Bollywood!

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.