BOLLYWOOD...da da da da da da Bollywood
Well, I was definitly "a lert" last night. Not that it did me much good. I went to the India Movie Night. It was a good hour drive away by bus during rush "hour" (it's hard to tell, but the traffic is definitely worse late in the afternoon than at other times).
So we left here at 6:30 or so, and it’s at least 7:30 by the time we get there. It’s supposed to be at the Tavern on the Green, Qutab Golf Course. I had seen the sign for this way out near the last memorial we went to on Sunday, so I knew it was a long way. But the program said that while buses would be available for the return, “taxis will be available on request” – keep that in mind when I get to the end of this story.
The place had white lights hanging in the big trees, and red lights wound along the trunks. We got off the bus and immediately were accosted by a brightly painted elephant’s trunk--still attached to an elephant. Then we walked through this entry way that looked like a huge “clapboard” (the things they snap and yell “action,” with the hosting company – Coal and Oil Group” as the producer, etc. ) and adorned along the pathway with life-size cardboard cutouts of what I take are famous Indian actors and actresses. I’m like the third one off the first bus so hardly anyone’s ahead of me – which of course turned out to be fortuitous in getting a beer before the crowd got there.
Then they have these lovely Indian girls who hang a black scarf around our next (very nice, Pashmuna 100% viscose (whatever that is) although the orange Coal & Oil name on the end of the scarf makes it a little too commercialized for a gift to bring home). And there’re fire eaters doing their thing too!
We then walk into this football field size (oh, I’m sorry, maybe cricket sized field) with about 10X10 foot gaudily painted scenes along one edge – each “booth” has either a fortune teller (the background looks like a store or something, and he’s got a parrot in a cage on a table – you sit down and he reads your palm while they take your picture) and there’s a face painter in another, and others are just for picture taking – with like a chaise lounge chair in front of the interior of a Indian palace, or the front-end of a car and you sit in the seat, you know stuff like that. Later one, two of us went up to get our picture taken and the guy said something about us not having the printed shirts on – I never could figure out what he meant, but all the Coal & Oil guys had what must be the Indian equivalent of an Hawaiian shirt on so he must have meant you needed to be with one of them, I don’t know.
Oh yea, the other side, opposite the “booths” is a LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG single booth, that must have had at least 100 stainless steel food containers lining the front, you know those things at a buffet with the curved lids that you swing back and with sterno kind of flames underneath. Each of the individual booths has a name in front of its five to ten containers, which I take to be the type of Indian food, none of which makes sense to me, but what do I know about Indian food?!? Behind the food were about a thousand movie posters.
And then in the front are a bunch of chairs all covered with white clothes and orange sashes, facing a stage, with two big screens on each side, big light stands, sound system, speakers, movie posters, etc.
So I’m drinking my Kingfisher beer – which comes in a huge glass bottle that must hold three tall beer glasses worth of beer – and mingling. Meeting all kinds of really nice folks – I must have given out a thousand business cards so far over here. All the people are really friendly – so unlike any conference I’ve been to in the States. If you’re standing alone, someone will walk up to you. And if you see some desperate soul standing alone, you just go up and say “hi” and discover he’s from Singapore, Indonesia, Russia (well they’re not too friendly, actually), Australia, South Africa, France, Norway, Switzerland, England, Malaysia, Thailand, or of course anyone of the million ethnicities that appear to make up India – from dark haired, black long-handled mustachioed folks, to turban headed Arab-looking guys, to almost black folks, to very Gandhi-like, and everything in between. That’s really one of my biggest surprises – I mean I guess I knew it but never really thought about the diversity that makes up India. It’s unbelievable, from black-veiled women, to bright colored sari-wearing, bare midriffed old ladies and everything in between. Really amazing! It’s Eastern, it’s Arab, it’s very British, it’s Indonesian-like, it’s amazing!!!
Anyway, I mingle and have a pretty good time, but by about 8:30 I go and grab one of the few remaining chairs – there’s probably 100 chairs, but well over 600 people at the event, and my back could use a rest, so I grab one. It was a fun way to meet other folks, actually. I watched these two guys who looked almost Japanese but were probably from Southeast Asia somewhere try and move a stand-up table to get it level – they could NOT find a level spot and kept looking at me and laughing as I helped them with hand directions. And of course there are waiters constantly bringing around little glasses of about seven different colors of fruit drinks, (you had to make your way back to the bar to get an alcoholic drink but turned out the lines weren’t too bad if you already had a beer glass you could walk up to the side for refills – the poor English folks, however were appalled that the open bar had NO GIN but they seemed to make do with vodka tonics).
