When Chinese danced to Lata's tunes
It was mid-June in 2001. There was a flurry of activity in our operations war room as the entire General Staff Branch of our brigade was feverishly preparing for the border personnel meeting with the Chinese at the Chushul-Moldo sector, scheduled the very next day.
Those days, border personnel meetings were a routine feature, unlike the critical ones of today, and were held every June and October.
I was the Brigade Major and had to accompany the commander, Brig Vinod Chopra, for this important meeting. We all were very thrilled as this was the first time that we were to drive 5 km inside the Chinese territory to reach the venue on their side.
During the drive, we were more than at our usual level of alertness as we were trying to analyse every terrain feature we crossed.
Once at the venue, the meeting was conducted in two parts. The conference got stretched inordinately long, as expected, without covering much ground, as interpreters of both sides had to hold on to the mike for a longer time. The conference was followed by a short recreational programme before we were to move in for lunch organised by the hosts.
To our surprise, the programme featured Chinese girls singing and dancing to the lilting hit songs of Lata Mangeshkar from 2000 and 2001. They danced superbly to ‘Humko humise chura lo’ (Mohabbatein) and songs of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. The Chinese had surprisingly perfected the dance moves of our Bollywood actresses to the minutest detail.
After this entertainment programme, my curiosity got the better of me. I asked my counterpart about the number of rehearsals the performers had put themselves through to master the dance moves. I was not surprised when he said it had been a full month that they had been memorising and practising dance sequences from video-cassettes.
I finally got to meet the performers. They admitted that they were great fans of the versatile singer Lata Mangeshkar, the now immortal ‘Nightingale of India’. Undoubtedly, she had a massive global appeal.
