tales from the land of bollywood

I haven't been online in so long, I can't remember everything that has happened since my last post. We're still in Mumbai, enjoying the shopping and night life and the Bollywood stuff. I haven't been an extra in any films or anything - we are avoiding the creepy scouts this time around. We have had a few funny Bollywood encounters though. Erica saw Ram Gopal Varma (famous director) in the Hyderabad airport last week when she was en route to Delhi. We also saw Amitabh Bachchan's house, because it was down the street from the movie theatre where we went to see The Last Lear. Funny story... we were walking down the street at night looking for a taxi, and this creepy man wandered over to us. He was old and stumbling like he was drunk, and groaning a lot... it was like he was a zombie. Anyway, he walked right up to Erica, then just fell onto her. I was ahead of her and turned around because she had screamed, and saw her running away from this guy. He tried to follow us, or rather kind of lurch after us, and so we decided to run across the street. Then we look up, and we're actually right in front of Amitabh's house, and all his security guards (he had 5!) were watching us screaming and running. They didn't help us or anything. Thank you, Amitabh's security guards.

Then, that same night, we were driving in an auto-rickshaw to a bar, and we stopped at an intersection. Suddenly Erica grabs me, pulls me across her to look out her side of the rickshaw and points forward. At first I had no clue what I was looking at, then she says "It's Salman Khan!" He was on a motorcycle, two rickshaws ahead of us. I was like "No way, it's not him" but then he turned his head and I saw him in profile, and if it wasn't him then he has a twin. Not sure why he'd be on a bike and not in a private car, but hey. It wasn't just us who noticed him, too. All the rickshaws pulled up alongside him and the driver closest was nodding back to the other ones to confirm it. We tried to get our rickshaw driver to follow him, but he drove off so fast, and we didn't know how to say "Follow Salman Khan" in Hindi or Marathi. I made Erica's brother in law teach me to say it though, so if we ever wind up behind Salman in traffic again (or anyone else I want to follow, for that matter) we're all set. Haha.

We had a filmi day yesterday too. We met our friend Shikha's cousin Rajat, who is a director, and he brought us to a place called Filmistan, which is probably the busiest bunch of studios in Bombay, even busier than Film City. Also much more concentrated than Film City. He had a friend working on one of the sets there, so we got to sneak in and watch them shoot some scenes. Interestingly, the film was a collaboration between Bollywood and Hollywood, with a Hollywood director - Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. The film's title isn't 100% confirmed as far as I could tell, but it's something like "Nagin: The Snake Woman" or Snake Goddess, or something to that effect. It appears to be about a very pretty Indian woman (Mallika Sherawat) who transforms into a giant snake and eats people. Seriously. We got to watch them shoot one scene where a guy freaks out because he is about to be eaten by the giant snake. He falls to the floor and screams in terror. Then we had to leave the set, because they were bringing in the giant snake and we weren't allowed to watch. (In case we leaked film secrets or something?) We saw the snake's head though, and it was hilarious. It's not a real snake, it's a ginormous fake snake that they built, like something from a horror B-movie. Jennifer Lynch herself wasn't particularly nice. We came on set quietly and stood out of the way, but she made a point to stand near Erica, and say loudly enough for her to hear "They can't come on this set just because they're Americans. It's bad enough I have to deal with the Indians." (Quote has been altered slightly to remove foul language.) How sweet, eh? Charming lady.

Anyway, after leaving her set, we decided to wander around and see what else we could find. We saw a sign that said Red Chillies on it, which is Shah Rukh Khan's production company, so we tried to go in onto the set, but the door guy wouldn't let us. Undeterred, we found an unguarded back entrance and snuck in that way. It was a freaking massively huge futuristic set that looked like a space station or something and glowed bright green. In the middle there was a small spaceship. Inside the spaceship, there was a man wearing a shiny costume. The spaceship was on cables so it hovered straight up and down, and there was lots of fake smoke underneath. We have NO idea what they were filming. Actually, they didn't shoot anything while we were in there, so we figure they were just getting the shot set up for later on. After about 10 minutes, we were noticed and questioned about what we were doing there. We convinced them to let us stay a bit longer, but then eventually we got kicked out before any actual shooting started. Still, it was a pretty crazy set.

After that, we sat down next to a building to figure out how to sneak in to a different set. We were just waiting around there when this American guy with full sleeve tattoos and a beard came up to us. We thought we were going to be in trouble for something, or told to move, but he just asked where we were from and said his name was Brian. He's one of the special effects guys on the giant snake film. We chatted with him for a minute, and we were asking him about the snake, and suddenly he was like, "Hey, come with me!" So we followed him, and he took us into this back room where they were keeping all the special effects stuff for the film! It was insane. There were giant snake heads and different parts of the snake. It's all really complicated stuff, it's built to move like a real snake. We saw one of the actress's costumes, which is a half-woman, half-snake suit with a 6 foot tail. And another costume that looked like some kind of alien creature. It was all wired up to move on it's own - Brian squeezed some handles and the face moved like it was real! I am sure Jennifer Lynch would have been livid if she knew we were behind the scenes with the snake, but that made it better somehow, haha. It was seriously really cool - Hollywood sci-fi special effects. Brian said the Red Chillies spaceship set looked like children made it. I still don't have particularly high hopes for Nagin, but it was fun to see behind the scenes anyway.

After all this, we wandered some more. There were a million dancers running around, and we could hear a song sequence being filmed, but the door guy wouldn't let us in, and we couldn't locate a back entrance. Aww. After that, we were starving, so we gave up on the film sets and left. We did see Mallika Sherawat for a few minutes, but we didn't talk to her or anything, because we didn't particularly care.

So that was our film experience thus far. Otherwise, we've been having fun going out in Bombay. Last time I was here I was alone, so I didn't go to any bars or anything. We went out Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to different bars, which is definitely a bizarre experience to have in India. They have these extremely posh bars, and once you step inside you've completely left behind anything third-worldly and might as well be in London or NYC or wherever. Saturday night we went to a nightclub called Enigma, which is inside the Marriott hotel, and was definitely the fanciest club I've ever been to in my entire life. It's hotel guests and couples-only to get in, but single ladies are also accepted, of course. The cover charge to get in was 12$ for each of us, but that was cheap. Couples paid about 60$ to get in. Being a single lady has advantages, apparently. Inside was packed - you could barely move anywhere! And the drink prices... oh my god... it was 20$ for a rum and coke!!! Fortunately, our entrance cover doubled as drink tickets so we could afford one, haha. It was insane. The music was really good though, a mix of Western stuff and Bollywood stuff. Erica and I had fun dancing, even though we had to fight off the occasional creep. One guy asked me, not kidding, if I was "single and ready to mingle". I was literally speechless that anyone would use that line. That guy wins hands-down for worst attempt at a pick-up EVER.

Anyway, I think we're done with the nightclub scene for now. It was fun once, but way too expensive to do a second time. I am not sure what we're doing for the next few days, but I think we're leaving for Hyderabad on Thursday morning. Will post photos once we remember to start taking them again. Oooops.