Chasing Julia Roberts in Pataudi Last updated on: September 29, 2009
Matthew Schneeberger in Pataudi
"She's the star of Pretty Woman. She won an Oscar. She's very, very famous. Hurry! I have to see her today," I told Mishra, my inimitable Delhi-born taxi-wallah, as we sped down the National Highway 8, with the shimmering glass skyline of corporate Gurgaon, in Haryana, in the rear-view mirror and dusty, rural India in front of us.
"Pretty woman. Hmm. You want a pretty woman, sir? I can arrange this," he dutifully informed me. "Nepali, Indian, gori."
"No, Mishra! Never mind. To Pataudi!"
We presented quite the duo, the pair of us: I, the intrepid American-turned-desi journalist battling food poisoning and bad Hindi, and he, the 5'3 taxi-wallah with dubious English and remarkable driving skills.
We were on the trail of Julia Roberts, one of Hollywood's leading ladies, star of Pretty Woman and Erin Brockavich. For, if you don't know by now, the illustrious Ms Roberts is indeed in India.
The 41-year-old is here to shoot for the Hollywood film Eat, Pray, Love, the film adaptation of American Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir of the same name. In the film, Roberts plays the then 35-year-old Gilbert -- a soul-searching, NYC-based writer, who, in the wake of a bitter divorce undertakes a year-long sojourn to eat in Italy, pray in India and love in Indonesia.
Full at:
http://movies.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/sep/29/slide-show-1-julia-roberts-in-india.htm
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges