What Baldan hadn’t expected to fall in love with, though, was the country’s architecture – and in particular the painted havelis of Rajasthan.
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We washed in waterfalls and hiked beside the Band-e Amir lakes, which were an incredible turquoise blue, in the middle of the desert.” And then, having hiked through the Khyber Pass – “now an area far too dangerous to travel through, but then full of friendly goat and sheep herders” – she discovered India.įor a jeweller, the gems of India were always going to be appealing, whether the famous diamonds of Golconda, the deep blue Kashmir sapphires or the piles of semi-precious stones that have been traded in bazaars for centuries. I slept at the feet of the Buddha at Bamiyan, now sadly destroyed by the Taliban. From China, she went to Pakistan and to Afghanistan, which was then, she says, “the most beautiful country in the world. “Wherever I went people were selling old belongings and so many of them had wonderful stories attached to them, whether they were coins from remote kingdoms, or embellished pieces of gold from a warrior’s bridle, or carved pieces of jade created to bring good luck.”Īs their popularity grew, so did her travels to find more tribal treasures. “Mao had been dead only a year and the country was very closed, very traditional,” she says. Not only did Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli and Shere Khan kickstart Baldan’s lifelong love of books, but also of travel, from Italy to the rest of Europe, then the US and, at the age of 27, China, a country that changed the trajectory of her jewellery career. I read it again and again – and in every house I have lived in ever since, I’ve had a copy.” “For a small Italian girl, it was so exotic. “It was my sixth birthday, when my parents gave me The Jungle Book,” the cashmere-clad Italian jeweller, 73, recalls as she accompanies me into the courtyard of her Indian fort. Maria Grazia Baldan can tell you the day she fell in love with India. Here’s a look back at some of her most cherished appearances on the big screen.Saturday March 07 2020, 12.01am, The Times Her last appearance was in 2014’s La hija de Moctezuma, directed by her son Iván Lipkies and produced by her daughter, Ivette Lipkies. Rumors that she was battling stomach cancer began to surface in 2003, which she vehemently denied. She also worked extensively in television and is perhaps best known in this medium for her program ¡ Ay, María qué puntería!
Much like Cantinflas, La India María maintained her noble, clever indigenous character throughout the entirety of her filmography, exposing social ills like racism, machismo, and corruption, while keeping her films light and family friendly. Her iconic character appeared in over two dozen films over the course of more than 40 years, and brought several generations of Mexicans a positive image of indigenous femininity through the popular lens of farce and absurdist humor. Mexico’s “La India María,” born María Elena Velasco on December 17, 1940, passed away this morning, presumably from cancer. Latin America has lost yet another emblematic figure from the world of film and television.
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