Our trip to Northern India began today – Nov 4th Election Day! When we left at 2:00pm, the voting was still going on. We are really interested in the results and don’t know when we will find out. The trip started with some VERY auspicious moments.
When we arrived home last night, from our last dinner in the States at Campanile, there was a large envelope attached to our gate. We opened it to find a large Proclamation singed by our Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge and Los Angeles Mayor Villaragosa. It was a Proclamation of Friendship between Los Angeles and its Sister City of Mumbai (Bombay). Through fund raising events we raise money that is sent to charities in Mumbai. Cathy and I are active in the Mumbai Sister City organization. We have the proclamation with us and plan to deliver it personally to the mayor of Mumbai.
We arrived at the airport and walked to our gate, Cathy noticed someone sitting on the floor, using a laptop. She said “That looks like Aamir Khan” and it was! Aamir Khan is a MAJOR Bollywood actor, one of the biggest and most serious actor / directors – in fact his latest movie is India’s entry for Best Foreign Film for the 2008 Oscars. We have seen many of his movies including Laagan. Cathy has written about two of his great movies: Rangeela and Rang De Basante in the book on Bollywood that she is writing. He must have noticed us looking at him, and he walked towards us. He introduced himself and we had a great conversation. At the end he gave us his cell phone number and email. He was totally without any pretense. He was happy to pose for a couple of snaps.
Our flight connected via Frankfurt Germany. India is halfway around the world from Los Angeles and some flights, like our last trip go west, and some like this one on Lufthansa go east. The pilot said he would announce election results as he got them. Somewhere, over the Atlantic, in the middle of the night, the flight crew came through the plane serving champagne and telling us Obama had won! They were very happy, as were we. It has been a miserable 8 years under Bush.
In Frankfurt we saw a little of CNN for about 10 minutes, but don’t know how any of the Propositions in California that we care about came out. I am writing this about 2 hours from Kolkata (Calcutta) and will find out all the results when we check-in to our hotel. All three of the Aamir Khan movies listed above are available on NetFlix. Rang de Basante is fantastic, see it! When we travel I always take my laptop so I can Blog. In addition, we bring DVD’s and watch them on these long flights. We watched a Telugu Film (Southern Indian distinct from Bollywood) named Shiva. We also watched a Hindi film - Company. They were both gangster films by one of our very favorite Indian Directors: Ram Gopol Varma. We started but didn’t finish the Bollywood epic: The Ballad of Bhagat Singh about the Indian revolt against the British in the 20’s. Rang de Basante covers the same events but brings them into current Indian politics. It would be great to watch these two movies on consecutive days!
1 comment:
With Tea and little snacks prepared, I had settled in, at 7:00 p.m., for what I thought would be a long election night. The results came in at 8:02 p.m.!!!!
I have made that first "leg of a trip" to Frankfurt myself. Loved it as part of the jump off point to where I was headed.
"It has been a miserable 8 years under Bush."
In 2003, in my website newsletter, I wrote about where we were headed under his presidency. It's uncanny to read it today!!! I'll direct you to it when you get home.
Take care and enjoy.
Marie
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