A lesson outside classroom

Manpriya Singh 

It’s hard to believe that Chandigarh girl Gul Panag ‘was struggling to find a direction’ as she puts it, in the first or second year of college. For someone, who literally branched out into so many directions—beauty pageants, modelling, Bollywood, television, politics, you name it, she certainly doesn’t believe in stagnation. 

“I did my Master’s (in political science) well into mid thirties,” she gets us started with the importance of formal education in her life, which is why she never lets go of any opportunity to keep regularly abreast of things (specialised knowledge, included) and an opportunity of interacting with the students. “This is an impressionable age, this is the time when either things that make sense stick with you, change the course of your life or you are stuck in the large rut of mediocrity and chalta hai attitude,” she says a few minutes before she takes on the stage for an interactive session with the students of University of Petroleum and Energy Studies.  

After all, it was one such interaction which affected (if not altered the course of her life), as she says, “I remember there was one such lecture by ITFT director Gulshan Sharma that stayed with me,” she recalls of her days in GCG-Patiala. 

Then there was another trigger that came from her paternal aunt, “It was my bua who also put things in perspective, I didn’t have to do what everybody else is doing.” 

In between, conversations easily shuttle to and fro between various set of subjects; from the youngsters today to unfortunately the mediocrity that clouds our education system to the Indian Constitution, which she considers ‘a world class and the holiest document’. The information, the knowledge, the opinions, ‘they all stem from the fact that I was always very interested in politics’. 

Bollywood and beyond 

In the pipeline is another, ‘degree of sorts’ about which she promises to reveal and talk at length, next year. “Let’s just say it stems from my hunger for knowledge.” 

Meanwhile, it’s been a busy year or at least it’s going to be a busy year ahead at the box-office with Student of The Year 2, then there’s Bypass Road with Neil Nitin Mukesh. 

That’s a return of sorts after a long sabbatical. “I took a hiatus for all these years to set up my businesses,” she signs off. While films and another degree are definitely on the anvil, we guess who knows may be another shot at a political career too. This Jill of All Trades truly doesn’t believe in stagnation. 

manpriya@tribunemail.com