I never thought when I started investigating my family tree that it would end up with me getting taken out for tea and cakes at Harrods by my glamorous American cousin, but that’s exactly what happened this week. Vimlamati, who’s my great great aunt Mary’s granddaughter, got in touch to say she was in London on business and would love to meet up, and said if I could come down to London with Suky she’d take Suky to visit Santa in Santa’s grotto at Harrods, and we could catch up and have an English tea. Vimlamati’s a choreographer and she’s really beautiful and elegant. I was a bit shy to meet her at first but she was really nice and friendly. She said that she’d seen all the photos of the Shanta Rao Dutt exhibition in Liverpool and the blue plaque unveiling, and had been trying to spot me on the pictures, by looking for the family resemblance. Turns out she got it right too.
Suky is normally really shy with new people but she was really laughing and playing with Vimlamati straight away, it was brilliant. I think Suky was even more excited to meet Vimlamati than she was to meet Father Christmas! Next time Vimlamati’s coming to London for work she says she’s going to try and add on an extra couple of days to her trip so she can come up to Liverpool to visit us. That will be so lovely. And when Suky’s a little bit older we might take her over to LA for a visit too.
Vimlamati brought over loads of photographs of my ancestor Mary Dutt in the chorus line in loads of Hollywood movies for me to take home. As soon as I’ve got them scanned in, I’ll put some of them up on here. And I can’t wait to show gran, she’ll love them. I’m really excited to have a real live movie star in the family.
You would think that was enough excitement for one festive season, but not only did I get invited to London by Shanta Rao Dutt’s grand daughter, I’ve also been invited to Edinburgh for Hogmanay to see the Bollywood song and dance spectacular called Bollywood Steps that Nutkhut do – they’re putting it on as part of the New Year’s Eve celebrations. Nutkhut were the arts organisation that found Shanta Rao Dutt’s long lost silent movie in the first place, and started off the whole project. It was their director Ajay that put me in touch with the Dutt half of my family – and I’ve now met not one but two of my relatives from America in the last few months, thanks to him. I can’t wait to tell him about it all when I see him up in Edinburgh!
