from my fellow blogger Kaddele:

A Guide to All Things Shashi
including Shirts, Skirts, Poetry and Mushrooms.

Three Parts available today. Read it. Like it. Comment it.

Teil 1:
Teil 2
Teil 3

Have you read it? No? Then -read it - its interesting.

What Do you think? Are there many Non-Desi people watching Bollywood & Co.? And, one more important point of view: Is there cultural mix between desi ones and others? Or do both parts stay alone without connecting to each other by the same passion? For me, living in rural germany there is no chance to get many contacts to a desi audience - there is none. No indian store, the next indian restaurant far away (but worth the way) and so on. So no discussions about movies with insiders by origin.
Should Bollywood try to get non-desi audiences? Should they try to make movies interesting for non-desi audiences? In a world the movie income overseas become more and more important that looks interesting. But - will we love such movies made for us?

….Although to be honest I am excited about the t-shirt. Seriously, there will be t-shirts.

So I’m back home in the US, and while it offers comforts like my dog, a coffee maker I know how to use, and my very own bed, it is sadly lacking in crazed German-speaking Bollywood fans. I know, I know, that’s no way to live. These people are fantastic - and completely out of their minds (I know they will take this in the complimentary and awe-struck spirit in which it is meant).

Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen any of my home-town friends yet, but I’m a little down in the dumps today, missing all these new friends and feeling very disconnected from everything. This happens most of the times I travel, and on the plane from London to Chicago yesterday I found myself wondering what nationality has to do with one’s sense of where one belongs - and then quickly decided that it must vary from person to person and that it is perfectly okay to feel that you belong in many different places but with a certain special type of people, and people can of course be located wherever. Home is where the heart is, and one’s heart can be in many places - with many people, that is - at one time. At least, mine can. And is. Anyway, I think the Google translation of Paint It Pink’s post about going home says it best: “Why does one have to say good-bye to dear humans always so soon? Menno. The world is unfair and bad.”

Speaking of translation…my goodness, is my German ever not up to snuff. Many of the finer points of the weekend’s conversations were lost on me, which at first made me really sad, because clearly these Deutsch-wallahs were having a fiercely fun time. So I mostly just tried to listen as carefully as possible and didn’t join in conversations because I couldn’t, and quickly I began to fret that I was missing out on most of the fun, that everyone probably thought I was a sad-sack wallflower, and, most importantly, that I wasn’t going to be able to get to know these wonderful people. But even with my language barrier, I quickly picked up on the very strong sense of high-quality community - and realized how the love of Bollywood is an impressively effective lingua franca. (And special thanks to Eduardo, Koi, Babsi [the actress one; there was so much of Babsis at this event] Kaddele, Maini, Birgit, and of course dearest Michael, who took special English-language care of me when I probably looked lonely and sad, too frightened to try to jump into the other swirling conversations.) While I may have missed the details, I know, thanks to all the other kinds of interactions there were, that I was a full part of the heart of the weekend.

To give you some idea of how much fun we had, and why I’m sad not to be there anymore - and believe me, I had a blast even when I wasn’t able to understand what was going on - here are some pictures, just a few out of the over 400 currently in the Bollywood Blogger Meeting Flickr pool.

Koi, who knows Hindi properly and is a professor and a mad, mad dancer; Maria; Babasko; the edge of Michael; Marco; and me

Koi, Maria, Michael, Marco, and me - I think we’re dancing to “Kaike Paan Banaraswala,” which Michael suggested as a way to life out spirits after the big pile of KANK in the awards results put a damper on our mood.

Maini, who will soon be starting up Bollyfun in Norway; Kaddele, in whose esteemed pink -painted presence I was honored to spend some time; and me

Michael, me, and Babasko - whatever it is we’re doing, clearly the sentiment is “Vah! Vah!”

People who read my regular blog (okay, blogs) may know that I have had a long-standing plan to get all of my favorite people to move to my town (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, population ek crore, surrounded by soybean fields and hog farms and a good two hours from any major city). It’s becoming increasingly obvious that that isn’t going to work, so I’m formulating a new plan, which is that all my favorite people who do not want to move to Chambana should move to Mumbai. Some of us have even dreamed up a way to make it work: we’re going to try to sell an Indian tv channel on our reality show idea, which is that a gaggle of foreigners live in the beachfront house from Om Jai Jagadish and work at making a Bollywood movie. Cameras follow us around as we pitch the idea to directors and stars, learn about how to make costumes, work out the choreography, fight over who gets one-on-one coaching time with Saif, etc.

