In the psychedelic, musical realm of Bollywood, there isn’t a person more grounded and irresistibly charming than Sushmita Sen, beauty queen of
yesteryear and current cine-screen siren. P.Ramakrishnan spent 36 hours with, who he calls with misty eyed sighs, heaven.
An hour after her performance at the Diwali Dreams concert at the Intercontinental hotel in Hong Kong, Sushmita Sen, 29, former Miss Universe and current Bollywood diva, wipes off cakes of makeup and mascara in her plush suite.
“Isn’t it a miracle what makeup can do?” she asks as the sheaths of café-au-lait foundation is wiped clean, an impressive mask that hid from the 800-strong audience her body quivering exhaustion after hop scotching over three countries in as many days.
“It’s every actresses help-kit, hides whatever you want to hide before you get in front of the camera, a stage, a studio. I haven’t slept properly all week.”
In another 10 hours, she’s back on a plane, zooming off to Dubai for a film shoot, in what’s going to be one of her busiest years in her film career with four releases lined up in six months. Pressed for time, it’s a one-off chance to talk to one of the most beautiful women in the world, correction, Universe, as her silken sash clearly indicated that fateful night on May 21, 1994. Though she took off the crystal studded tiara long ago, its halo has never left.
Reflections on the crown and glory night are put on pause as she sighs, “I don’t think we can get much done tonight. Can we postpone the interview? There’s a gaping hole in my head!” Bending over slightly, she parts her honey-brown follicles and reveals strands of hair caked with blood.
“I always do my own make-up. I know my face and I know what it needs but with my hair I asked for an assistant. The hair extensions she put in my head were… I don’t know being stapled in? After one particular stab, I asked her to be a bit more careful,” she says with only the slightest hint of vexation. “When she started I could see she was nervous, her hands were trembling and I didn’t create a fuss because then nothing would have been accomplished. I bit my lip, let her finish, went down, did my thing and here I am… with a hole in my head!”
Well of course the hairdresser goofed in her nervousness. How many people get to play with a
silver-screen goddesses' tresses? No diva tantrums and hysteria from Sen ensued, “I don’t like to shout and scream. Creating a fuss is not my style.”
If it’s any consolation, her blood, sweat and tears were not in vain. Sen’s electrifying dance medley to her biggest musical numbers from her film career was staged flawlessly on stage in Hong Kong. From the moment she walked in, flanked by four bouncers as she sifted her way through the crowd, the audience called out “Sushi! Sushi!” (much to her acknowledged
delight). From her glamourous entrance to the choreographed perfection of her dances, she played her part of a superstar well.
There’s the on-screen persona, and then there’s the person underneath, equally affable. Local resident and dancer Rani Asra Gidwani, was one of the lucky few who got to meet Sen off stage, “She was amazing! Perfect dance. And when we spoke, it was like we’ve known each other forever!”
Even the organisers gush about Sush. Kishore Samtani says, “She’s great to talk to but hard to pin down. That’s the only difficulty we had because she’s either shooting, dancing, flying here or there. She gave us no trouble, no hassles. None of the rubbish you hear about actresses.”
Did she win Miss Congeniality when she in the pageant? She throws her head back in laughter. “No I never did! Not for Miss India, nor for Miss Universe! But its OK, I got the crown didn’t I?”
The genetically blessed one beat out 55 other contestants in 1994 to bring home the coveted title
and crown, edging out Miss Venezuela, the country that once monopolised the pageant arena until that year. Since Sen’s unprecedented win, India’s gone on to take home six crowns over a span of a decade, with a finalist in every pageant every year since. India Today thus proclaimed her historic triumph, one of the 56 most significant events that shaped India; “India seemed to have taken out a patent on international beauty crowns. That Rita Faria was the first Indian to win the Miss World crown 28 years ago was forgotten in the near-hysteria that gripped the country in 1994. An entire industry was born, geared to turning gawky ducklings into tiara-wearing swans.”
When I bring up that evening that catapulted her to the stratosphere of fame, Sen presses her lacquered nails into her forehead, trying to rub away fatigue, “God, it was so long ago. I don’t know why people still call me Miss Universe?”
