indian film festival in DC

Just as I was sitting watching MHZ networks showing the chit-chats of Bollywood, I was wondering about the weeekend which is already on the doorsteps. I thought about the previous weekend and the fun we had as a friend of mine came from New York city, Mitesh, to enjoy the Indian Film Festival in Washington DC.

Last friday was a day of lot of fun. We had a get together organized by SALSA (South Asian Law Student Association) in downtown DC (Farragut Square) in an Indian restaurant called "Indian". We had our usual cocktails, some appetizers and then followed by a hour of waiting and chit chatting, we had the dinner. We were only half-way thru the dinner when we started hearing the beats and the loud Punjabi music.... not surprisingly, it was dance time.... with a wonderful mix of brown, black and white students we had a total blast dancing.... a good exercise for normally busy people.... I feel like corporate America should start a tradition of dancing for their over-worked employees ! Everyday for an hour, as you get out of your offices where you have spent the entire day sitting on an office chair staring at your desktops and laptops, here is some good news for you, corporate america- we are gonna dance ! that should be so much fun in some utopian world..

Saturday and sunday were days of both relaxing, eating and enjoying the film festival. On saturday, we watched a movie- "a wednesday". None of us were very sure of what we were getting into, but we are glad we watched it.... it was a nice movie starring Naseeruddin Shah about the life of a "stupid common man" who was so fed up of the terrorist attacks inMumbai, that he decided to take the law into his hands and through some clever manouevering, forced the Mumbai police to shoot some of the bad guys locked in terrorist cells but will be ultimately released for lack of evidence....  upto the last 15-20 minutes of the movie you will not realize the twist and the fact that you are actually watching a "Shah" movie and not just any ordinary hindi movie.... Shah has again proved his calibre and his choice of movies of substance.....

Sunday was a documentary day.... we watched "Shorts" which was composed of 3 documentary style movies... one was about the life of Indian-Americans and the difficulties faced by them right from their childhood.... the other one was about gay Indians..... it's good to see India finally rising up to the issue of gay people through movies... I would also like to see the mainstream recently released movie "Dostana" or "Friendship", again made about gay people.... The last movie was a documentary on the life of an Indian American women who is struggling to keep the "India" connection alive following the death of her father....

Our film watching bonanza ended with a great lunch at "Woodlands" one of the very good Indian restaurants in a Washington DC subarb, Takoma Park. We reached there just about 15 minutes before their buffet was closing, and am glad we got there... they had a very extensive buffet menu, with south Indian dosa, idli, coconut chutney to north Indian pani-puri, paneer jalfrezi, gulab-jamuns and what not..... If you want to go to this restaurant please do eat their gulab jamun- it is just heavenly.... it literally just melts in your mouth, has just the right amount of sugar, in other words, just perfect......

We had a fun weekend... and I look forward to such a weekend again....