I am a movie star.
Well, maybe not quite. More accurately, last Friday, I was an extra in a ridiculous, low-budget Bollywood movie. Philippe had met a guy recruiting the day before, so we found ourselves, up, breakfasted and rounded up with 25 or so other goreh youths in front of the local McD's at 8 a.m. then herded onto a bus, and driven out of town towards "Filmcity". Sound glamorous?
When we got to our movie's set, we were led to a room and given our costumes- black, white, grey or a combination of those- in my case, a white skirt (thankfully longer than I originally guessed), 2 stripe-y tank tops (black and white) and a really short white shirt (puffy sleeves, collar, strange mid-belly length... unflattering!); in Philippe's case, shiny black pants (think "fake leather") and a black shirt with white "washer" pattern (think "70s"). In both cases, our shoes didn't fit and it was like foot torture... for 11 hours. My hair was pulled back and curled, then sprayed into place. It was a little scary. All the other girls looked more classy, sadly, but some of the other guys rivalled Philippe for ridiculous outfits (see-through shiny white shirt, anyone?)
We then sat. Had a tiny cucumber and tomato sandwich. Sat more. Wandered around and found a mirror to see how ridiculous we looked. Saw some guys in obvious wigs (reddish and fluffy). Sat around.
Finally, around noon, we went on set and discovered quite how weird the day would be. The scene was set in a club called the Blue Elephant (with shiny giant blue elephant head cutout and hung front the ceiling). There were 2 stages (one with poles, one with a band), a raised bar and some raised areas, balcony-style, parts of which were covered in what looked like thick chicken-wire. We went up there. These balcony sections were surrounded by what looked like banisters, but was in fact plastic piping and not sturdy, as we were reminded by a loud voice answering to the name of Sweety, in the same breath as we were told to stand as close to the edge as possible, dance and wave our arms about. Philippe was somewhere under those platforms, standing around a table with some other guys, I was at the top with a bunch of girls. We basically danced over and over again to the same 15-second part of a song, occasionally being shifted from one platform to another.
There was a long lunch break. Then more dancing on platforms, this time while pole dancers did their thing on their own stage.
Then a random long-ass break. Then more dancing.
The whole "we'll get you back to Colaba by 9 p.m." was looking increasingly unlikely when Philippe started regularly going to argue with the agent-guy who had brought us over and eventually, we started walking off to change. They brought us back and shot their last scene as fast as possible. We still didn't get back to Colaba until a little before 11 p.m., half an hour after a girl's hostel closed and an hour before our night train to Jalgaon for the next step of the adventure.
Death-trap of the day: unstable platforms with fake railings.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
"I am sooo not getting on that death-trap"
This is a theme, so far this trip. There are many different exciting ways of getting around the country and half of them look like they were never designed to hold nearly as many people as they are doing.
Our second day in Mumbai, stopped by a pastry shop for breakfast (recommended in the LP and making Philippe salivate in front of the glass cases of chocolate and fruit concoctions), moved our stuff to the Salvation Army's hostel and we internetted. Then we headed over to the Haji Ali Mosque in northern Mumbai. To reach it, you take a really long bus ride through "real Mumbai" (not the touristy area around Colaba) then you walk out into the sea (Arabian Sea?) passing vendors and beggars aplenty. The mosque itself is a place of pilgrimage so it's a really interesting atmosphere. I was crazily on the lookout for what to do, this being my first mosque-experience, and me being really afraid of making a faux-pas and offending someone. I followed the women into the female entrance while Philippe got to go through the main entrance, all unshod and head-covered. It was really a great and interesting experience.
We also saw the laundry facilities for Mumbai's hotels, restaurants and general populace. This is an intricate network of washing tubs, rinsing areas, hanging posts, swinging lines and sorting people, all looking like it's been around for quite a while. We saw laundry being swung around, stomped on, hit against the stone tubs and twisted into the lines to hang without pins. Impressive.
Our day ended with a swing by Chowpatty beach where there were hundreds of people flying kites. The colors of the sarees and kites were amazing, and the gelato we treated ourselves to after a long day of walking wasn't bad either. The best, though, was wandering around the snack stands by the side of the beach. We tried panipuri (crunchy little puff with lentils and tamarind sauce inside), bhaji sandwiches (deep fried veggies in bread roll) and chai. We also got a weird thing in a leaf that tasted like rosewater, coconut and other things that I found horrible, but Philippe downed because it was served directly into your mouth by a man with a crazy moustache. The "death trap" part was the crazy ferris wheels that were made to spin by guys jumping up onto it and then swinging themselves off and pulling it down with their bodyweight... does that make sense? It was so strange to watch and, combined with the fact that it looked ready to fall apart, did not encourage me to try it, no matter how much Philippe made puppy eyes at me for great pictures.
