The day began with many challenging but exciting tasks on hand. The most exciting of them was the drive. ” Take the Cedia they said and hit the road!!”  Umm… actually dreams are made of this.  Only this was for real.  But where did we want to go?  Harish and I, as usual went into a huddle, and then quickly took an opinion poll from friends.” Do something on BOLLYWOOD!” said all.So bollywood it was .

Film City was close enough, but the challenge was getting in.  And as it turned out, it was a piece of cake.  Drove there in our spanking Black Cedia, Harish brandished his business card, and by golly!  We were in!  The first thing that struck us was the size of this place!  It was sprawling, and dotted with make believe bungalows, temples, paan shops, chai shops and what have you.  We knew the time we had would just not be enough to cover the whole place, so we just decided to quickly go to the more interesting spots.

It was a perfect merging of the fake and the real. Our pictures say it all. The buildings were merely facades, but the people there were real.  Aspiring actors, spot boys, tea suppliers, all of them, who had come there with dreams and aspirations. Like Ramaswamy from Tamilnadu .We quickly got talking in tamil and he told me that he was recently appointed to guard the set of a famous teleserial which had been shot there in the past.We also met a group of aspiring actors who were waiting to be auditioned . . . who happily posed for us! There was the quintessential bollywood dwelling where you can imagine the typical bollywood MA residing and shedding copious tear’s for her long lost son or missing husband.And , there was the Radha Krishna temple.There was also the make believe Paan shop which had a board saying no visitors allowed at all , but Harish insisted on being photographed with the signage ! We could also almost hear the bollywood judge bringing down his gavel and sternly saying, ” order order”. The closest we got to Shekhar Kapoor or Kirron Kher who were shooting there was to see their name pasted on their vanity vans. We wanted to stay on longer , but it was time to leave we had much to do. So , we reluctantly said bye to Ramaswamy and gang and left . Enjoy the pictures Bollywood Ishhtyle :