With its glittery musical romances, Bollywood is reeling in billions but has so far failed to seduce western audiences. Now a new wave of moguls and directors are enlisting the cream of Hollywood to spice up its appeal. Dominic Rushe in The Sunday Times:
Lost in India’s biggest shantytown, a hellish sprawl in the heart of Mumbai, what should have been a 20-minute trip, to attend the premiere of the latest Bollywood blockbuster, was now an hour-and-a-half odyssey. Somewhere the driver had taken a wrong turn and we were crawling through Dharavi, Mumbai’s mega-slum.
Exhaustion may have been to blame. The driver was so tired he had to stop in the middle of the street every 10 minutes to splash water on his face. With neither Hindi nor geography to fall back on, I was left to stare anxiously out of the window as he drove further and further into the dense network of shambolic streets.
Dharavi’s slum looks as though it has been cobbled together from flotsam and jetsam after a flood of apocalyptic proportions. More than a million people live here, stacked in hovels that appear to teeter on the edge of collapse. But that night the population was teeming outside, preparing for a chaotic collision of religious holidays.
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