Bollywood Dreams Dashed

Before India we had been trying to eat street food as much as possible, but in India Joanne had never fancied it so we'd never had any. This had posed us with a bit of a calorie problem, as restaurant portions in India are huge and greasy, but we had been very restrained and had shared one portion at almost every meal. There were loads of tasty looking food stalls in Paharganj though, and I was determined to have street food at least once in India. Rs20 was all it cost for probably the best curry I'd had in India, served with two stuff parathas. I think I was ripped off actually, as a customer had told me it would cost Rs15, but a tourist mark-up like that I can live with; it's when they think they can charge tourists double that I start to object. Again Joanne didn't fancy it, but I went ahead without her. We struggled to find her something as we were running really low on cash and the ATMs were all playing one of their periodic no-money tricks on me.

A relatively quiet queue at the train station

It was quite a shock to be back in the crowds of Delhi and the heat in Delhi was a bit much for us after all the time spent in quieter, cooler mountain towns, so we retired to room and lazed about most of the day, watching Bollywood on TV. Joanne had never seen any Bollywood before and decided that she really like it. Actually I really like it as well – another thing I love about India! We were waiting to see Swarg when it came on at 7pm. This was the new TV series we had worked on as extras for a day in Mumbai. It had started the day before so we had missed it travelling on the overnight bus. As soon as the program started we recognised the scene as one of those we were present for. It was quite surreal watching the finished version after having witnessed take after take. The production quality was far higher than we had expected after witnessing the set and the performances from behind the camera, but the magic of television really had worked wonders on it and it seemed like quite a polished, very professionally made piece of television. It just goes to show how little I know about making television as I clearly had not been able to imagine anything close to what the director saw while it was being filmed. Alarmingly, though, the cuts were far faster than I had expected and the shots were much closer in to the actors than I thought. The net result was that there was far less footage of the extras than I thought possible. At first there was no sign of us at all so I started to focus more on the background. I suspect that quite a bit of digital post-processing had been done on the background because some action seemed to go at a slightly different speed from the foreground, and some seemed to be taken from a slightly different angle, but mostly there seemed to be far less going on than there had been at the time of shooting. In a couple of split-second cuts we spotted the two blond dutch people who had worked with us, and after downloading and extensive analysis, we believe Joanne also appears briefly, but I am almost certainly not there. I suspect some digital editing was to blame there. I can just imagine how it went: “Look at the state of him! Take him out. Leave in the girl and, oh yes, the two young blond ones”. Even the scene I was certain would contain lots of me had none. They must have re-shot it on subsequent days! Our dreams of Bollywood stardom – over!

You can watch "our" bit of the program here: http://www.desi-tashan.com/?ID=620478784e4311ab or else by searching for: Swarg colors 30th June.

And this is a reminder from when it happened: http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?CommentID=72447

A postcard for whoever is first to add the time Joanne appears as a comment below! And if anybody finds a higher definition version than the above link, please let me know so I can go through it more closely looking for myself!

written by  The Happy Couple on June 30, 2009 from Delhi, India
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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