Almost Famous

We had to be up early this morning for our big day on the movie set. After a quick breakfast, we headed down to the cinema where we were to meet the recruiting lady. There was already a small group of about 9 or 10 other girls and one other guy. We were all put into taxis and driven across the city, down some dodgy back alleys, behind the Hyundai dealership to an old, abandoned-looking building that seems to be a pub or club. We chatted to the other guy, an Aussie named Lincoln from the Sunshine Coast while we waited for about 15 minutes before being told that the shooting had been cancelled for the day, as the actress's father had just passed away. We had the option to go to a different shoot, but really couldn't be bothered at this stage. We said goodbye to our future stardome and were driven in the taxis back through the city to Colaba and joined Lincoln for a coffee at the trendy Barista (the same javan oasis we had discovered in Jaipur). It was nice to just hang out and chat with a newfound friend, and for a day we felt normal. We ended up spending the rest of the day with Lincoln, who had been travelling around India for a few weeks by himself (sick half of the time it seems) and was desperate for company provided by someone NOT trying to rip him off, lie to him, or cheat him in any way...we definitely knew how he felt! After talking of our travels for a while we realised we had met Lincoln before on Phi Phi island in Thailand.

After some time on the internet, we headed to the Cathay Pacific office to change our flights, Lincoln headed to pick up a suit he had made, and we all met at a cinema to check out a Bollywood movie. We all agreed on seeing Kaal, a film being heavily advertised here. It looked to be a mystery/action type movie, and all we cared about was that it involved tigers. We bought our tickets (prices are based on seating, the most expensive tickets being the best seats) and headed inside. We got excited when we saw the Coke machines at the snack bar, thinking they would be frozen Cokes, a movie treat we love at home, but they weren't. After the national anthem and flag waving, the film opened up with a song and dance number in full Bollywood fashion: loud music, horrible singing, spastic dancing, and garish costumes. The first few lines of the movie were in English, but that was it for the rest of the film, other than a few stray words and phrases here and there. 'Cut the crap' was used quite a number of times. I guess it's a testament to how shithouse Bollywood movies are in that we didn't need for any of it to be in English to be able to follow the story. In fact, I think it was almost better. The movie turned out to be a cheesy horror-type flick with a crappy story & crappy actors, but the scenery was beautiful. It was set in 'Orbit' National Park, an obvious knockoff of Corbett National Park. We suffered through the film, but thankfully it was not the 3-4 hour marathon that a lot of Bollywood movies are.

We said goodbye to Lincoln, who was going south to Goa before heading to the U.K. (we'll hopefully catch up with him in London), bought a few beers at our local liquor store and went back to our hotel. The beer was going down very well, and we decided to stay in and order a pizza for dinner (we had seen ads for Domino's). Nige ran down to get more beer, and we had one of our best meals yet: ice cold beer and an awesome pizza delivered nice and hot that didn't taste like masala.