a dramatic change of scene yesterday for us in Bengaluru

You must be wondering what I am up to here! Well thanks to Laksminarayan and Raji we had a dramatic change of scene yesterday away from carpenters, painters and so on!

Lakshmi was invited for this do at the Royal Orchid's by its owner Mr. Baljee, a very nice hotel with great ambiance and he included us as his guests. He only knew that it was a music program with Mahesh Bhat.

We later found out that it was a preview of music of Mukesh Bhat's movie Jashnn, claimed by the producers to be a movie 'For every Nobody who wants to be a Somebody'. Anyway I have no plans to be a 'somebody'.


Lakshmi is 'always on time', part of his German culture and a rare quality among us Indians, so we were there at 7.40 pm, a bit late by his standards, but it was Friday traffic! We were ushered in to small hall which was empty. It was also too cold for us ex-Bangkokian's, so we walked out and in to the garden and it still felt cold. Bangalore weather is really amazing. We need to wear warmer clothes till we get acclimatised.

As we saw that the hall was getting slowly filled, we went back and took our seats. We then waited (Of course!) for the Chief Guest Mahesh Bhat. We were served cocktails as well as snacks that were veg and tasty. The spicy peas were, I am sure, from Bangkok! We later had an excellant buffet dinner outside the hall.

Even these youngsters waited patiently, I did not know they were the Stars of the movie and the one facing us, a familiar face, is the music director Toshi.

The show was on as soon as Mahesh Bhat arrived, about an hour and half later, and I was impressed by his fluent speech in English. Then all the actors spoke in turn, also in English, and they did well! I specially liked the way Shahana held her own as an actor and did not go 'jee-jee' all the time while acknowledging the great support they received from Mahesh Bhat. I did not see anyone touching Mahesh's feet!

At one point during Shahana speech Maheshjee kissed her on the cheek! I was shocked and would have filed a case against him, a la Richard Gere, if only I had caught him in the act on my cell phone camera!

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The event manager chatting with the Chief Guest. I noticed that the singers wanted the sound to be louder, while she was gesturing at the same time to the technicians to lower it from the rear of the room! Very confusing and funny!

The press photographers took a picture of Raji and Tara and even asked them for their names. I had hoped see their picture on papers the next day. Not on the ones I read! But here is my picture of Tara and Raji!

We all felt that the music system was better and the program better organised (Ahem!) at Viji Khalid's party, which Raji and Lakshmi attended, on May 16 in Bangkok. ( You will read about it, hopefully very soon!)

This is from Deccan Herald. Mahesh Bhat claims that Shahana is the new Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi. We must go and see the movie to see if he is really right!

This and the rest of the pictures below are from the paper 'DNA'. A pity we were not invited to this event! It was at the offices of the news paper.

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