'Aishwarya Rai would be named...': Prahlad Kakkar recalls Sushmita Sen 'weeping copiously' & calling 1994 Miss India rigged

Prahlad Kakkar, the veteran ad director, recently recalled Sushmita Sen ‘weeping copiously’  during the 1994 Miss India pageant and believed that the event was rigged and Aishwarya Rai would be declared as the winner. For the unversed, Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai had competed in the Miss India pageant in 1994

Talking to ANI, Kakkar recalled what Sushmita told him while crying “in one corner of the changing room” during the contest.

“One day, halfway through the competition, Sushmita was weeping copiously in one corner of the changing room. I walked up to her. Even though I was supposed to be from a rival camp, I walked up to her and asked her. She said, ‘No, it’s all fixed. It’s all rigged. We don’t know what we are doing here.’ When I asked her, she explained how Aishwarya was a bigger model and she would be named the winner,” he said.

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“It was a tough competition. Both of them were stunning. But Aishwarya fell. Finally, there was a question-and-answer round, which was an extra round because they couldn’t make up their minds. Sushmita’s answer was far more confident and composed than Aishwarya’s, and she won the last round. It was touch and go. But that was like, what an era it was,” Kakkar added.

Sharing how Sushmita got deschanted with Bollywood overtime, he shared, “Sushmita got disenchanted with the industry and started becoming difficult to actually get hold of, access. So she put layers in front of her, too. I don’t think she trusted them. To some extent, she was westernised. Additionally, she harboured a mistrust of the industry, as she believed it was all exploitative. At the end of it, if you’re a single woman and you’re good-looking and your life is on the line because your career is your life, then you can be taken advantage of.”