Think you can see beyond the beauty? Those breathtaking eyes, pouting lips and fair skin? Think you can place aside realms of poetry to reach the incisive brain that lies within? If you can, you are on a face-off - not with the 'glitz, glamour and show business' persona that the world assumes is Aishwarya Rai - but with (surprise!) order, reason, logic…. Behind her every word lies a well-ordered thought process that disseminates, analyses and processes information to emit, what you and I would term simple communication, but which through her lips, fall like pearls of wisdom.

The pace at which things have transplanted in her life have contributed to moulding her. And she lives by the belief that the natural order of human life is determined by its ebb and flow - you just have to wait your turn and ride each wave. Such profound wisdom from one so young? Thanks to her formative years - basic education and family upbringing, because therein lies, "my understanding of life and people". School and moral science? "Yes, the one we scoffed at and said, 'Oh my God! Here we go again.' Learning classical music and Bharata Natyam have shaped my body language."

She came up against the first rough eddy in standard 10, when she didn't quite attain the required marks. Adolescent Ash then learnt that you cannot live according to other people's expectations. The next lump she had to swallow was the loss of the Miss India title by a .02 margin to Sushmita Sen.

But the highs soon followed, one after the other. Offers for commercial modelling pursued her doggedly and she worked hard. "Even when I considered modelling a hobby - I was (pause) bloody professional." With the Miss World experience came quick maturity, so what sits on those slim shoulders is not just a pretty 'ash-brown' head but, should we say, the solemnity of Solomon?