Two questions on every lip were: Did Priyanka Chopra break the Glass Ceiling?Was she the right woman to choose?

She was the chief guest and speaker at the Penguin Random House’ 11th edition of its famous Penguin Annual Lecture in the packed Sri Fort Auditorium on 26 December. Given that she was the first woman to be invited to speak in a decade of these thought-provoking lectures, UNICEF Ambassador and international cinestar Priyanka Chopra dazzled with her presence but many questioned the Penguin choice, especially publishers and writers.

On her part Priyanka began her lecture by expressing her dislike for the phrase ‘Breaking the Glass Ceiling’. She said, ‘My father always used to ask me why do you want to fit in a glass slipper like Cinderella when you can shatter the glass ceiling. Honestly, I am not very fond of this phrase because it puts everything that I have achieved till now in a box’. She confessed that she had never planned to find a glass ceiling just to break it, ‘I was never on a mission to break or shatter anything, ever. All I wanted was to chase my dreams’.

While enthralling the audience with various anecdotes from her star-studded journey and the obstacles she faced as a smalltown- girl making it grand in life, she highlighted 12 points on being one’s best self and later shatter every other ceiling in one’s own style. She advised everyone to dream, know themselves better and believe that they already have everything as a Brahmastra in their will and determination.

Earlier, prominent and widely loved personalities like Dalai Lama, APJ Abdul Kalam, Amartya Sen, Thomas Friedman, Amitabh Bachchan, Ramachandra Guha, Dan Brown, Jeff Kinney, Ruskin Bond among others had graced Penguin’s prestigious annual lecture.