I was cleaning up some of my picture files tonight and found this--it's from SALTAF 2008 in Washington DC (and not the greatest quality, mostly because I was too excited to take a non-shaky picture).
I'd been planning on going to SALTAF (the South Asian Literature and Theatre Arts Festival) for months prior to the actual weekend of the event, but I got a bit of a late start that morning and that combined with some nasty weather made me more inclined to want to just stay in my nice warm bed rather than trudge downtown to the Smithsonian. In a bit of an effort to motivate myself to wake up I checked the website for the event again, as a sort of "Melissa! Get off your ass and get out the door!" gesture. And it's a damn good thing I did, because they'd updated their guest list overnight with some last-minute arrivals. The first was Sooni Taraporevala, who is one of my all-time favorite screenwriters and who would be there to premiere her new film "Little Zizou."
The second was Boman Irani. Boman Freaking Irani! I don't have words to express how much I love that man. Love love love. He was flying in with Sooni to take questions about the film (which he starred in).
If there's anything that'll get me out of bed, showered, dressed, and onto a packed metro train at 7am, it's the prospect of meeting Boman Irani. So off I went--and here he is, looking dapper and awesome in the only picture I took that came even remotely close to being decent.
Boman Irani, center, and Sooni Taraporevala, left.