The year was 1994. India was witnessing one of the most talked-about beauty pageants in its history. The Miss India crown was up for grabs. And, there were two extraordinary young women vying for that crown: Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
Behind the glitz and glamour lay intense drama, and of course the whispers of rivalry. And Prahlad Kakkar, filmmaker and advertising guru, has now revealed what really happened behind the scenes.
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In a chat with ANI, Kakkar gave a candid peek into the chaos, emotions, and surprising twists of that pageant. He shared that Sushmita Sen believed the competition was “rigged”.
“I had escorted Aishwarya to Goa with her mother,” he said. “I met Sushmita there, and I even had access to the changing rooms much to the organiser’s dismay. They tried to stop me, questioned my identity, but I told them, ‘You can’t stop me.’”
Kakkar recalled a particularly emotional moment. He spotted Sushmita weeping quietly in a corner of the changing room. Despite being from what could be seen as a rival camp, he approached her. “She told me, ‘No, it’s all fixed. We don’t know what we’re doing here. Aishwarya is a bigger model; she’s going to win.’”
Trying to calm her nerves, Kakkar reminded Sushmita to trust the judges particularly Simone Tata. “I told her, ‘She’s a judge. She’s going to judge honestly and fairly.’ And that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
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The competition itself was tight. Kakkar described both contestants as “stunning,” making it difficult for anyone to predict the winner. “Aishwarya had a minor slip and the judges decided on an additional question-and-answer round to break the tie. Sushmita’s answers were composed, confident, and precise, and that’s how she clinched the crown. It was incredibly close, but that moment defined an era,” he recalled.
Kakkar also touched on the rumoured rivalry between Sushmita Sen and Lara Dutta. He dismissed the gossip saying both women carved their own paths.
Reflecting on Sushmita’s journey after Miss India, Kakkar shared insights into her complex relationship with Bollywood.
“Over time, Sushmita became disenchanted with the film industry. She started putting layers between herself and the industry. She didn’t entirely trust it, felt it could be exploitative, and perhaps that’s why she became more guarded. Being a single woman, beautiful, and at the mercy of your career, you have to be careful. She understood that very well,” he explained.
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