Netanyahu in India: Bibi-Modi lunch date goes full on Bollywood as live bands play classic Hindi songs

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he and his wife Sara were elated that they will get to to see Bollywood up close when they travel to Mumbai.

Netanyahu will be travelling to Mumbai on January 18 and will attend an exclusive "Shalom Bollywood" event.

"My wife and I are very happy, we going to Bollywood. We would like to see it first hand," the Israeli prime minister, popularly known as 'Bibi', said at a joint press event with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Vijay Gokhale, secretary (economic relations) in the External Affairs Ministry also narrated an anecdote that gave a sense of Bollywood's popularity in the Jewish country.

While Modi was hosting a lunch for the Israeli delegation on Monday, a live band played the song 'IIchak Dana Beechak Dana', the number of Israelis who knew the number was amazing, he said.

In fact, they all instantly reacted, saying they knew the song very well, he said, adding that films will be a good way of building people to people relationship.

The song featuring Nargis and Raj Kapoor is from Shree 420, released in 1955, and was sung by the legendary Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh.

The two countries also inked a pact on film-co-production.

The pact envisages to establish a framework for encouraging all audio visual media output, especially the co- production of films for the benefit of the film industries of both the countries and contribute to the economic growth of the film, TV, video and new media production for further development of cultural and technologies ties.