Bollywood and Jehovas

Hello world! No, I dont think that Jehovas witnesses are currently the fad in Bollywood, but both are relevant to our last few days here in sweaty India. As a little taster....BOLLYWOOD - The "scene" was set (pun intended)...we were in Mumbai, dubbed as Indias most expensive city....great!...but nevertheless....Bollywood beckoned!!! And boy did it turn out to be a brilliant experience. Or rather, somehow, Jen took centre stage of all the 'extras'.....no surprises there, lol and so it could've been so much better for me had I been a speaking part in the film!!


21/03/08 - After making our way to the airport in Kochi, to depart for Mumbai (more Northerly) we discovered it was half run by the local population and the government. For those using the airport this meant:

1. that their 'paperless' ticketing system (for Indigo airlines specifically for us) would actually require you to go to a manned office prior to entering the airport building and obtain a PRINT OFF- to then go inside the building and check in where you can get a boarding pass - Justification of more people required to do one persons job number one

2. security screening requires passengers to put their luggage through an x-ray machine before checking it in, probably a good thing (and also a tactic employed by Malaysian airports), and then to have a further 4 security checks of your hand luggage before boarding the plane as well as at least 20 personnel to take your 2 checked bags to the plane by tractor - Justification of a further 25 peoples jobs

3. refreshments would of course be 8 times the price, with a cup of (crap) coffee for example costing a massive 30 rupees! (75 cents) as opposed to 5 rupees everywhere else in India (so far)

4. and the last thing it meant was that taxes would be harsh! We paid 4000 rupees in tax for a 500 rupees flight each, which meant in total, the cost was 5000 rupees for 2 of us to fly the 1 1/2 hours up the coast. Unfortunately the last point here was very justified as we would not have been able to stomach the 41 hour train journey!!!!


A day-flight-few-hours-later and we touched down in Mumbai. Boy it was hotter up here! The taxi and rickshaw drivers of course would try to charge us 500 rupees for the hour journey to the area we chose to stay (a crazy 6 pounds ish), but we managed to do bus-train-bus to the same part for a mere 28 rupees! Get in there! An hours search later and the best we could do with accommodation was a pretty rank-but-do-able guesthouse called Maria's for 500 rupees (negotiated down from 650). The trick here is to tell the guesthouse that you're staying for at least 3 nights, or 5, and then they are more likely to give you discount!

Mumbai was already proving to be crazy with at least a million people in a 2nd class train coach that perhaps accommodated 50, lol. Seriously though, there were tons of people here! But we survived and we were now in our pretty average guesthouse. It was the most expensive guesthouse we'd paid so far....damn it! An evening of looking at the street vendor offerings and a McDonalds later (I know, I know, Western losers!....but we did get a buy one get one free voucher) and it was bed time. But not before we were stopped in the street by a guy working for a Bollywood extras company. WE WERE GOING TO BE FAMOUS!!......for clarification, we were going to be Western extras in the background of a movie called Victory and not famous in the slightest....!

Excited and ready for action (pun intended once more) at 07.30, we found ourselves on a bus with two people we'd met the night before in a Shisha shop and had pursuaded to come to the shoot with us along with 6 other Westerners. We were on the way to the shoot that was in a 7 star hotel called The Grand, fairly close to the airport! Oh yeah, and it WAS Grand.

Everyone was excited at the prospect of doing it as well as getting paid 500 rupees for the privilege!

There were red carpets set up for the stars as they arrived!

Jen having her hair and makeup done

What a day it turned out to be! A 10million dollar film about a small town cricket player turned superstar starring the England cricket team and a few famous Aussie players too. Harman Boweja, the main star told us this whilst we were shooting a club scene involving Jen as a speaking part!!! AND YES I WAS SLIGHTLY ENVIOUS OF HER CENTRE STAGING. She managed to score a part where she kissed another main guy in the film on the cheek and said something like 'hi, happy birthday'...and...'hey, where's VJ'.... Didn't mind that she had to do the kissing bit either as it was only on the cheek!





Some sexy dancing later by us extras in the background and it was lunchtime already. Sooo exciting....yay!


I was asked to do a swim scene in the lush hotel where I had to don a pair of speedos!! Not comfortable! So all you Germans out there....sort it out dudes, they're so not nice to wear!



....there's me in the background on the right hand side....awesome!


And then Jen scored another speaking part in the posh lobby! Her line was '20,000, thank you very much'...DAMN IT!!! 13 hours (in total) later and we were done for the day, had our 500 rupees in our pockets and I had taken an email address in case we could do it again...networking baby, networking! Check it out! So you have to buy the film in a few months to see if we're in it. Have a look at this youtube vid of an Oz player talking about it:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vSHgCijW4Mg

A second pretty crap nights sleep in our very average guesthouse, due to a window that wouldn't close and some very hungry mozzies, and we were up early for our trip to meet the new tour group across Mumbai.

We were all packed and ready to take a local bus about 20mins up the road when a nice old lady offered us a free ride there as she was heading in that direction herself. Thinking nothing of it we continued to wait for the bus and then she turned up with her car! She was in the back and had two ladies seemingly escorting her. The car was the equivalent of a mini metro...pretty damn small! But we crammed ourselves in for the free trip only to discover that the ladies were Jehova witnesses and were on the way to 'a meeting'...whatever that entailed. How nice was that though?! No preaching and it saved us 16 rupees between us! Get in there!

We're now with our massive group of 2 other people and have been briefed about the trip which starts tomorrow (24th of March) at 05:30!!! The only thing is we now know how much things should cost in India so its going to be pretty hard adjusting to the tourist prices as we're used to pretending to be locals!!!! We'll see how it pans out......