Former Miss India Gul Panag grew up in India’s designer city of Chandigarh, the capital of two states. A great dog lover, she recently visited the famous annual Chandigarh Kennel Club Dog Show with her pet beagle. The acclaimed show had visitors from as far afield as Austria and Australia. The show also provides an opportunity for registered breeders to sell their wares. Amongst the most expensive breed on sale was the Chinese Sherpie which can fetch up to Rs 25,000.
Meanwhile, Gul is concerned that her Miss India tag is preventing her from getting the serious roles she’d really like to try. Her performance in Manorama Six Feet Under was widely acclaimed. “My Miss India tag has often been a deterrent for me since I did not take a conventional route to Bollywood and the kind of roles I’ve done or wish to do are not just about dancing around trees,” she says.
Gul’s next movie will be Straight – Ek Tedhi Medhi Love Story with comic actor Vinay Pathak. “My role is that of a caricature artist in London,” she explains, “Since it’s not easy for her to live out of her earnings, she joins Vinay Pathak’s restaurant as a cashier. It’s then that Vinay’s life starts to transform.” Later in the year, she will be working on Rann which stars Amitabh Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh; Hello Darling with Rajpal Yadav, Celina Jaitley and Isha Koppikar; and Ek Rectangular Love Story with Rajat Kapoor.
