Ordre National De La Legion DHonneur

I received this award, my second award from the Republic of France on 26/11/2008 the same day as the Mumbai attacks. This award probably saved my life as well as the lives of many friends and family members. My earlier award the Ordre National du Merite was awarded the Taj, a location I chose then and would have been up to me. Had the award been organized for any other day I might well have accepted invitations to attend functions at either the Oberoi or Taj. As it so happens the date was selected because the Ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont was coming to Mumbai to inaugurate a food festival organized by the Alliance Francaise and Cordon Blue at the Four Seasons Hotel. The food festival gave me the opportunity to celebrate the event with a French dinner and hence the venue was the Four Seasons. We started with speeches. The Ambassador spoke brilliantly ex tempore. My response was in verse with some elements from earlier poems describing my strong connection with France. And then we went to dinner. During the dinner, Adi started talking about some of my lucky escapes : Flying out of Baghdad airport a couple of hours before an explosion, hastily leaving Seychelles after a coup and walking away from a belly landing of an Indian Airlines flight at Madras airport. Minutes later we heard explosions and it looked like Adi had had a premonition. As it turned out we had another narrow escape since we were at the Four Seasons Hotel. The rest is history.