Sole Searching

Okay, Mate, Just Come Straight To The Point

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

This week's theme is shoes, so I was wondering if I should post shots of cowboy boots, or soccer boots, or cricket boots, or even a pair of flippers by the pool. Just something unusual. Maybe even a pair of R. M. Williams boots, the quintessential Outback footwear.

Then, while I mulled over the many possibilities, I remembered these shots I took during a 36-hour stopover in Singapore in December.

I was walking through an area popularly known as Little India. The sights and sounds and aromas reminded me instantly of India, the country where I was born and educated. I could hear Bollywood film music, I could smell Indian spices and I could see the brilliant, bright colours of Indian sweets.

Then I spotted this display of ceremonial sandals, called "mojaris". They are very popular in the Punjab, in the country's north. As a child, I would probably not have given them a second glance, because they were such an everyday sight.

But when I have a camera in my hands, nothing is commonplace. So I asked the shopkeeper's permission and I was delighted by the fact that he seemed amazed that anyone would want to photograph footwear.

No, I didn't feel like a heel!

Joy Hind

Weather Forecast For Today? Very Mishti

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

No, these pictures were not taken on Indian soil. They were taken a few days ago, in Dandenong, a suburb in the south-east of Melbourne. You want Bollywood DVDs? This is the place. Indian gossip magazines? Ditto. Indian sweets, classic Bengali "mishti". Ditto again. Bangles? Ditto. An Indian meal? Mate, you've come to the right place. There's everything here except an Indian government and an Indian cricket team.

TRANSLATION: ``Mishti'' literally means sweet in Bengali. ``Mishti doi'' is sweet yoghurt, and ``mishti'' is a generic term for finger-lickin' Indian sweets.

Join Travolta

These Tactics Just Ain’t Fair

Strange though it may seem, one of Bollywood's biggest stars is promoting a skin-lightening cream. In a 40-second advertisement for Fair and Handsome, an Indian product, a dark-skinned man who has no luck with women is handed the cream by actor Shahrukh Khan, with some mild admonishment. Weeks later, the confident, paler young man struts like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, with girls flocking and chanting: ``Hi, handsome.'' The ad appears on YouTube.

FOOTNOTE: That’s not Grease enlightening.

Pray Tell

Bollywood Singer Is A Man Of The Cloth

A popular Bollywood male singer apologised recently for wearing a burqa to pray in a famous Muslim shrine in India. Himesh Reshammiya said he was sorry if people were ``offended'' by his dressing as a woman to enter the shrine in Ajmer. The shrine's prayer attendants have defended the singer, who changed into the burqa after he was mobbed by fans at the gate, and slipped in through a different entrance. Last year, Bollywood starlet Katrina Kaif was criticised by devotees for entering the shrine in a skirt.