For the first time in its history, Femina Miss India accepts the Bollywood allure and officially associates with filmy big wigs.

The country’s most sought after beauty contest recently announced a strategic collaboration with two of India’s ace directors Madhur Bhandarkar and Vipul Shah at the Marriott, Mumbai. They will mentor and launch two Miss. India finale contestants in their respective upcoming film projects. And that’s not all- industry stalwarts Anupam Kher and Shiamak Davar will also be supporting the association by way of training and mentoring the contestants in acting and dance respectively.

This is the first time in the history of Femina Miss India that an association of such scale is being worked upon.

It has been widely considered that winning the beauty pageant is a ticket to the fast lane that leads to Bollywood. Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Dia Mirza are few of the current beauties that have conveniently got into the Hindi film industry after having a smooth sail in the contest. The association with the four respected men of Bollywood is cited as an official confirmation to the situation.

In fact, director Madhur Bhandarkar went on to candidly agree to this and reasoned, “It is a well known fact that girls enter the contest to shoot to fame and then leverage it to get into films. There is nothing wrong with that and there is no stopping them. With industry professionals mentoring them right from the word “go’, the hit and miss cases will reduce. The good will be filtered from the not-so-good and talent will be honed professionally from the very start.”

Ironically, though a pageant for women, there were none who shared the dais with the four male mentors. Veteran actor Anupam Kher intervened and tried hard to justify, “My school “Actor Prepares’ has more aspiring actresses than actors, so I guess I qualify for this ownership”, he said jestingly. Interestingly, the only female present at the do was Miss India 2009 finalist, Miss Ishita Sarkar, who looked quite a hottie in a crystallized purple number.

The credibility of this pageant lies in its experienced and noteworthy panel of experts, who this year will include the likes of Marc Robinson, the official Contestant Director and Fashion Director, Mickey Mehta, Dr. Jamuna Pai, Dr. Purnima Mhatre, Alesia Raut, Seema Hingrany, Sabina Merchant, Dr. Sandesh Mayekar and Prasad Bidappa.

Before signing off, Marc Robinson stated, “We will endeavour to focus on potential talent who showcase an innate aptitude and strive to create a niche for themselves, not only by their outstanding looks and a perfect body, but also their aspirations, talent and intellect.”

-Lipika Varma/Sampurn Media