This article was written in between blogs as an email. Am modifying it to be bloggish. Hope you like it (although, since most folks who I know were on the email and didnt read that, i dont expect more success here ;)
As the missus sleeps peacefully on our flight back from macau, I am attempting to pen down some thoughts from our adventure. Its been a few years since our first trip to vegas, the original sin city, and we now believed ourselves to be slightly better traveled and hence less prone to wide eyed wonder and gollywow-ness. I’m glad to say that we were wrong. If las vegas is sin city, Macau’is sweet sin city with a thick Portuguese accent. And we loved it to say the least. For our own rather diverse and almost mutually exclusive reasons.
One thing we both loved equally was the beautiful approach to the cute little airport. The runway is entirely on the sea and you get lovely views of the islands on descent and eventually a (steel) birds eye view of the hotels on Taipa island. Taipa is to Macau what aundh and kondhwa are to sadashiv peth, newer, shinier but missing that special something that makes the city what it is. In Pune, i am perhaps more grateful than sorry that we in aundh lack puneite charteristics like “joshi ithe rahat nahi. Bell wazwun pata vicharay che 5 rupay ghetle zatil.” (Joshi’s don’t live here, if you ring the bell and ask us, we will charge you INR 5.)
In Macau though, there is a vintage Portugese vibe to the old part that shiny Taipa lacks. I truly wish the Portuguese had held on to more of the world in their heyday than the brits. Better football, food and attitude to life in general. Compare Goa with London for taste. And this email would have been in Portuguese. Much softer language. None of that bollocks or stiff upper lip stuff.
But anyway, let me return to our main topic. Macau and the IIFA award ceremony that we were there to see. We got to the Venetian to collect our tickets and walked from reception through the casinos to the Cotai arena ticketing arena. If you thought that sentence was long, you must bear with me, because the venetian is the size of a small planet and the walk was infinitely long. But hey, already paisa vasulness was on the anvil. Nayana, our resident celebrity radar spotted a rather dopey, tall bearded gent who we then identified as the one, the only Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra (henceforth referred to as ROPM). Yeah baby Yeah. we spoke to him for a bit, about how dilli 6 was awesome but he got a bad rap for it and how RDB was legendary. His wife seemed much more receptive than him, possibly because she wasnt the one smoking the good stuff. But hey as we stood there, Shaimak Davar and Boman Irani also turned up and since we were nonchalantantly chatting up ROPM, we said a hello and felt rather stardusted.
Anyways, cutting a long story medium (short is this PVG-MFM, IIFA , MFM-PVG. For medium keep reading. Thank you for your patience), we were back at 5 pm by the “green carpet” waiting for the stars to make their scheduled walk into the arena. Why green carpet and not red? – I think some folks are going in the wrong direction with the green revolution, but thats just me.
The scheduled time for stars to walk by was 5 pm to 7 pm. Pause. Pause. Paaaaauuuuusseeeee.
6 pm: We saw Raima Sen walk out of the hall dressed like our Shanghai aiyi (househelp maid). Just to be clear, our aiyi is not much of a fashionista. After 15 minutes of being wannabe-paparazzi you really begin to see the world in two shades. On the carpet sashaying/waddling/shuffling in waving/shaking hands/signing autograph and on the barrier fighting to find a great spot so when david dhawan/abhishek/arjun rampal/priyanka walks by, you can get a foto/touch hand/get autograph/throw sack over and kidnap ala Borat.
Another very disconcerting thing happens to half fans of bollywood such as us. We dont know all the celebs, so we arnt sure if we should take a picture or not. We used the following thumbrule. “if we can recognize, we will photograph/throw sack over, else we will look away.” Not easy. Not easy at all. We couldnt tell Resul Pokutty from Prabhudeva’s brother, whatever his name is. It was the beard, i swear. And we say all Chinese look the same. Tch Tch Indeed.
While hanging out at the green carpet fan enclosure, we learnt a few interesting things. We learnt that the Nepali Gorkha’s basically are the main security family of Macau. One such Gorkha dude kept walking by saying “shobhji” type of stuff to a group of lowrung off duty Nep security boys who decided the best spot to hang out was next to us. More on them later. But the walkie-talkie shobji dude told us that “shobh lok to aobhi aobhi wapas gaya room ko” at 6:15 pm. No chance of anybody but the flunks and organizers walking around for the next hour or so. You can take the indian outside the IST timezone, but you cant take the ISTness out of the Indian. This is probably why the show is not scheduled for live telecast.
