The beauty pageant, which was revived by the U G Hotels and Resorts in association with the Department of Tourism of the Himachal Pradesh government after a gap of 11 years, has been rolling on for the past one week. The event reached its grand finale at the Shilon Resort last night when the 18 contestants sashayed in shimmering gowns in silver and black.

And in turn impressed the judges as well as the crowd, with local girl Sulakshana, a student of B.A. (Honours) in English at St. Bedes, bagging the thunderous applause all through till she was finally crowned the first runners-up. Her confident smile won her the title in that category too.

Though the judges differed from the initial list with Vinod Khanna busy with the Budget session of Parliament and son Akshaye out on shooting, there was indeed one star son, Puru Rajkumar. ``I am still roaming around in this region from the Chandigarh Star Nite and I am yet to go home,'' Puru told The Indian Express. It was his duty to crown the second runners-up Neha, a classical singer by training and a student of fashion designing from Delhi.

There was Bollywood's fairy godmother, Anna Singh, who transformed Madhuri Dixit in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and the main person behind Karisma Kapoor's cinderella change, along with designers Vallaya and Raja Bayana. Ace photographer of the glamour industry Subo Das and theatre and film director Arun Kukreja provided them company along with Sean Dexter, the managing director of Spice Telecom, Avinash Rai from the Rajah Hosieries, Amit Agarwal who heads the men's fashion magazine `Mantra' and choreographer Priyanka Singh. And they all scrutinised the girls under the compering of Pallav Bose and Nafisa Joseph, former Miss India.

And the parade was made memorable by the charm of its choreography and the elegance of the costumes; if for the former the credit should go to Delhi's top choreographer Pratipto Nandy, then the final year students of Chandigarh's National Institute of Fashion Design deserved kudos for making even the average-looking girls appear graceful.

But, the only boring element in an otherwise professionally conducted show was the fillers. For it was left to Channel V's latest find Shibani Kashyap alone to entertain the audience along with the dancers from the channel's group, Planet. Though the dancers did a splendid job and despite the good track that Shibani's album is, the continuous lip-sync that her singing was and the aggravating velocity of the cool wind left many wishing for the final round to happen.

It did happen via elimination rounds which saw the number of contestants coming down to five from 18. There were two question-answer rounds, one thrown in by the comperes with an unrelenting Pallav giving a tough time and the second by the judges. The spontaneity of the girls came out in this with Arneeta, a Delhi-based business consultant who believed in pragmatism, independence and ambition as the main ingredients of success, local gal Sulakshana for whom beauty and love came from within, Sanhati who `dreamt practically', Neha and Chandigarh girl Monica, who was all for women ruling the roost in the next millennium, making into the final five.

Clad in gowns of maroon and sand colour, they answered the common question in one minute: ``on the most basic strength of womanhood''. And there was no doubt in the viewers' minds about Sanhati, the daughter of the Election Commission secretary general Subas Pani, winning the title. For throughout she was what she wrote, ``Being herself''. She bagged the title of Body Beautiful too.