Sushmita Sen recalls starving at seven-course dinner after winning Miss Universe, later got advised by her etiquette teacher to eat at home before leaving: ‘Pet bhar kar jao’

She said, “I’m at the head of the table, I’m 18 years old, I barely speak English. I’m getting it together at that point and Barbara, my travel manager sitting to my right and thereafter beyond Barbara are all men. I’m starving, I’m smiling at my travel manager saying ‘I’m very hungry’. Then I bend over like ‘I’m very hungry Barbara.’ She’s like ‘So are they and you’re the chief guest, you need to start.’”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Sushmita Sen (@sushmitasen47)

Sushmita then navigated through the seven-course meal with guidance from the gentleman to her left, who was the tourism minister of Mexico.  This experience prompted her to learn table manners to avoid feeling out of place in similar situations in the future. The actor added, “This is when I went to Barbra and I came back to Miss Universe organisation and I said I need to learn because I felt very out of place and I don’t want to feel like this again so they…”

Sushmita recounted how they arranged for her to meet an etiquette teacher from San Francisco. Together, they practised various aspects of etiquette, including dining etiquette. One particularly valuable lesson that stuck with Sushmita was her teacher’s advice to “eat before going out and then carry oneself with grace while dining.”

She shared, “One of the things I learnt from her was, ‘Pet bhar kar kha kar jaao ghar se (Eat well at home and then go for an official dinner), so that you do not have the urge to eat at the dinner table and you can elegantly say, ‘No more, thank you’, and they will assume you follow a strict diet.”

Sushmita was recently seen in the third season of the hit Disney Plus Hotstar series Aarya.