The Embassy of India, Cairo (through the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture) in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Cairo Opera House and managed by Teamworks Arts, is organizing the third edition of ‘India by the Nile’ in April 2014. For the last two years, the festival has been billed as the biggest foreign festival in Egypt since the 25 January Revolution. This year the festival, running from 30 March -17 April, was inaugurated Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Bachchan will speak about his films, particularly Amar Akbar Anthony at the Opera House on the 31st of March.
The inauguration of the festival will be followed up by a new musical, Bollywood Extravaganza – A Tale of Passion, Love and Revenge, which will run at the Opera House from the 1st to the 3rd of April, and will see more than 35 Indian dancers performing to the much-loved music of Indian cinema. The musical will also travel to Alexandria. A Bollywood dance workshop will also be organized on 30th March at Medan Theatre in the Cairo Opera House complex.
Through the three weeks of the festival, the range and variety of India’s diverse cultural ethos will be on display. A dance group from the North-Eastern state of Manipur will showcase the folk traditions of the area. The well-known band Advaita, will perform fusion music combining the classical musical traditions of India music with Western rock, at Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, and Ismailia. In a fresh take on a traditional field, this year Indian cuisine will feature street food, available at event venues through the festival.
“This year the approach to tourism was that they wanted to get more visitors from India. In 2010 the number was 114000. The idea was to grow that number and that’s why we decided how about getting an iconic figure like Mr Bachchan, at the iconic place such as the pyramids. The idea worked…he has been phenomenally gracious. It is generous of him to make time for the festival,” Indian Ambassador to Egypt Navdeep Suri quoted as saying.
