Madonna visits Mumbai slums
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Madonna, the international pop sensation, music composer, dancer, film maker, author and star-actress, all rolled in one! She came to Rajasthan for the New Year clelebrations after which she went to Mumbai. She visited the Colaba slums also.
After relishing a year-end leisure holiday in the royal state of Rajasthan, Madonna dashed to Mumbai on Tuesday. The multiple Grammy and Golden Globe award winner has, reportedly, booked the entire fifth floor of the Taj at Gateway. She tried escaping the paparazzi while driving to the Taj.
When British pop diva, Natasha Bedingfield, visited Mumbai during November 2006, she made sure she observed a slum in Kandivali, northwest Mumbai. Madonna seems to be quite impressed with that and is thus following in her footsteps.
Soon after checking in and pepping up themselves, Madonna, her hubby and Australian author Gregory Roberts hit the road to the nearby Colaba slums. Slum dwellers were awed by her sudden arrival. And, she was welcomed with rose petals and arms wide open by the amazed crowd, though only a few recognised the celebrity!
Madonna walked all the way through tapered tracks in a slum and visited a flea market there. Slipped into a black jacket, T-shirt and jeans, the material girl spent almost 45 minutes with the impoverished residents. It is interesting to note here that Roberts, who accompanied Madonna to the slum area, made the Mumbai slum his abode in the early 1980s. The author had taken refuge in the city after running off an Australian high-security prison. You can get easy glimpses of the slum in his best seller ‘Shantaram’, which is being adapted into a movie enacted by Johnny Depp and directed by Mira Nair.
The group, then, delighted in the Udupi Food – ‘idli-vada sambhar, masala dosa, and sev puri’. Madonna also tasted a bit of ‘jeera fried rice’ with ‘sambhar’, and topped it off with a cup of ‘steaming masala tea’. And the stop for this delectable quick lunch was a roadside budget restaurant!
The grapevine spills the beans that the celebrity is planning to hang about in Mumbai for about a couple of days more.
Before coming to Mumbai, Madonna and her family had spent nearly a week in the colourful desert state of Rajasthan, where they had a nice time horse-riding, kite flying and participating in some other exciting activities.
