Taapsee Pannu recalls experience as Miss India contestant, says a designer humiliated her: ‘If it was in my hand…’

Taapsee said that she was surprised to be selected at all, and was sure that she would be thrown out after cracking the top 10. From across the country, 28 women had been shortlisted, Taapsee said, and she was one of only two or three women from New Delhi. “I remember that all the other women were professional models,” Taapsee said in Hindi. “I had only done photoshoots. I hadn’t done television commercials, I hadn’t walked the ramp, because those shows used to happen at night, and my father wouldn’t let me go.”

Taapsee said that she was humiliated in front of everybody else at the Miss India trials. “I realised during the ‘grooming period’ that this wasn’t something I could do. They’d make us walk, they taught us how to smile. Hemant Trivedi used to be the expert teacher at the time, and he humiliated me. He said, ‘If it was in my hand, you would have never been in the top 28.'”

Taapsee said that she eventually didn’t make the cut, but recalled an incident that happened at the wrap party. “I knew that I was walking on thin ice, because there was a lot of favouritism happening there. They were making people sign contracts that strictly stipulated that contestants would have to give 30% of all their earnings for three years to the pageant. When it was over, we went for an after party, the national director was there, and he wished me good luck for the future very courteously. I don’t know what took over me, but I told him, ‘Sir, take it from me in writing, you’re not getting the crown back’.”

It had been almost a decade since an Indian had won a global pageant, and Taapsee told the national director that India stood no chance. “I don’t know why I said that. But I got a gut feeling, and I did it,” she said.

Taapsee said that the only two things she took away from her time in Miss India is the advice that you don’t comb curly hair, and her friend Farah, with whom she has started a wedding planning business.