Shimla, 1:09 am

In the span of the last 36 hours, I have had dinner with a local princess (who is also the chief minister's daughter), seen a movie in a theatre which blacked out thrice bec of power cuts, and seen shekhu try to get a coffin organized in chandigarh. And this is my last night in Shimla (hopefully - if I manage to get up tomorrow morning).

Dinner last night was with two of shekhu's friends - a very young mother and her even younger daughter - and these extremely nice people turned out to be royalty. She is a Bushahri princess (a rajput clan of himachal) and also the chief minister's daughter. However, I would not have known this if she hadn't told me - she's a very sweet unassuming woman - and is absolutely adorable. The conversation was, of course, littered with alcohol (as have been most of my days here) - but was extremely interesting and chilled out. Besides, now I can actually say that I dined with royalty in Himachal :).

Went for Fanaa, the latest Aamir-Kajol film (I wanted to see it before I went forth into the boonies). Ok, so here's my take on it - in a nutshell - I liked it - even though there were SEVERAL moments where I was like "come on..!! That's too weird even for bollywood" (shooting helicopters down from the ground with a pistol? floating rishi kapoor?) But all said and done - I love both Kajol and Aamir - so I liked it. I think part of it was also because it's a small town and there's all the whistling and heckling and commenting (so fun!). And the lights went out thrice at which point the audience starting whistling even louder. But yea, it was fun.

Right now Shuks is trying to get a coffin organized. Why? Well, a business associate of his dad's came down to shimla and he organized a trip for this guy, his brothers and their families to manali. Now the younger brother of this business associate got a heart attack and passed away in manali. And we found this out right after we got out of Fanaa - so the whole evening was spent talking about malpractice and how random death can be. I mean seriously, this dude was apparently fit and in great health - and now, suddenly, he is no more. freaky.

And I have a splitting headache.