My brush with Bollywood

Hey everybody!  How's life treating you?  Things have been quiet on the le Roux front lately. 

André had, by all accounts, a wonderful skydiving trip to Dubai and arrived back home very early on Sunday morning.  As all worthy hunter-gatherers should, and, I suspect, mostly to draw attention away from the electronic toys he purchased for himself, he returned with wonderful goodies for the wife: a big bottle of my favourite perfume – Christian Dior's Dune; (For some reason) one large Toblerone and three small ones (One was promptly paid forward to a flu-riddled Emily - hope it made you feel better?); and lastly, three glossy magazines (Marie Claire, Femina and Cosmo).

The perfume made me happy, the varied size choccies made me giggle but the magazines made me laugh that deep, super raucous belly laugh that only André can cause.    Why?  Well...  Uhm...  I love magazines and eagerly ripped the covering off the first one, then the second and, smelling the proverbial rat, soon discovered that all three magazines were the Indian versions!  I believe I can now participate in a Bollywood game show and do relatively well. 

Actually, the magazines turned out to be interesting and rather informative.  I just need to figure out the Rand/Rupee exchange rate and I can order myself a couple of colourful Sari's for summer! 

 

On a more serious note, though, as it turns out, I enjoyed the magazines, probably because they were so different from the ones I normally read.  Yes, the usual suspects featured in all three magazines:  fashion, hair and beauty, and varying levels of sexual content, Femina being the most sedate and Cosmo living up to its reputation with the most risqué articles and one most enlightening diagram. *Blush* Also, as was to be expected, articles on women's rights and crimes against women was very prominent, it being those type of magazines.   The personal accounts of hardship and violence was heartbreaking and very difficult to read, but also offered insights into a culture I knew very little about. 

 

But on a much shallower note, what I really enjoyed most was the advertisements: strolling through the virtual shopping malls that jumped up from the colourful pages, seeing the different product ranges available, different dishes and recipes in the foodie sections and particularly the exotic jewellery advertised was most pleasing!

 
Other than wanting to see the Taj Mahal, I have never had a hankering to visit India, but now, after my brush with Bollywood, I can see a visit to places like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata, to name but a few, in our near future.  Thanks, Love!