9am:
We wake up early, before 10am in an Ayurvedic resort — a place where we have to be peaceful and quiet. They are very punctual here; they serve us vegetarian food, sometimes we get chicken, but mostly it’s all detoxifying food. The rice has some kind of purple dots on it.
10am:
For breakfast we are served fresh fruits and eggs of our choice. The tea and coffee here doesn’t taste like actual tea and coffee.
11am:
We go for a stroll on the beach and talk about the video, and then we head to the Veet Academy. They have booked the whole mansion. It is pretty awesome! It has gorgeous views, and wherever we go we see beautiful beaches, and lots of girls. As soon as we enter the mansion, we spot Aamina Sheikh’s daughter playing with a python.
12pm:
As sunlight is the strongest right now, we begin shooting the mansion shots.
3pm:
We hijack all the girls and bring them back to our place!
4pm:
We find ourselves on the beach again — flying kites and playing cricket. We meet an aeronautical engineer, who flew from Sydney to Hong Kong, then Hong Kong to Sri Lanka just because we were coming. This guy is great, so we hang out and party with him. Not that you can do much in an Ayurvedic resort, but we make the most of it.
5pm:
We go for a swim with Fahad Ashraf, director marketing of Reckitt Benckiser. We begin having long, drawn out discussions with him about how the women of this country should evolve and how we want to open schools together. Other than being in Sri Lanka, and shooting a music video, this is the graver reason why Veet and Noori are working together. Fahad explains how for the last three years the competition was becoming meaningless and he wanted to add meaning to the concept. The girls that are being chosen in the competition are regular girls. The idea behind selecting regular people is that you are not choosing them for their appearance, but for completely different reasons. We talk about what else we can do in the future, how to turn this into an institution, and even discuss the future of the girls who don’t win. It’s very important for them to stay connected because it isn’t about winning and losing, it’s all about exploration and transformation — different people, different backgrounds, different stories, and stories cannot just end.
8pm:
We go to Galle. It’s a full moon and there is a large Portuguese party here. Suddenly, Aisha Khan starts feeling sick and we need to take her to the hospital, but we find out that there are no hospitals. No one is sure what is happening to her. We take her home, and she sleeps it off.
12am:
We go back to our room and jam with the guitar. We only have a few night sets. After a while we are hungry but we can’t find junk food. We are seriously craving chips and Pepsi at this point. We decide to make fries ourselves, so we cut the potatoes, only to discover that these weird Ayurvedic potatoes just won’t fry!
1am:
Still awake, waiting for the potatoes to fry…
3am:
Three hours later, finally the fries are ready! After quickly munching down the fries, we finally go to bed, as we have to start the day early tomorrow.
