Advertisement
Published: February 10th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Day 2 - 05/02 - Mumbai
Uhh, Mornings, even though we both got a good 8 - 10 hours or so sleep we felt we needed much more. The alarm was set for 7 and we were out at 8 (after paying for another night) and at McDonalds at 8:30 via a fruit stand where we picked up a couple of battered and bruised yet tasty bananas. Bollywood man wasn’t there but 8 foreigners were (more than we’d seen on our whole trip around Mumbai the day before). Part of me expected everyone to congregate in a circle, sit on each other’s knees and share stories but the atmosphere was actually quite tense, I think everyone was maybe a little bit grumpy due to being awake so early. I knew we’d all be laughing together in about 2-3 hours so why wait I thought but in the end I just did the same as everyone else was doing and just stood in silence. After about 10 minutes of waiting good ol’ Imran Jiles popped out of the car, bringing with him 3 people we’d walked past at the Salvation Army hostel, handed us over to his young protégé, told us to
follow him, then walked off, probably to recruit for the next day.
We walked round the corner to wait for the bus to pick us up, a few more people had turned up now which brought the tally to around 25. McDonalds do a home delivery service here, a fact I realised when I saw about 20 or more Bright red and yellow ‘McDelivery’ bikes. This made me think about food, we were told by Imran that we’d get 3 meals but lonely planet says that’s not always the case, 1 would probably be enough for me anyway I thought seeing as Indian food fills me up so quickly, I don’t understand it at all.
The bus journey was surprisingly easy, I think taxi drivers are slightly more cautious around a bus than they are other taxis so it was given a narrow birth but a birth all the same, and we reached a college in the middle of Mumbai in good time. As a white person, even in an international metropolis such as Mumbai you get looked at, a bus full of 25 of us pulling up at a college for girls meant we got quite a
few stares, it’s apparently a well known college for girls studying Psychology, English and other subjects that you get a BA for.
Us western extras aren’t liked too much as we’ll work for 13 hours for 500rupees just to be on tv, (they earn at least 900) and we’ll wear more western and revealing clothes, so basically we’re stealing their jobs, yeah. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. I was thrown some trousers far too tight for being the 32 inch waist I had asked for and a shirt a little too big with a tie that was partially broken and ripped. Obviously a top quality shoot. There was actually some debate over just what the filming was for, some Indian extras were sure it was for a scene in a bollywood film, some were sure that it was a commercial for an insurance company and others believed it was a commercial for a product of some sort although they didn’t know what. I reckon it was for an insurance commercial.
The filming happened in a large auditorium where an imaginary girl was apparently pulling off some sick dance moves during a school dance or
Marigold man
This guy made so many chains of marigolds and piled them up high something similar, and when a man standing by the camera finished narrating just how awesome she was ( I think he was enjoying the whole thing a little too much) we stood up and clapped. They kept shuffling people round constantly, aimlessly and pointlessly, they wanted people to look like they were parents of the kids in the school dance, or at least siblings. But for some reason they sat a young western girl next to an elderly Indian man which seemed to make absolutely no sense. We thought they’d had it after 3 hours of painstaking retakes but then they decided to move the angle of the camera. To be honest they were pretty terrible, sometimes they told everyone to go back a row (which took about 30 minutes as they did it one row at a time) lighting kept getting changed, they kept measuring a couple of people’s faces which I laughed at. The whole moving about thing worked out quite well for me as I got to talk to a lot of the travellers, By the end I’d realised there were Aussie, Spanish, French, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, Swedish and more Spanish people with us. All of them
Scrubbing the floor
They scrubbed the dusty floor until it was gleaming, a tiring job that took them atleast an hour seemed nice, I ended up chatting with this (genuinely) mad Spanish girl called Estephanie (yeah I did spell that right, It confused the producer as well) who hated dance music but liked trance music... Uh huh... I’m no music genius but I’m sure there’s not enough difference between the two to warrant a strong hate. The Dutch and Danish couple were both good laughs, and the 2 Spanish groups had a bit of a feud as Estephanie and the 2 guys she came with decided they didn’t like the political views of the 4 other Spanish people. Crazy Spaniard and her friends come from Cataluña and they seem to have judged the group of 4(1 crazy mum who tried to teach the Macarena to some locals, 2 daughters, and a boyfriend of 1) for people against it. I don’t know the situation myself so was intrigued to ask more, assuming the 3 wanted independence and the 4 against although it seemed they both didn’t really mind. So it was completely pointless. Brilliant.
The Aussie girls happened to be in Delight guesthouse as well and they seemed nice so we arranged to go to elephant island with them tomorrow as
neither of us had done it yet and it’d be a laugh.
Ah, one thing I didn’t mention yet. Every so often a guy would come in with a bucket filled with maybe 15 bottles of water, when the Male Indian extras wanted to call him over they did so in a way that would be SO disrespectful and demeaning in our culture. They make this horrible sound with their lips which I hate, it’s similar to when you make a fake kissing noise but louder, like saying ‘fff’ but breathing in and almost whistling, Maybe you can figure it out or maybe my explanation is poor.
The day was long and but we got lots of chai (the best chai I’ve had so far and since) and free food as well which was good. We did nothing from 5pm onwards through to 9pm, well, I did a little 30 mins extra where I walked into a corridor looked both ways then turn right and walked down some stairs. (Yeah, I’m one of those background extras when people are talking about crap in a hallway).
The bus home was rowdy with the newly happy friendly Spaniards chanting some
Spanish songs, joining in is difficult when you only try recreate the sounds, we tried though and we did alright I think. The locals seemed bemused when they heard the racket.
After getting off the bus, the Dutch and Aussie’s were heading to leopolds (the place where the terrorists hit in November 2008) so we joined them. Leopolds is different to how I’d assumed, it has a large square dining area downstairs, and a thin upstairs area with a large selection of imported drinks behind the bar, no Guinness rendered us wanting a large kingfisher although it’s not cheap at just under £3 for 660ml. The Dutch guy showed me pictures of this thing called ‘the gibbon experience’ which sounds absolutely awesome and I’m definitely going to do it. (Google it)
The bullet holes from the attacks in 2008 are still there and they’re brutal. Holes in the wall, and shattered glass stemming from a bullet hole in the middle. Even just to imagine the attack sends a horrible shiver down my spine. Enjoying a beer, Doors smashed down, gunfire, aimless gunfire in fact, Gunfire designed to create panic, fear and aimless destruction.
On the walk back
to the hostel after last orders the amount of times we were offered ‘hash, very good stuff sir’, is annoying. But Mumbai late at night, what are you expecting eh?
Btw thanks very much for your nice comments :D Appreciated,
Advertisement
Tot: 0.046s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0258s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Gill
non-member comment
wow! Leopolds...but so much sadder than before...