Anyways, we couldn’t relinquish our spot in the enclosure, so we stayed. It was a subtle shoulderpush battle between me and aforesaid nep flunk guards. I would gain an inch, then some flunk would walk past and nep boys would get excited like electrons subjected to high temperature/pressure or magnetic field. <My apologies, I’m reading a Brief History of Time>. As a result, some ground would be lost. And we went round and round. But hey, this is what neighboring countries do right. Keep pushing till we get some more land. I was just a cog in the wheel. We won. Mera Bharat Mahan Shobhji!
At approximately 7:30 pm, the stars started making their way down the aisle. It was totally worth it. And this is me, a non-bollywood fan saying it was worth it.
Suchitra Pillai of DCH fame walked by first, we got a good fotograph and nep boys had no idea who she was, so it was all quite manageable. Laaaaarge pause. The Venetian sent out clowns, jugglers and guys on stilts. One clown was Nep. Obviously he struck up a conversation with our boisterous neighbors. And he was a pantomime. You cannot begin to imagine the excitement this caused with my shoulderpush opponents. Clowns began to terrify Nayana and me at this point. Thankfully he went away after about 10 minutes of freaking us out. Riteish Deshmukh and Boman Irani then made their appearance. They were hosting the evening along with Lara Dutta. Walked past quickly with a few waves. They were followed by a surprise entrant – Quick Gun Murugan, in orange trousers. It doesn’t get more exciting than this. We shouted out “Wondu Sambhar Apramanii. Mind IT!!!”(should have said “Modale Sambhar aaprama ne….”) and he was so moved by this that he then moved towards us, gave me a warm handshake, which said, “oh my God, you are the only fool apart from me who remembers that line”. Resul Pokutty walked past, very peacefully and before we could figure out whether he was who we thought he was, I think he was inside discussing sound editing with the guy who did Terminator and Gladiator, his peers for winning the Oscar. Shame on us. Really. Shame on us. I wish he had a badge or something though. Then Shweta Salve of Jhalak Dikhlaja or Nach Baliye fame walked by. Not much excitement from the shoulderpush brigade, except for her dress. They don’t watch Sony I guess.
One of the highlights of the green carpet for the evening, Pradeep Rawat came in. If you don’t know who Pradeep Rawat is, that’s perfectly ok. Think Ghajini. He is the eponymously named bad guy. In real life, he was extremely sweet and shook hands with almost everyone. Unbelievable. Fame has definitely not come easy to this man, and he is happy to share his happiness with all the fans. GO BRO!. Anushka Sharma from Rab ne followed. She walked past quickly, a couple of Miss India waves. Shreya Ghoshal also walked by rather quickly. She got way more cheers than poor Resul.
Then 3 elderly folks walked in, and the crowd was cheering for the lady, who we knew was an actress in the 70s/80s. An update from my colleague – She is Kiran Juneja, immortalized by her performance as “Main Ganga Hoon” in Mahabharata. Accompanied by Ramesh Sippy, maker of Sholay!! Whee ho. And I missed my one chance to try out my Gabbar imitation, in case he intended to make one again, just to teach RGV how its done.
Lara Dutta then walked through, perhaps initiating the beginning of the big ticket stars! Wow. She was uber-hot. Fairly tongue tied here. This effect stayed for most of the evening because film ishtars are truly larger than life in real life. More beautiful, taller, thinner! Wow. Did I say that already. Wow.
Asin, of Ghajini fame walked by. Not a big fan, but Nayana got a great snap of her. We had split responsibilities as so – Sam, engage nep boys in shoulderpush battle and give clear space to Nayana to take photos of celebs. Nayana could have handled my job but I couldn’t do hers, because she has surgeon-steady hands to take pictures, where as I have “recuperating from drug abuse” shaky butterfingers. And, I’m not even recuperating from drug abuse.
Kabir Bedi then came along and was very gracious to shake hands and take a pic with us. ROPM (refer top of email), having smoked some more of the good stuff, was back. Dopey once again. Ila Arun and daughter walked by. Ila is cool to say the least. Ashutosh Gowarikar and wife also very graciously posed for us.
And then, in the second most obscure of appearances of the evening, the actor who played Guruji in either Hum Log or Circus walked by. How do you cheer the guy on? You want to, but you cant. But we did some whoo, whee ho etc stuff. Dino Morea walked by. Umang Kumar, we think, walked by. Half fame is a terrible terrible thing.
Sonam super cute Kapoor walked past and her face is such that you think she is going to start saying Masakali Masakali right there. Raima Sen walked by. Now hot. Full marks, make up artist.
