Mumbai, India – January 24, 2008

Uncle Manu is a doctor. As such he seems to have numerous connections, of which he has kindly taken advantage of for our sake. Today it was a doctor friend, who happened to be the head of neurosurgery at a Mumbai hospital, known to most as ‘Doc’. Doc is the personal doctor to numerous Bollywood personalities, and Doc today was going to a music release party for a Bollywood film called ‘Black & White’. Smita Auntie’s cousin Krishna is the spokesperson for a political party here in Mumbai, so he was going as well. Through this double connection, Doc & Krishna, Evy & I somehow ended up at an ultra private (except for the hundreds of photographers/videographers) music release party at a film centre in Mumbai’s Film City. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and unfortunately neither did our hosts.

First off, what to wear? We asked Minti & Smita Auntie & they suggested jeans & a nice top. We showed them our backpacking wardrobe. So then it was decided to go shopping. First off we were taken to a ‘Western’ style clothing store. It was a little like going to Sears or maybe Walmart for an outfit. We voted no pretty quickly, but Minti & Smita Auntie already looked exhausted with this whole clothing shopping thing. What to do, what to do. We stopped at shop after shop along this apparently famous-for-shopping-road, Lincoln Road, stops that were made all the more awkward by the fact that clothing doesn’t tend to be on display here – it’s folded in neat little piles behind the sales clerk and they whip out the most hideous confections as possibilities and start looking distraught when you turn down polyester strapless dress after polyester strapless dress. Evy & I both leaned toward thinking that our best bet was to wear an Indian top of some sort – both easier to find than nice ‘Western Wear’ and easier to pull off if it was too fancy/casual (we’d just be written off as dumb Westerners who didn’t know what to wear). By this point, the comments we were currently getting from Minti & Smita Auntie had changed. Now they were saying that we needed something fancier with lots of bling. Apparently Bollywood is big on bling. Unfortunately, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be more of a typical film style party, where people dress down to dress up, especially ‘cause it was in the morning – but I couldn’t be sure. Finally we ended up with two sparkly/jeweled Salwaar Kameez’, mine in turquoise & Ev’s in pink. We bought bangles to match. I have such large hands they had to go up to the back top shelf to try to find some that would fit – they were muttering to themselves about overly large Westerners, rather obviously. The shoes were a whole other story in terms of fitting. We had at least 3 shoe store owners give up on us with our size 10 & 11 feet respectively. Their biggest size here would fit a very narrow-footed size 9, maybe. Evy ended up with what she figures are camel-hide man sandles, while I have sparkly gold eyesores which have trailer trash written all over them. It physically hurt to buy them, but hiking shoes &/or flip flops weren’t exactly an option. Smita Auntie cringed when we came home with our only options.

The release party was funny in itself. First we were driven by Uncle Manu’s driver to meet Doc at the hospital. This alone, being driven around like the ueber wealthy, is something we’re totally not used to. Krishna & Doc then took us to the Whistling Woods Film Centre, where it turned out that Doc was the Trustee. We found this out when he wanted to know why we weren’t taking photo after photo – ‘I’m the trustee of this place,’ he said, ‘you’re my guests, do whatever you like.’. So I took some photos. Unfortunately I photographically missed our excursion to the fifth floor (guard to Doc: ‘Excuse me sir, guests aren’t allowed upstairs’ Doc to guard, regally: ‘I’m not a guest. Come girls.’) Once upstairs we met the writer/director of the film in his private office, after having waited for him to get changed in his room.

I also photographically missed the Doc’s obsession with being photographed – he always wanted to be where the action was. Thus we would follow his imperial ‘Come Girls’ and stood wherever he thought the stars would likely come, and eventually ended up waiting by the doorway for their entrance, along with numerous photographers/videographers.

I think our meeting with the Bollywood superstar Anil Kapoor was the most amusing for us. He came up to shake hands with the Doc, who then introduced us as his two Canadian guests. He shook hands with me, then with Ev but then didn’t move. For around 10 long seconds he just stood there, maybe 2 feet in front of us, looking at some spot right above our heads, still holding Ev’s hand. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’ said the Doc. We laughed, and agreed (what else are you supposed to do when they’re standing right in front of you?!). No reaction from the actor, until all the flashbulbs went off, and suddenly we realized he’d been posing while standing there with us, simply waiting for the flashes to go off before moving on. So funny. The rest of the event was fairly typical – short video describing the making of the film, introduction of the key players particularly in relation to the music, singing by the main singer/songwriter. The singing was amazing, & we were really glad that Doc made an effort to get us all a copy. He signed it for us at lunch. I think he’d love to be a movie star.