The next day, after a slow start to the day and a chance meeting with a Bollywood guy looking for extras for a movie, we headed to Elephanta Island, to gaze at temples carved into rocks. The boat ride over was quite long, made more so by the cramped quarters and the slightly sketchy guy who was trying to get a picture of himself sitting next to me. Also, the random throwing of trash into the ocean was a delight... not. The site on the island is a group of about 4 main caves up a hill, with some monkeys. It was good to visit, being a completely different sight from what we'd seen so far. I realise that it's an impressive feat- carving huge temple caves from a rock, sculpting rocks into huge statues etc- but I felt bad being left nonplussed by the visit. The threat of monkey bites did little to add to it! There was a thoroughly impressive sculpture of three--headed Shiva.
After our boat excursion, we decided to delve into the mysterious world of train-ticket buying in India. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus or CST) is a beautiful building which combines all sorts of architectural styles on the outside. Inside, it's amazing how many people it can hold without seeming all that crowded. After asking several people, filling in some paperwork, getting a guy to leave us a lone and purchasing a book of all Indian trains for all the days of the week until June, we got our stamp, went to the reservation room and found that our train was fully booked and we'd have to be waitlisted. Too bad, we thought, but whatever, we didn't want to waste more time standing in the reservation room listening to a guy trying to sell chai by rattling some plastic cups at us. Then, we spotted the "Foreign Tourist" window. Surrounded by "Foreign Tourist Only" benches, it became our haven for over an hour while we deciphered train time tables, bothered the nice lady behind the window repeatedly and finally settled on one night train towards Ajanta and Ellora and a waitlist spot on another night train to Ahmedabad. Tickets in hand we avoided bus touts, traffic and wrong turns to return to Chowpatty and sample bhelpuri (crunchy, crispy, spicy and delicious), pav bhaji (lentils with onion, tomato and peppers eaten with grilled bread) and get a picture of P eating the yucky leaf combo from the guy with the moustache. I had to fight valiantly but managed to get away with some slightly less weird stuff and an odd-tasting glace cherry... I think this will be the worst thing I eat in the country, but everything else so far has been amazing.
Death trap of the day: tourist train on Elephanta!
Our second day in Mumbai, stopped by a pastry shop for breakfast (recommended in the LP and making Philippe salivate in front of the glass cases of chocolate and fruit concoctions), moved our stuff to the Salvation Army's hostel and we internetted. Then we headed over to the Haji Ali Mosque in northern Mumbai. To reach it, you take a really long bus ride through "real Mumbai" (not the touristy area around Colaba) then you walk out into the sea (Arabian Sea?) passing vendors and beggars aplenty. The mosque itself is a place of pilgrimage so it's a really interesting atmosphere. I was crazily on the lookout for what to do, this being my first mosque-experience, and me being really afraid of making a faux-pas and offending someone. I followed the women into the female entrance while Philippe got to go through the main entrance, all unshod and head-covered. It was really a great and interesting experience.
We also saw the laundry facilities for Mumbai's hotels, restaurants and general populace. This is an intricate network of washing tubs, rinsing areas, hanging posts, swinging lines and sorting people, all looking like it's been around for quite a while. We saw laundry being swung around, stomped on, hit against the stone tubs and twisted into the lines to hang without pins. Impressive.
Our day ended with a swing by Chowpatty beach where there were hundreds of people flying kites. The colors of the sarees and kites were amazing, and the gelato we treated ourselves to after a long day of walking wasn't bad either. The best, though, was wandering around the snack stands by the side of the beach. We tried panipuri (crunchy little puff with lentils and tamarind sauce inside), bhaji sandwiches (deep fried veggies in bread roll) and chai. We also got a weird thing in a leaf that tasted like rosewater, coconut and other things that I found horrible, but Philippe downed because it was served directly into your mouth by a man with a crazy moustache. The "death trap" part was the crazy ferris wheels that were made to spin by guys jumping up onto it and then swinging themselves off and pulling it down with their bodyweight... does that make sense? It was so strange to watch and, combined with the fact that it looked ready to fall apart, did not encourage me to try it, no matter how much Philippe made puppy eyes at me for great pictures.
The next day, after a slow start to the day and a chance meeting with a Bollywood guy looking for extras for a movie, we headed to Elephanta Island, to gaze at temples carved into rocks. The boat ride over was quite long, made more so by the cramped quarters and the slightly sketchy guy who was trying to get a picture of himself sitting next to me. Also, the random throwing of trash into the ocean was a delight... not. The site on the island is a group of about 4 main caves up a hill, with some monkeys. It was good to visit, being a completely different sight from what we'd seen so far. I realise that it's an impressive feat- carving huge temple caves from a rock, sculpting rocks into huge statues etc- but I felt bad being left nonplussed by the visit. The threat of monkey bites did little to add to it! There was a thoroughly impressive sculpture of three--headed Shiva.
