SUNCITY FUNCITY

Palace Hotel
Suncity RSA 21-22 may 2009 Saturday

It’s the last Blast. Heat is on. Screams a full page advertisement for IPL final in Saturday Star, a South African daily. It also says :
Sunday 29h30 Opening ceremony ( no mistake!) to commence straight after the game. Don’t miss explosive performances by AKON, Katrina Kaif, Poenix fire Dancers, Eddie grant, Jugalbandhi of drums, as well as laser shows and the crowning of Miss Bollywood.

News papers usually carry no news of IPL. They are busy with other local and international sports. The entertainment center here has a 50-60 seater bowl with a large screen playing the game. I found no body there on Thursday. But some yesterday. Today’s the citizen, another paper, carry some picture news in the front page of IPL. Picture of 5 girls selected from the crowds of previous matches by IPL officials as contestants for Miss IPL Bollywood. The winner will get 50000 rands and a chance to act in a bollywood movie. Inner page of the same news paper has pictures of Preity Zinta , Shilpa Shetty and Hritick Roshan, Yana gupta , SRK and Katrina. The paper also features, the local singing sensations, Grant and AKON as attractions on Sunday.

The curious mixture of cricket and (filmi and pop) glamour. The glamour seems to get the upper hand! That is sportainment!

Five of our group managed to get some VIP 5-6 passes for yesterday and today. May be fo finals too. They went in a taxi travelling 5 hrs up and down from here to watch. I did not find any of them that crazy about cricket. May be I don’t know. It was the fun of going and being in the gallery and when nothing else to do. And tell others that they had been there, perhaps.

This Sun City is a fun city. No city really. It has hotels, entertainments, movies, casinos, resorts, manicured lawns, exotic plant beautiful roads, crocodile farm with 7000 crocs, tribal ( paid up tribals to perform) centre, two golf courses all in the middle of a hilly bush forest of a 55000 hectare game sanctuary with a plethora of animals large and small: African elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions, antelopes, giraffes, zebras, and many birds. It is nice to hear the bird chirping all the time outside the window. And gurgling sound a stream of water outside. So soothing. The stream of water of course is run by a huge pump, no natural stream. Well, a lot of this place is not natural, barring the forest. The Sun city is created on an imaginary story of a lost tribe and their lost city with a palace, where I am staying as a crudely and decadently luxurious 5 or7 star hotel. Rated as one of the best in the world! All the trees it is surrounded are palms and tropical ones, not found within a km away. The buildings, in with marble and granite and in some places made to look like ruins. Big hollow boulders, I believe imported from USA, is everywhere making caves roofs and passages for lifts housing casinos and auditoria. Some trees, large ones and plants with flowers are petrified natural ones. Look near natural, but don’t grow. I sometimes think, is the bird sound real?

The palace, the hotel is huge. Some over 500 rooms and suites. A potpourri of architecture. Whimsical. Yet some meticulous detailing. But on the whole it does look neither authentic nor serious. Like Disney land, to borrow Maxwell Fry’s words, the experience is there, but no seriousness.