Home ›› 20 Jul 2022 ›› Show Biz
One of India’s most-loved beauty queens has been in the eye of a social media storm recently.
Sushmita Sen, the first Indian to win the Miss Universe title in 1994, has made a career as a successful Bollywood actress.
The 46-year-old, who has starred in around three dozen films, was most recently seen playing the lead in a critically-acclaimed and popular web series called Aarya.
Often described as smart, witty and intelligent, Sen has won a number of prestigious cinema awards and is widely regarded as a ‘woman of substance’.
But all her achievements seemed to have been forgotten since Thursday night, when Lalit Modi - a 58-year-old businessman and founder of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the world’s richest cricket competition - announced on social media that he was in a relationship with Sen, opening the floodgates to crass and misogynistic jokes.
Modi, too, is a public personality - the architect of the wildly successful IPL hit the headlines a decade back after the BCCI, India’s cricket board, accused him of financial irregularities and suspended him. Modi, who has always denied the allegations against him, has been living in London for the past decade.
Sharing a bunch of romantic photographs from their recent vacations in Maldives and the Italian island of Sardinia, he initially described Sen as his ‘better half’ and then - after that set off rumours of marriage - edited it to read “my better looking partner”.
Modi, who lost his wife of nearly three decades to cancer in 2018, said his relationship with Sen was “a new beginning, a new life finally” and that he was “over the moon”.
Sen has also received a lot of support on social media, with many pointing out that in the past, she dated men who had little money and that no-one called these men gold-diggers.
But with the inordinate scrutiny and commentary about their relationship continuing - memes and jokes questioning her motives are being shared not just on social media but also passed around on WhatsApp - Sen responded on Sunday night with an Instagram post.
“It’s heartbreaking to see just how miserable & unhappy the world around us is becoming,” she wrote.
“The friends I never had & the acquaintances I’ve never met…. all sharing their grand opinions & deep knowledge of my life & character… monetising the ‘Gold Digger’ all the way!!! Ah these geniuses!!!”
To those claiming that she was dating Mr Modi for his money, the actress - who once endorsed a line of diamond jewellery and is reported to be worth an estimated $10m herself - wrote an apt reminder:
“I dig deeper than Gold… and I’ve always (famously) preferred Diamonds!! And yes I still buy them myself!!!”
It’s a response that has won her much applause in India, reports BBC.