Next up, HAHAHAHHAA Sreesanth was here. And the crowd chanted Bhajji over and over again. Ridiculous. As is Sreesanth. The slumdog middle set of kids were there and we got pics with all of them. Irrespective of whatever the Bacchans and Aamir Khans say, Slumdog was awesome!! And the kids were really really sweet. Then Kunal Kohli walked by. I know him from somewhere, just cant place where. Thanks to colleague, i know he made Hum Tum and some other chick flicks under the Yash Raj banner. Shreyas Talapade. Vinay Pathak. Go Vinay, Go Vinay!!! Peter Andre, of “oooooooo mysterious girl” and “oooooo SIX PACK” fame walked by. Did not show six-pack, for which I remain grateful. On his arm was Sophie Haque, the item girl with the big……eyes.
Then, in one of the cool appearances of the evening, ravishing Raveena Tandon walked by. Classy and cool. No doubt still a super mast mast cheez. Cheesy, I know, but I couldn’t resist. Sharad Kapoor, of TV and Lakshya fame walked by. Once again, recollection came after he went and hence we were left feeling slightly “oops, i did a Resul again” guilty.
The highlight of the evening, the Bacchans made their entry and the crowds went wild, self included. And are they cool or what. Jaya-ji and Amitji first up, followed by Ash & Abhishek. I had planned on loudly shouting “AMITABHACHAN” ala little potty-covered Jamal, but something about the guy just makes you shout Amitji! Amitji! He is the man. Ash is unreal. Not all animals are equal. Not by a long shot.
Minisha Lamba is a little tea pot, short and cute. Farhan Akhtar is so cool, he doesn’t need a refrigerator. Arjun Rampal shook Nayana’s hand while I oogled at Mehr Jessia. The original Indian supermodels. Wow. Also, Milind Soman walked by looking like the best possible “Made in India” product ever, but we couldn’t take any pictures. Please call Nayana to ask why. HAHA.
Rahul Bose and Shefali Chayya walked in, dressed super cool. Neha Dhupia walked in dressed in what can best be described as a giants grey sock with a hole for the neck. No No. Tusshar Kapoor was there. AAAAOOO to you too and wheres Jeetu? . Mugdha Godse of Fashion fame walked in, with Madhur Bhandarkar, but we didn’t notice him. Sorry Madhur (ji) <The ji stuff is uber cool with bollywood>
Genelia was next. She is known more as Aditi thanks to JTYJN (even I’m too old for this acronym stuff – it’s the teenybopper movie with Imran Khan. Produced by Aamir.) All the crowds could only scream Aditi. Perhaps she has identity issues now.
One line of space purely to capture the awesomeness of the next celeb to walk down. Priyanka Chopra. No more needs to be said.
Director no. 1 David Dhawan was next. Kaka made an appearance looking more likely to kick non-marathi manus out of Maharashtra (I think that was Bal Thakerays kurta) than say “babumoshai”. See the pics. Why saffron Kaka? Why????
Next up, DJ Aqeel keeping it real. Later on, when we walked out on the show, we found him playing high stakes poker. Very James Bond-esque. Respekt!
Sanjay Khan and random entourage arrived next, with a dude we know in Shanghai, and up until that point though was basically a fake. Not anymore Don. ;)
Zaid Khan, who later made a rather large scale fool of himself. Everyone from the movie “Mission Istanbul” needs to be tested for lack of braincells. Don’t see it, its a blackhole for grey cells. Wife and self were about to win the Nobel prize before we saw it. And now….alas.
Bipasha Basu walked past, looking as cool as cool can be. She was awarded Minister for Environment by Boman. He accused her of causing Global Warming. We agree. Tanvi Asmi, Shabana Asmi and Javed Akhtar walked through, looking calm and classy. Does anybody know if they are sisters? I cant be sure. (Sisters-in-law, mama has educated me) Anil Kapoor, Akshaye Khanna and cute babe. Anil Kapoor and Boman Irani would later poke some fantastic jokes at each other. Kangana Ranaut may not be a great speaker, but she is unreal and if there was a Snow White movie, she would be ideal.
And now the main show – HRITHIK ROSHAN!! SUZANNE KHAN!!! Guess who shook Hrithiks hand people! Yaaa man!! Yours truly. My favorite hrithik/farhan movie will always be Lakshya.
In what I believe were huge bloopers, Diya Mirza and Pooja Batra (I had brief chat with her about Fergusson College – Thanks Foi :)) walked in after the Roshan family. We only saw them because we were having dinner next to the carpet enclosure and we were hoping that Katrina would make an appearance. Sorry, Nakul, she didnt show up. That was the end of that. We then proceeded into the show.
The next part will feature a few snippets from the show and other exciting things in Macau like the town square and the Manchester United experience. As a special bonus, there will be a write up on our terrifying return into the Mainland and our agonizing departure from Shanghai.
