Liz, Me and Jodhpur

You would wonder why the header ran something like that, as if Liz Hurley and I ever knew each other or something! Well I happen to be there in Jodhpur at the time of her Wedding. I was still in the army and the Army Cantonment is just next door to Umaid Bhavan Hotel where the Wedding took place.

I am writing this post not for the Wedding which tabloids and newspapers all over the world had harped on since the last so many days. But for the hack (or whatever journalists these days are called?) who would butt in the internet cafe where I come to upload this blog and disturb everyone.

I never had a secret craving for anything white so I never bothered to ask her name. She would come inside the Cafe with an Indian friend, who despite his best accent training and perhaps wasting his father's long hauled fortune staying in England, thought he spoke fine Anglicised English or that thang you call Cockney but ended up sounding like some poor hijdas trying to make his words come out with a nasal twang.....

They always chatted loudly and disturbed everyone. They never noticed the looks of disdain and irritation on the face of the surfers. From the day Liz landed in Jodhpur till the day she left Blondie, that is what I knew her as, haunted the Cafe and disturbed everyone of us who were too polite to even tell her not to talk so loud.

Blondie committed a a faux pas and went blue in the face. Once, after filing her story and mailing it to her editor in England, she got so excited and gave the owner of the Cafe a ten rupees tip, thinking perhaps it was a nice way of saying, "Thanks for all the assistance rendered". The owner of the Cafe, a self respecting man in his late fourties said, " No thank you I don't require it". Blondie was too embarassed to look anywhere and turned around and seeing a boy (who didn't look like someone who would refuse), thrusted the tenner in his pockets and left quietly.

Well folks it is not that I was happy she was shown her place by the owner of the Cafe. But the apparent lack of knowledge about cultures or rather the misconception foriegners have of us is so appalling. It wouldn't have taken so much to have asked from her Indian friend the niceties of the place or land she has arrived to chase a story. Or would you blame the Indian friend?