Miss India 2009

Thanks to a few colleagues of mine dropping in home last Sunday, I could not catch the first round of Miss India 2009. I could only get a quick glance at all the contestants and most importantly, missed the bikini round and half of the other titles. Generally, I make my list of top 3 and check whether my taste is in agreement with that of the judges. Last time around, Parvathy Omanakuttan was a clear winner but from what I saw of the contest this time, I thought there were none who made a mark as well as Parvathy did.

I would not say that the jury was fully eminent- the sight of Asin, Madhur Bhandarkar and Ajay Devgan made me cringe. Asin is too inexperienced to judge a beauty contest, Madhur has never bothered to make good looking women look really good in any of his films and I hate Ajay Devgan's sense of dressing. However, we also had Sushmita Sen, Nandita Mahtani and Deepika Padukone which kind of offset the presence of the first 3. R Madhavan and Malaika Arora Khan did a fairly good job at compering though I must say Malaika these days is sounding extremely disinterested...

I missed Genelia's performance. Kangana Ranaut was just passable and Priyanka Chopra rocked! As for the QA session, I thought the questions were pedestrian and most of the answers were dumb! There was this girl who made it clear that she would always choose career over family but was not crowned (probably, she did not embody the essence of the self sacrificing Indian woman) and amongst the ones who were crowned, Miss India World was appearing to be passionately over the top about anything and everything.

None of the winners are the kind who would stand out in a crowd and I do not expect any of them to make it big at the international pageants this year! Miss India World Pooja Chopra, Miss India Universe Ektha Chaudhary and Miss India Earth Shriya Kishore could not match the elegance and grace of former crown winners Parvathy Omanakuttan, Sushmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra or even Yuktha Mookhey who attended the pageant. As usual, Ritu Kumar created quite a few stunning outfits- that probably was the saving grace of the pageant this time!