Grand pageantry showcases India.

Voici en exclusivité car  encore introuvable sur le net et encore moins dans la revue de presse du site de Lille 3000 l'article du Hindu de Vaiju Naravane (interviewée sur France 3 samedi) de lundi 16 octobre.

"Lille: France's northern city of Lille on saturday throbbed to Indian rythms with a gigantic song, dance and light parade that brought six and half lakh (1 lakh= 100 000) people into its medieval paved streets.(la parade n'avait pas lieu dans le vieux Lille mais d'un point de vue journalistique, il me semble que ça passe bien)

Open air discotheques boomed out Indipop, some 1500 residents of the city dressed in Indian costumes (elle omet de dire que les costumes ressemblaient d'avantage à un assemblage de chiffons plutôt qu'à aucune tenue indienne connue ) swayed to thumping filmi numbers, the Bollywood Brass Band belted out intricate drum roll tattoos, enormous floats decorated to look like Indian killer trucks with familiar signs like "No horn please" or "Good Carrier" ferried Rajasthani Manganiar singing parties through the streets lit up by fire throwed and a thousand lamps. '(le coup du camion, ça a marqué la journaliste, on l'avait déjà senti dans l'interview)

"Wedding saree"

The backdrop to the parade with the huge railway station was illuminated to look like the maharaja's palace in Mysore . The party went on all night with revellers trailing home early in the morning. Martine Aubry, the powerful Socialist mayor of Lille was dressed in a pistachio green ghagra choli which she described as "My wedding sari, for my marriage with Lille". Ms Aubry, the author of France's 35-hour work week and a committed Socialist believes such cultural events are a means to break down social barriers, a way of uniting people of different class and races in joy and laughter.
"This extravaganza has cost the city 1.5 millions euros or 3 per cent or our annual budget for culture. And looking at the crowds present here today, i feel it was money truly spent. Why India, and why particularly Bollywood? Because India, despite his huge problems that we are not attempting to cover up here, is a country that looks resoluty towards the future. It is the world's biggest democracy that is trying to solve its problems in the framework of law and democratic rules. And then culturally, you have so much diversity, so much to offer" she told the Hindu.
The festival has cost a total of 7.5 million euros (intéressant de le signaler surtout quand Martine Aubry n'est pas claire en ce qui concerne son 1.5 millions= la parade seulement...). The extravaganza will continue over three months with 500 film projections, 50 arts exhibitions and over one hundred theatre, dance and musical perfomances.
The literary aspect of India has not been ignored, prominent Indian writers and their french publishers including Suketu Mehta, Tarun Tejpal and Ruchir Joshi will discuss trends in modern literature.
The city has commisionned original works of art from young and rising Indian painters and sculptors such as Subodh Gupta or Ashok Sukuraman.

Surprising.
What is surprising and wonderful about the festival is how it has managed to combine tradition and modernity, the new and the old, to give the image of emerging India, a country on the move" (c'est l'image qui passe en France depuis quelques années....)

Un article sans grande surprise, me semble-t'il comme on pourrait s'y attendre.Le plus rigolo, c'est que le sari de mariage de Martine Aubry est connu dans toute Inde ast'heure. ;)