After our boat excursion, we decided to delve into the mysterious world of train-ticket buying in India. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus or CST) is a beautiful building which combines all sorts of architectural styles on the outside. Inside, it's amazing how many people it can hold without seeming all that crowded. After asking several people, filling in some paperwork, getting a guy to leave us a lone and purchasing a book of all Indian trains for all the days of the week until June, we got our stamp, went to the reservation room and found that our train was fully booked and we'd have to be waitlisted. Too bad, we thought, but whatever, we didn't want to waste more time standing in the reservation room listening to a guy trying to sell chai by rattling some plastic cups at us. Then, we spotted the "Foreign Tourist" window. Surrounded by "Foreign Tourist Only" benches, it became our haven for over an hour while we deciphered train time tables, bothered the nice lady behind the window repeatedly and finally settled on one night train towards Ajanta and Ellora and a waitlist spot on another night train to Ahmedabad. Tickets in hand we avoided bus touts, traffic and wrong turns to return to Chowpatty and sample bhelpuri (crunchy, crispy, spicy and delicious), pav bhaji (lentils with onion, tomato and peppers eaten with grilled bread) and get a picture of P eating the yucky leaf combo from the guy with the moustache. I had to fight valiantly but managed to get away with some slightly less weird stuff and an odd-tasting glace cherry... I think this will be the worst thing I eat in the country, but everything else so far has been amazing.
Death trap of the day: tourist train on Elephanta!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Mishandled
"Your luggage has been mishandled."
"Alright, what does that mean? Where is it"
"We're not sure. Maybe still in Hong Kong, maybe in Delhi, maybe here in Mumbai... maybe elsewhere"
"SO basically, you have no idea..."
"It has been mishandled."
Not sure exactly how the conversation really went, but it seems to have been somewhere along those lines. When we got into Mumbai, after what felt like a ridiculously long flight (China and India are close together on the map, as Philippe reasoned) we got to the baggage pick-up area to find out that both our bags, as well as those of about 10 other people had been mysteriously mishandled and were plainly not there. They couldn't tell us where, or when or how, just point out that the bags were not there and they would look for them and let us know what happened. Since it was around 12:30 a.m. and the whole process lasted a good 2 hours, we decided to skip the whole "sleeping thing" in favor of sitting around then heading over to Sassoon Dock to see fisher-people unload the night's catch, as recommended by the Lonely Planet as a good activity for night owls. We took a pre-paid taxi from the airport to the Gateway of India (cool 1950s style black car with yellow roof and nifty old-fashioned "for hire sign") then wandered over to the docks, inadvertently walking through a section of slums which was a sudden awakening to the poverty that 55% of people in the country live in.
The unloading was cool, with people throwing up baskets of fish from their boats to the dock and people packing them up to sent to restaurants and markets. Would have been even better if we could have bought some! We then found a hostel (hard to do at 7am, pre-opening and checkout time) and slept through half the day.
Feeling rejuvenated, we had our first India meal (delicious dhal!!) which I was unable to eat in a convincing Indian style... finger-eating does not come naturally. We walked quite a few miles around the city, seeing a museum, a synagogue, a church (oldest Mumbai building), the University, the High Court, some cricketers, a train station and a market where we had to buy a few things to replace our grubby travel clothes, since jeans and hiking boots are great, but in this heat, with no change of clothes... ick.
In the evening (after more deliciousness), we made do with tiny black shampoo bought at a street stall (the shampoo itself really was black) and dried ourselves with our t-shirts before collapsing into sleep. We were rudely awakened an hour later by the arrival of our bags, mysteriously found in HK and shipped over on the only flight of the day... phew!
"Alright, what does that mean? Where is it"
"We're not sure. Maybe still in Hong Kong, maybe in Delhi, maybe here in Mumbai... maybe elsewhere"
"SO basically, you have no idea..."
"It has been mishandled."
Not sure exactly how the conversation really went, but it seems to have been somewhere along those lines. When we got into Mumbai, after what felt like a ridiculously long flight (China and India are close together on the map, as Philippe reasoned) we got to the baggage pick-up area to find out that both our bags, as well as those of about 10 other people had been mysteriously mishandled and were plainly not there. They couldn't tell us where, or when or how, just point out that the bags were not there and they would look for them and let us know what happened. Since it was around 12:30 a.m. and the whole process lasted a good 2 hours, we decided to skip the whole "sleeping thing" in favor of sitting around then heading over to Sassoon Dock to see fisher-people unload the night's catch, as recommended by the Lonely Planet as a good activity for night owls. We took a pre-paid taxi from the airport to the Gateway of India (cool 1950s style black car with yellow roof and nifty old-fashioned "for hire sign") then wandered over to the docks, inadvertently walking through a section of slums which was a sudden awakening to the poverty that 55% of people in the country live in.
The unloading was cool, with people throwing up baskets of fish from their boats to the dock and people packing them up to sent to restaurants and markets. Would have been even better if we could have bought some! We then found a hostel (hard to do at 7am, pre-opening and checkout time) and slept through half the day.
Feeling rejuvenated, we had our first India meal (delicious dhal!!) which I was unable to eat in a convincing Indian style... finger-eating does not come naturally. We walked quite a few miles around the city, seeing a museum, a synagogue, a church (oldest Mumbai building), the University, the High Court, some cricketers, a train station and a market where we had to buy a few things to replace our grubby travel clothes, since jeans and hiking boots are great, but in this heat, with no change of clothes... ick.
In the evening (after more deliciousness), we made do with tiny black shampoo bought at a street stall (the shampoo itself really was black) and dried ourselves with our t-shirts before collapsing into sleep. We were rudely awakened an hour later by the arrival of our bags, mysteriously found in HK and shipped over on the only flight of the day... phew!
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