Charge of the beauty brigade

What do Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Celina Jaitly, Gul Panag, Nikita Anand and Neha Dhupia have in common?
Apart from being former Miss Indias, they belong to military families. All three winners of this year’s Pantaloons Femina Miss India pageant, Kanishtha Dhankhar, Ankita Shorey and Hasleen Kaur, hail from a defence background. Did these girls have an extra edge because of a certain upbringing?
Background check
An officer’s daughter does not only have to deal with the prospect of her father possibly going off into war zones, but also the constant changes in her postal address.Gul Panag relates to this only too well. “As an army kid, my upbringing was unparalleled,” she says, and adds, “The near-constant state of migration has given me the ability to adapt and adjust to any situation. I was able to adapt equally well to the high-pressure environment of the pageant. This trait is perhaps the biggest edge that army girls like me possess. This helps us not only in pageants, but in any field that we choose.”
PFMI International 2011 Ankita Shorey agrees. “I was never confined to one place, so I was able to absorb the cultures of different places. This really helped me grow as a person.” Ankita revealed that each military station has its own unique cultural activities, including regular parties. “I used to attend the social evenings with my parents, where there’s a lot of decorum to be followed. That made a huge difference. In fact, I learned to use a fork and knife at the age of three. I was trained to be a woman, and a sophisticated lady at that, at a very young age. This is why military girls, in every field, are usually ahead of their competition,” says Ankita.
Nikita Anand, actress and former title holder, adds, “My father was very punctual, and so am I. During the Miss India grooming sessions, there were three to four girls in one room. Every morning, we had to report at a particular time, and we were four to one loo, so the only way we could manage was to be disciplined. It is a lot easier for an army girl to manage such things.”
Belle of the ball
Army-bred participants are often experienced when it comes to beauty contests, as military stations host mini-pageants of their own. Ramesh Menon, pageant coordinator of the Navy Ball, insists that the training girls acquire at these pageants is at par with that of national pageants. “We give the same grooming and catwalk lessons as Miss India,” he says, adding that the sessions are usually conducted by former Miss India winners. “We also have celebrity judges, ensuring that the winners are of extremely high standards. A large number of our winners have won Miss India.’’
Interestingly, Gul Panag was one of the judges at Delhi’s May Queen Ball in 2007, which this year’s PFMI Earth Hasleen Kaur had won. “Hasleen really stood out. In fact, after the pageant I went and told her parents they should send her to participate at the national level. And just look what she has gone and achieved!” says the actress.
Colonel Sarabhjit Singh, Hasleen Kaur’s father explains, “The people from the army have a very good social life. There’s a lot of exposure and we have amenities like sports complexes, clubs etc, where many competitions are held for the army children. These competitions and exposure grooms their personality and gives them a lot of confidence. Discipline is also very important. Not that we are danda masters, but because of our lifestyle, our children lead a very disciplined life.”
Parents no bar
Nikita Anand tells us, “I don’t remember my parents ever telling me what or what not to do. In a business family, from what I know, some children might be told that they have to carry on with the family business. For us, modelling is as good a career as any other. We have no illusions about the glamour industry as being ‘bad’. It has a lot to do with the high levels of exposure that army parents have.” And Gul concludes, “Army parents are as encouraging as they are liberal and broad minded.”
On the frontline
Ankita Shorey
Kanishtha Dhankhar
Hasleen Kaur
Priyanka Chopra
Lara Dutta
Celina Jaitly
Neha Dhupia
Nikita Anand
Gul Panag
Manpreet Brar
Parvathy Omanakuttan
Pooja Batra
Sushmita Sen
(With inputs from Sanya Ahuja)