many years — into a women's college. "It definitely keeps me going, having some goal that's bigger than just me," she said. "It keeps my head focused on the long term."

Pal-Chaudhuri said she hopes to be able to offer women in her country possibilities for a career outside the home by providing a more career-oriented American liberal arts education. "Although there are educational opportunities open to some, women who have an education in India typically do not go on to careers," she said.

Though her schedule is often hectic, Pal-Chaudhuri said it has benefited her in some ways. "I'm a real procrastinator, so it's helped me to get over that," she said. "I've become much more efficient, and the quality of my work has improved."

But because of her many time commitments, Pal-Chaudhuri said she is unable to participate in the social and extracurricular aspects of Princeton. "I basically have no social life and no time to myself," she said. "When I do have time I sleep."

"Sometimes I do regret not having a regular college experience," she added. "At the same time I have opportunities now that I might not have otherwise."

Pal-Chaudhuri said she spent five years after high school traveling the world as a fashion model. After so much time abroad, she said she felt drawn back to the halls of academia. "After a while I started to realize that traveling around, everywhere started to look the same," she said. "I kind of wanted to go deeper, to explore inwardly rather than externally."

She cites this five-year period as another reason she is able to thrive in her current lifestyle. "I sort of stocked up on my wild and craziness."