Thank you so much to everyone or being your fine, funny, loveable selves and for putting up with my pathetic language skills and embracing me - literally - because of this crazy love that we could somehow tell that we all shared, no matter the language. I am a lucky girl indeed to know people like you and to be a part of a community that enjoys each other so much.

Pictures at the Flickr Group

Crossposting from Baba Aur Bollywood

Location. Check.
Movie. Check.
Program. Check.
Logo. Check.

Lets roll.

I can´t believe it. A week from now it will all be a pleasant memory. Come saturday, March 10th the Bollywoodblogger Meeting will rock the city.

Here is the final program with all the important infos (here the program in german)

Thanks to Judith and Birgit for the great help and the awesome logo and layout.

So, if you happen to be in Vienna next saturday, be sure to drop in. You just don´t want to miss this.

P.S. Birgit entrusted her Carom board in my care. (She´ll be going to India for 6 months end of march) We´ll set it up at the meeting. And I hereby challenge all of you.

Yay, it´s award season.

Marco the Swiss Bollywood guruji of the german-speaking BW-community has just opened the polls for the 4th annual central european bollywood awards. So if you´re located in Central Europe and can read German you´re eligible to participate.

Just go there. Register. And vote!

All you other wonderful people. Sorry. But you still can get to the nomination list here. And if you like, give a prediction here.

Update 2/20/2007: The results will be presented at the evening event on March 10th at the Bollywoodbloggers Meeting in Vienna.

Don´t think that only because the last update concerning the First Pan-European/International Bollywoodbloggers Meeting in Vienna is from a week ago, there was no planning work going on behind the scenes.

So here is the first draft of the schedule for Saturday March 10th 2007.

Remember: First rule of the 1st PEIBBM. It´s all about having fun. So timetables are approximate values only!

Since some of you will arrive in Vienna on Saturday morning I will have an open house with lots of coffee for those poor red-eye-flight gals like Maini and whoever wants to join. Around noon the idea is to grab some lunch and since its so nice there we´ll head to the Naschmarkt.

At 14.00 we´ll get into serious business and meet to watch Bommarillo. The place we´ll be doing that has WLAN so expect some heavy live-blogging.

Next point on the agenda is 18.00 where we´ll meet (at an until now undisclosed) Indian restaurant and at 20.00 we´ll have some cool stuff coming up (again undisclosed as of now *wavesatmarco*) So hang in there. It is only a few days until I will be able to come up with more details.
PS: Participants get in shape. There might be press coverage too….

Congrats for your launch of an online Bollywood Award Vote. But there is still another one voted by online audience - the annual central european bollywood awards. And this year everything will be better at Marcos Awards, won’t it? Which award will be the more important one?

Crossposting from Baba Aur Bollywood:
There is no way I can fall asleep with the storm knocking with a speed of 75mph/120kmh on our windows (and we have lots of big windows) So why don´t I shoot forward and tell you what Michael, Beth and I have come up with.
There will be the first Pan-European/International-Bollywoodblogger-Meeting in Vienna on Saturday March 10th. And you´re all invited.

Kyun? Because we can. And because Beth will be visiting Vienna then. And since that is a very special occation and calls for a celebration anyway and since Michael invited himself too, we thought, hey, why not meet all of us?

We don´t have an agenda yet. But what we have is ek pura din, the whole saturday. And that means we will talk, eat, drink, watch (a) movie(s) and party. Plainly speaking a bunch of nice people with a vast interest in indian cinema (yes, it´s not BW-exclusive) will meet a bunch of nice people with a vast interest in indian cinema. Sounds fun, hai-naa?

So far I already have almost definite consents from some very cool people and I hope you will have time to show up too!

I´ll keep you posted with any news concerning accommodation and program and what else I might not think about right now (while the bloody wind throws around my -as I thought- heavily secured flowerpots). Oh and fire away with any questions you might have. Haan, email bhi, if you don´t want it public. babasko [at] gmail [.] com

UPDATE 1/31/2007: Yaaahooooo! Great feedback and already an impressive (if a bit heavy on the germanspeaking side) line-up. Beth. Michael. Marco. Maini. Oliver. Kaddele. Maria. Birgit. Maja and “my” complete Viennese BW gang.

ad Accommodation: If you´re short on funds. Don´t worry. As long as you make it to Vienna, we´ve got a couple of sofas for you (Not that there´s going to be much time for sleep)

UPDATE 2/3/2007: I´ve posted a suggestion for the meeting program on my own blog.