Sitting in a lotus position at the edge of her bed in her Intercontinental suite, she’s quick to notice my raised eyebrow, as I didn’t swallow her self-deprecating comment.
“I sincerely don’t think I was the prettiest girl at the pageant, but I was honest, true to myself. No other Indian had come anywhere close to a win, so I had fun just being there. No expectations. No disappointment. I got to keep the crown too – no other pageant lets you do that. It’s somewhere in a cupboard at home.”
Nearly 4am, room service trolleys in food and as Sen saunters to the bathroom which is bombarded with a smorgasbord of makeup kits, brushes, and flecks of cigarette ashes on the sink. Before she returns, the waiter leans and whispers, “Can you please tell her that I’m sorry that food came late? And I’m a very big fan. I saw her in Malaysia years ago!”
When she comes out, he almost genuflects and hits the exit before even hinting for an autograph. People are quite taken aback by her sheer presence, the man’s bravado to ask for a picture from her wanes and he scuttles away.
“It’s the celebrity perception, nothing to do with me. I’m working on a film right now where the director has me parading up and down in different outfits at the beginning of each shoot. Then he looks at my nails, then my lipstick, see if I’m coordinated. After ten minutes, last week he said, the eyeliner is not right. I was packed off to the makeup room to get “the look” perfected. The genius-complex directors used to get on my nerves, but now I’m chilled out.”
Looking the part of a dream girl on screen still takes precedence over nearly every role Sen has done. Not much of a stretch - she starred as Miss Universe in her first film (who gets kidnapped by a man obsessed by her and heroically, she kills him off at the end!), and she’s been cast as the temptress who makes the leading man cheat on his wife in two different films already. About the seductress on screen routine she states, “I’ve done enough of the bimbette roles and had enough of that. I don’t have the box-office success that makes me straitjacketed or typecast in a role of the heroine and I get a chance to experiment. Whatever the results may be at the cash registers.”
Clearly destined to stay afloat in the celebrity pool, it’s been an eventful decade under the limelight. What’s still etched sharply in memory?
“I still remember after I won, I’ll never forget that first day - I had my own driver and limousine there, this fantastic apartment with a pool. I had my own pool! I had just flown on a transatlantic flight, was dead tired but after pretending to be unfazed by the celebrity treatment, I finally had a moment to myself to let it all sink in. I sat by the pool for a while. Well, my housekeeper reminded me that it wasn’t for a while, it was the whole night. My life has never been the same.”
Once bitten by the celebrity bug, Sen, almost predictably landed in Hindi movies. All the pageant
divas proclaim wills to do good on earth and end up wanting to keep their fame alight for as long as possible by any mean or measure. If its not modelling, its movies or millionaire men. Indian actress Manisha Koirala, bluntly said in an interview, “These beauty queens all proclaim the same thing. Say they want to be Mother Teresa and end up shaking their ass in films.”
That statement appeared years ago in print, Koirala now, happens to be one of Sen’s film producers, “Manisha’s a great friend and honest to the core. Working in her film has been loads of fun.” That’s all Miss Diplomacy has to say on that.
The embodiment of the modern Mumbai gal, Sen went on to adopt a baby girl Renee, now five, and she told the press that she was ready to be a mother, even if man wasn’t in the picture. There have been several high-profile romances with directors, models, hoteliers that made headlines with Sen, but no one made history.
“I’m not crazy about talking about the man in my life right now. I don’t want to jinx it,” she grins. Rumours are that actor Randeep Hooda, one of the stars in the acclaimed film Monsoon Wedding, and she are more than good friends but not wanting to be chucked out of a speeding Mercedes and our newfound friendship (ahem!), I keep quite as we speed off to the airport.
There’s a whopper of a ring on her index finger, a diamond the size of a quail egg that sparked off
rumours that marriage was at last impending for India’s most eligible singleton. She quashes that tabloid fabrication with ease, “I bought the ring for myself, with my own money. It is a symbol, a symbol of what I’ve achieved as a woman of independent means. Didn’t need no man to give this to me!”
Picture courtesy of TAG Heuer. Sushmita Sen sports LINK Lady Quartz Chronograph.
Published in Kee magazine, summer of 2005.
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