The soft and feminine qualities that she depicts in her portraits of Indian women do not necessarily exist in every day, modern reality, says Anjana Kuthiala.
At least that is what she has been told by the legions of admirers who queue up to pay from Rs 200,000 each for the images she conjures up from her imagination and puts down on oil and canvas.
In London, where she has just launched a solo exhibition of her work at the Nehru Centre, Kuthiala says of the portraits that have become a hallmark of her style: "My woman is a combination of East and West, both urban and rural, she doesn't belong to any one place at all.
"But I also see her as a global Indian woman; she is the ideal Indian woman as men would like her to be. I have a lot of men who tell me this but they say God doesn't make them like this.
"There's a certain softness about her, a certain femininity, which is absent in Indian women to a large extent as today's woman is much more aggressive and career oriented.
"Marriage is not the be all and end all of her life. Men are a little shaken up by this. The transformation has been all too sudden for the man in India who has not been able to adjust to this in Indian women."
A career was the last thing on Kuthiala's mind when she won the Miss India crown in 1975. In fact, as she explains, she was so focused on her marriage that when she arrived in London for the Miss World catwalk, she treated the event as an excuse for a holiday.
Still striking at 49, Kuthiala told rediff.com, "When I came for Miss World, I didn't want to win because I would not have been able to get married."
That's why when the judges asked what her ambition was, she tamely replied, "To be a good housewife."
"It was the worst thing I could have said. Then they asked me why I was there and I said, 'It's for the sake of my country.'
"Today there's far more money involved. In those days it was just a fun thing, you didn't go in with a killer instinct. It wasn't a stepping stone to anything big. The change started after Aishwarya and Sushmita won the Miss World.
Now most of the girls are assembly line products. You can't tell one from the other. Nothing sets them apart, there is no individuality."
Why Kuthiala decided to make the change from domestic goddess to career woman remains a personal issue, although there are plenty of hints about what influenced her choices post marriage.
"I was married into a very orthodox set up," explains the Ambala-born beauty.
"It was like going into the dark ages, they were Rajput paharis, the men were segregated from the women completely and we women had to clean the floors with cow dung, not allowed to read, write or paint.
"Eventually, I just moved out of that."
Her husband has been very supportive, she emphasises, so has her 23-year-old son, Nipun, who shares his parents' homes in Shimla and Gurgaon.
Most of all, she gets a buzz from a VIP list of non-family supporters, including the likes of Shah Rukh Khan, Khushwant Singh and Shobha De.
"I don't normally paint men, but the only departure from the norm has been that I painted Shah Rukh and that's because he is riveting," Kuthiala cooes.
"He is my role model. I find him so amazing, he's like a computer brain, he's very quick, witty, driven and talented. He's so nice, down to earth and normal and so like today's young generation.
"There is no arrogance, none of that 'Oh I'm a star and I have to cultivate an aura.'. I loved him in Asoka. The whole get up was so artistic.
"I didn't make him sit for me, I used photographs and then when I showed him the painting, he was so amazed, saying, 'I'm a little like a woman here.
"Also when I gave him the invite and showed him the painting, he said 'We've met before. I've talked to you, I've heard you.' I couldn't think where.
"Then he asked me if I had a show at the ITC Sheraton and 'did you leave a message on my mobile.'
"I was so impressed. Who remembers, who cares and especially when you're the number one star of the country. So there is something very special about him.
"He's so good when you sit with him and talk to him. He's so focused and all there with you."
The list of Indian VIPs that Kuthiala knows tumbles from her lips like extracts from a Who's Who.
The only names she is cagey about identifying are the astrologers who have predicted her fame and success, even going so far as to tell her that she will one day enter the Rajya Sabha.
"Everything that has been predicted for me has come true," Kuthiala says without any embarrassment.
"Once I entered 40 my life zoomed upwards. Tons of astrologers have predicted this, that I would enter the Rajya Sabha, that I would make it very big at the international level. People who don't believe in astrology are the biggest idiots in the world. How could they not?"