Why Aishwarya Never Spoke Against Salman Khan | Prahlad Kakkar Reveals

Let me come back to another rivalry between Aishwarya and Sushmita, that also you saw panning out. That happened in front of me, because when they came up for Miss India, I had escorted Aishwarya to Goa, that is where to it, with her mother and the mother was staying with me as a matter of fact. And I met Sushmita there at the thing, I had access to the changing room, much to the organiser's dismay. He says, who are you? Why are you going inside? I said, you can't stop me. I'm there. Okay. And one day I found, halfway through the competition, I found Sushmita weeping copiously in one corner, in the changing room. And I walked up to her, even though I was supposed to be from a rival camp, I walked up to her, what's the problem? She says, no, it's all fixed. It's all rigged, we don't know what we are doing here. So I said, what is fixed? She says, no, Aishwarya is so big and she's become such a big model and everyone, we are all beginners. And they will obviously, they already decided that she's going to be Miss India. And we are just hanging around for, you know, for the crumbs. So I sat her down, I said, have you seen your judging panel? There's Mrs. Tata, Mrs. Simone Tata, there's this, there's this. Do you think they're going to be, what do you call, coerced into what Times of India thinks? Yeah, okay, because, okay. Okay. So if Times of India decided that Aishwarya is going to be Miss World or Miss India, and you are nobody, you think they're going to convince that to Mrs. Tata and say that, no, you follow our dictum? Bullshit. Mrs. Tata is bigger than Times of India. She's got her own opinion. So she's not going to be swayed by any public opinion or whatever. She's a judge. She's going to judge honestly and fairly. And that's precisely what happened. Sushmita won. Yeah, because, why? I mean, I still don't understand. I'm not saying Sushmita was less beautiful and Sushmita won, but there was something, it was a tough competition. Both of them were stunning, but Aishwarya fell. So in the trade-off, finally there was a question and answer round, which was the next round because they couldn't make up their minds. And Sushmita's answer, because she was convent educated, basically, was far more confident than Aishwarya's. Okay, that also points go for that. Yeah, so she won on that last round. It was touch and go. But that was like what an era it was. And then there was Sushmita versus Lara Dutta also. Not really. Both of them were like so confident, beautiful women. But Aishwarya, losing out to Sushmita was unbelievable. On that particular competition. Yeah, in that, both of them became, Sushmita became Miss World. Yeah, exactly. They both found their space. That was India's glory. Yeah. And I think the rest of the world also stood up to see that, oh, okay. You know, it was always Romania and all of them winning. And Venezuela. Venezuela, yes. Venezuela always, Miss Venezuela. But what were they like to work with Aishwarya? And you've seen Aishwarya from her first shot onwards. And then she comes to this, you know, Sanjay Leela Bansali movies and superstardom and like there's nobody to beat her. And then she takes, you know, now she's mom and does a few ads here and there. And then, you know, the criticism that she has faced so many times for fashion choices. No, no, always. Because Aishwarya is a very private person. She's not a public person. She doesn't open up in front of anybody. She has a very few set of very close friends who are contradicts and who she trusts. And only then she actually opens up and talks freely. But otherwise, she's very, very particular. So the press, the media, as you know, I mean, if they don't have access to somebody, they'll badmouth them. So Aishwarya has always had this policy that I will not give single interviews. I will give a press conference. So all of you come and I'll give you a press conference. And I'll ask her questions. But I will not give you access on one to one as to my gossip and a private life. It's completely out of bounds. Yeah, even when that phase when she was with Salman Khan, she did not speak. She didn't speak a word. Because that's her dignity. And Aishwarya realized very early in life that her silence was her dignity and her strength. And it bothered the media. So they were constantly trying to demean her, to criticize her, to bring her down so that she would come down to a level where she'd say, enough, I'll give you what you want. She never did. She didn't. Okay. She never did. Whereas Sushmita's is like an open book. She's an open book. She's a muffat. And she doesn't care. Whatever they say. You know, and so forth and so on. Very Bindas. Very Bindas. And darling of the press. Because they could get whatever they wanted from her because she didn't hold back anything. And career wise, both their paths went on the side, but it didn't, it didn't crisscross that. They didn't crisscross. But what happened was that Sushmita got disenchanted with the industry, like Aishwarya did also, eventually. And started becoming difficult to actually get hold of, access. So she put layers in front of her to... Why? I think she was disenchanted. I don't think she trusted them. Okay. I always felt that she was a little bit like Parveen Babi, maybe. To some extent, westernized. Yeah, she was westernized. And fish out of water in certain circumstances. But also mistrusting of the industry. Because they were all exploitative. At the end of it, if you're a single woman and you're good looking and your life is on the line because your careers, your life, then you can be taken advantage of. But Aishwarya got everything from the industry. So why did she mistrust? Aishwarya got it because, because she was so, she was gharelu. So they didn't, they didn't assume that they could have access to her anyway. And anyway, she didn't, they did have access to her. Including the, including her directors and things. I mean, she was close to her director, like she was very close to Sanjay Leela Bansari, which is why he got such a great performance out of her. But other than that, to the riffraff in the industry, she wasn't accessible. Whereas Sushmita, they felt Sushmita was accessible because she was so open. So they felt that, yeah, take a chance, you know. But you feel that both got raw deal to some extent? They do it. Because they were such independent women. And our industry, like the rest of the country, doesn't understand independent women. They are so patriarchal.