WHO said there was no Indian contestant in the top five at last weekend's Miss Universe contest?

Yes, Miss India did not even figure in the top 15 at the Las Vegas event... but one of the contestants who came close to winning the crown has Indian blood in her.

Ms Venus Raj, representing the Philippines, finished fourth runner-up. She was born out of wedlock in Qatar to a Filipino mother. The beauty queen's Indian father left her soon after, never to be heard of again.

In the days leading up to the finals, Ms Raj had expressed her desire to meet her father. She told a Filipino website, ABS News.com, that she is still hopeful that she will meet her long-lost father some day.

Having Googled his name and checked out Facebook without luck, she hoped that her performance at the pageant would draw her father's attention and she would be reunited with him.

Her birth records, however, got her into trouble after she won the Miss Philippines contest. It showed that her father was a Filipino and when it was known that she was born out of wedlock and that her father was Indian, she was stripped of her title. It was only after a huge uproar from her fans that the organisers succumbed and reinstated her.

MsRaj said she did not have a hand in the filing of her birth certificate with the erroneous information. The inconsistency was a result of the delayed filing of her birth certificate. She said her aunt filed the document three years after she was born and provided the wrong data to protect her family from embarrassment.

The beauty queen told the media that she learned of the inconsistency only when she was in high school and was applying for a scholarship. She added that it was poverty that prevented her from correcting her official birth records.

MsRaj grew up the hard way. The 22-year-old farm girl from Camarines Sur province simply wanted to build a concrete home for her mother. She lived with her mother in a hut in the middle of a rice field in a town called Bato for 20 years. She once said in an interview that walking on a rice field dike served as early training for her for walking on fashion runways.

"Before, I only dreamed of building my mother a house and finishing my studies. The opportunities that came my way broadened my horizons," she said at a party prior to leaving for Las Vegas.

"I realised I can have bigger dreams. If I work hard, I can make them come true. Maybe if I win (Miss Universe), my mother would not be the only one to get a house, perhaps other needy people would get homes as well," she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer before the contest.

Despite the economic hardship, Ms Raj graduated with top honours in communication arts, with a major in journalism, with the help of a local scholarship.

She now works with the Philippines' department of environment and natural resources as an information assistant. But all that could change with her grabbing international attention. This is the best showing by a Filipino beauty in several years at a top contest.

Her fans were certain she would win the crown. In fact she led the online poll put up by the Miss Universe pageant organisers. So what went wrong?

It could have been her answer to the question asked by actor William Baldwin.

"What is one big mistake that you've made in your life and what did you do to make it right?" was his question.

Cheered on by the audience, MsRaj relied: "You know what, sir in my 22 years of existence I can say that there is nothing major major, I mean, problem that I have done in my life. Because I am very confident with my family, with the love that they are giving to me. So, thank you so much that I am here, thank you thank you so much."

She may not have got it right with the answer but she is on the right track to stardom back home, with the Malacanang Palace calling it "a bright spot in an otherwise sad day" in the Philippines.

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