In 1994, two of Bollywood’s beauties Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai competed against each other for the title of Miss India.
Surprising as it may be Sushmita, who won the title, revealed much later that she almost pulled her name out of the competition like many other girls because Aishwarya’s intimidating beauty.
Sushmita opened up about the ordeal to Karan Johar on his show Koffee with Karan and said she never thought she could win against Aishwarya, who was favorite of that year.
But lo and behold, Sushmita won the title but still remembers how "fabulous" her friend and competitor Aishwarya was.
"I don't compare myself to Aishwarya's performance, I think she was fabulous on stage. My shooting star went right over my head. When you are competing for anything, it is not just your hard work, because there are 20-30 girls who put in equal or more amounts of hard work,” Sushmita said.
In the same year, Sushmita was also crowned as Miss Universe, while Aishwarya Rai crowned as Miss World.
Sushmita also shared that her mother was her pillar of support and scolded her for thinking to pull her name out of the competition without even trying.
She added, "My mother said ok fine let her win. If you think that she's the world's most beautiful then lose from her. What's the point of losing from someone else? Go give it your best shot."
Sushmita recalled when the results were being announced and Aishwarya’s name was called as a runner-up, she started thinking she’s not even made it to the runners-up however it was not the case as she was announced the winner of the pageant.
