Sen and the Art of Career Maintenance

For someone who has been written off, Sushmita Sen seems to have an awful lot going for her.

This one may just be called the return of the prodigal, only she never really was the prodigal. One fine day in 1994, a golden goal (and a hand of God?) helped Sushmita clinch the Miss India title over the competition favourite, Aishwarya Rai. Sush wanted to undo Gandhiji’s assassination, while Aishwarya wanted to change her very own birth, tsk tsk.

History stood by as Sush was then crowned the most beautiful woman in nine planets (eight planets after Pluto got bumped off), and then saw her movie career being walked off a plank into the deep seas. Things were so bad that even a reality show she was judging tanked. All this while, the giggling runner-up was doing it all—walking the red carpets, signing big banner movies and being called the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’.

However, after living in the reflected glory of the title for 15 years, Sush recently had a Eureka moment. She would groom further Miss Universes—well-read, philanthropic, good-looking women who didn’t give self-absorbed answers when asked what they would like to change about history.

Sushmita now owns the Indian franchise for the Miss Universe pageant, under a brand rather modestly titled ‘I am She’. It’ll be this, and not the Miss India pageant, that will pick the Indian entry to the Miss Universe pageant from 2010.  Truth be told, some of the plans of the ‘I am She’ pageant don’t look too shabby—it seeks to work for child welfare, environmental awareness, cancer, etcetera.

Unfortunately for Sush, the pageant she’s banking on to resurrect her career has itself fallen on bad days—it’s now owned by a man with the worst comb-over in Northern America, Donald Trump. It also comes at a time when the very existence of Indian pageants is being questioned. Cosmetic peddlers have already bedded and dumped India, having moved on to newer markets like Latin America. So, India hasn’t won anything in international contests for a decade now—though Pooja Chopra did win Miss Sympathy at Miss World this time for her broken leg.

Another concern is whether Miss Sen has bitten off more than she can chew. She also has plans for a venture, humbly titled Sensazione, to set up hotels, lounges and spas. She is all set for another showdown with the giggling runner-up thanks to a movie which she’s directing as well as playing the role of Rani of Jhansi in. She has also just adopted another child who ‘has her mother’s complexion’.

Is all this too much, too soon? True, she can blame Bollywood preferring bikini over brain for her career being flushed down the drain. But there are concerns about her well-documented ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) with men spilling over to business, and her plans of retiring to the French Riviera at 40 (she turned 34 this year). Would she be able to pull this off? 

Stranger things have been known to happen… how else can you explain someone with Trump’s hair running a beauty pageant.

resurrectionreturnSushmita Sen