Tuesday, September 25, 2007

And now what you've been waiting for...darkness


Da-dang, da-dang, da-dang....the familiar musical intro to India Idol (same as American Idol but in India). This is huge here because a finalist was from Darjeeling an area in northen India which is of Nepali descent...they speak Nepali, have Nepali customs....kind of southern Nepal.

Someone set up a huge projector screen in the streets and there was nearly a thousand people watching and cheering like crazy. I think that every TV in our town was turned on because just as the man,Prashant Tawang, was walking up to the microphone, one too many TV's got turned on and the city lost the electricity. You may have heard the sigh from where you are.

As it turned out, Prashant Tawang won the competition. The celebrations continued through the night and the performance has been replayed many times. When a friend was recounting the story and how his mother put a traditional Nepali hat on him after he won, she began to weep. Maybe she is too sentimental, maybe there is not enough to celebrate right now. Either way, I think it is sweet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We stayed for almost two weeks in Pokahra at the same small hotel. Every morning while I was having breakfast in the restaurant most of the staff gathered in to watch a soap together. Very entertaining. I believe it was an Indian production, but the hero was Nepali. They were very proud of him...I believe he was also the big star in Baliwood at that time as well.

steve said...

Sounds great. In some ways it is surprising how important the Indian media is here. In other ways it should not be since there is such a huge population in India relative to Nepal (which has about 27 million).