Aruni Rajapakse - Miss Sri Lanka 2007

“As you may have seen, my happiness and emotion took the better of me as I started to cry with happiness. Though I was a bit scared I was ecstatic about the fact that I won. When Maria was crowned 1st runner up I knew that I had won the pageant for Jackie (Miss Sri Lanka 2006) came and crowned me from behind…”

“Although I live in Colombo, my home town is Kandy and I schooled at Swarnamali Maha Vidyala in Kandy. Ever since I was small I was interested in modelling and then later as I grew older, I was keen on taking part in the Miss Sri Lanka contest for Miss Universe.”

























When asked whether she had prior experience in taking part in beauty pageants, she replied that she had won the Udrata Manike in the year 2004 and Capri Queen in 2005. “Although I wanted to take part sooner in the Miss Sri Lanka pageant I decided to take my time and gain more experience before participating in it.” So how supportive were her parents? “At the start my father wasn’t very supportive because some of his relations didn’t like the idea of me being a model for we are Kandyan , but later on he changed his mind and now he’s very supportive but most of all my mother and sister are the ones that have been right behind me, supporting me.”

Talking more about the pageant she also added, “I also won several mini titles such as Himalaya Miss Talent, Veet Smoothest, Reebonn Miss Beautiful Skin and finally Hilton Miss Personality. For the Miss Talent pageant I performed a Kandiyan dance for a song by Chandra Lekha. Since I had taken dancing lessons when I was at school and this was for the Miss Sri Lanka I thought a dance act would be more suitable” she said .

So what does she hope to do in the future?

“My future plans are to continue with my modelling career which I have been doing for the past two years and also to be successful internationally as well. Of course I am looking forward to going to Mexico to represent my country in the Miss Universe 2007 pageant and I will try to serve Sri Lanka to the best of my ability….” By Sherwani Synon for Daily Mirror