After spending the day at Madrid’s Art and Craft Market, I arrived at The Westin Palace for IIFA Awards 2016’s official press conference.
The conference started an hour late. It followed the usual course, thanking all sponsors profusely and unveiling what lay ahead over the weekend.
Anil Kapoor, being the businessman that he is, choose IIFA’S platform to launch his son. – Harshvardhan Kapoor. He has been signed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra for a romantic drama, Mirzya, based on the tragic love story of Mirza and Sahiba. It’s written by Gulzar sahb, and if the trailer is any indication of what’s to come, it looks very promising.
Then performers for IIFA Rocks and IIFA Awards were called upon the stage. Karan Johar and Fawad Khan were to host IIFA Rocks, with performances by the likes of Sooraj Pancholi and Shilpa Shetty. IIFA Awards would be hosted by Shahid Kapoor and Farhan Akhtar, with performances by Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Tiger Shroff, Hritik Roshan, etc.
It was exciting to see celebrities picking on each other and cracking jokes. Like normal people. Salman Khan joked about Priyanka and Deepika losing interest in Bollywood as they are all about Hollywood now. They are as human as you and I. I knew it all along (obviously) but it was fun to see it first hand.
After the press conference, I parked myself at the nearest Starbucks and sat for over an hour, sipping on cappuccino and posting pictures on Instagram.
And then it was time to go home. The city looked beautiful at night, and it was pleasantly windy. I walked to the nearest train station, and spent the next two hours trying to get home. Getting lost is an integral part of my travels, after all.
Once home, I replied to and wrote a couple of emails, updated the blog, and then crashed – dreaming of all the stars I was to meet at IIFA Rocks the next day.