And they also kept bringing food around. Unlike the first night, I didn’t see any fish heads, so I kept trying everything. The first thing I had was SO HOT!!!! I should have known better than to touch it to the green sauce-like stuff. It wasn’t so hot when you first took at bite – it was just a little spicey. It was about the size of a fortune cookie, but was deep fried dough, like an eggroll. God knows what was in it – there was a little sign on the tray but that didn’t mean anything to me and if you asked what it was, they just repeated what was on the sign! Most people can speak passable English, but some of these waiters were pretty low on the scale. And even some of the educated Indians were darned hard to understand – I had a long conversation with a guy from Ernst & Young and I only got about 20% of what he was saying and he spoke pretty good English (maybe it was the Kingfishers?).
Then of course, the show starts, with some way too gregarious Indian gal all dressed in modern, 20-something clothes, fashion jeans and a tight tee shirt. She tries to get the crowd excited, but that seemed to be a pretty difficult task all night, actually, not that folks weren’t enjoying it, just that we weren’t very vocal and loud like they would have liked. They introduce the owner of Coal & Oil Group, some relatively young Indian guy, whose family obviously had a lot of money (they’re headquartered in Dubai and want us to help them look at a mine they want to buy in Indonesia, by the way). Then on with the show, which consisted of a dance troupe of about four or five gals and six guys, danced in traditional Indian clothes, but with smoke and load music and dancing just like on the Indian music videos on tv. Some of the Indian folks new what was coming by what they came out dressed as, and the music I guess, but of course I didn’t recognize anything.
So, after about an hour of this, my jet lag’s starting to kick in. They still haven’t opened up the real LOOONNNGGG dining extravaganza, it’s nearly 10 PM, I’m beat and tired and ready to go, so I head out to look for a taxi. That’s where the real adventure began!
There must be a thousand cars all parked healterskelter on this little road, with about 500 guys standing there, in dress ranging from jeans to chauffeur-like. And a hundred kids standing by the stupid elephant, who by now has accumulated quite a pile of droppings behind him. He actually looked very sad in his eyes, even though he was all gaudily painted up. I was just thinking it when a guy next to me commented on the exact same thing – how they live to be over 60 and this poor animal didn’t look like he had a happy life, standing there with a guy riding on a platform on his back, kids running up and petting/hitting him, etc.
Anyway, it’s absolute chaos. I can’t figure out if these guys are taxis or what, and cars are constantly trying to wind there way down the street, constant horn honking and yelling, the music blaring behind me, folks trying to see inside and a more or less steady stream of folks coming out. I just stand there for a long time trying to absorb all of this and figure out a game plan. I see people getting in cars – eventually I realize that all the guys standing around are drivers, and folks either come out or call them on their cell phones before they come out, and then they pile into their cars and leave. There’s about six buses parked down the street, but they’re not moving anytime soon. I finally see a taxi, and people descend en masse on it and it takes off.
Okay, I think, I’ll wait for the next one. In the meantime, you have to watch your back cause the elephant’s trunk is kind of grabby.
I’m a little worried about pick pockets – that’s the only crime I was told to watch out for, otherwise it’s safe. Beggars walk by and get shooed away by the security guards.
This must go on for like a half hour – every time someone comes out I try and ask if they’re going back to the hotel. Most folks appear to be heading out partying, however. Eventually, about five Indonesian’s come out, and they’re looking for a taxi back to the Taj Palace too. We wait and I tell them my tale of now being out here for at least a half hour (I’d go back inside every once in a while, hoping when I’d come back out it would be different, but it was always the same chaotic scene for some reason).
There are the little three-wheeled, green and yellow, CNG powered (compressed natural gas – all the public transportation had to change to this a few years ago to cut down pollution) and an occasional city bus (I use that term loosely – I guess public transportation would be more appropriate). And traffic would jam up every time a new driver would try and get his car out, and motorcycles would zoom by in and out of the people standing on the side, with a million horns blaring!
Eventually, the Indonesians decide they’re going to walk the 100 meters or so down to the main road, and invite me along. We head down there and its really just more of the same scene but this time the cars are whizzing by at about 50 miles an hour, and you just know there’s going to be an accident every minute, and yet you stand there an there never is! It’s totaling unbelievably amazing that this chaos can happen and folks aren’t just lying on the side of the street dead with cars all mangled up but it seems to “work” more-or-less.
After talking to some of the hawkers who have booths along one side of the road (selling a bunch of fish, just lying there on rugs, and with fires going. People seem to live right where they work and sell stuff, so this is also home to at least 100 folks I would guess, at this one corner of an intersection in what is otherwise a more or less wooded area off the main drag which is wall to wall stores and unimaginable stuff.
We give up after a while and walk back to the entrance, almost getting run over about three times in the 100 meter walk down the street. The chaos outside hasn’t changed.
A bunch of women come out, and one of the Indian gals goes up and hugs the elephant – while the rest look on in amazement and shock, especially the western looking ones.
Finally, a bunch of guys come out, they don’t realize what they’re getting into – they think you can just walk out and get a taxi. I calmly explain to them that I’ve been trying for an hour! They decide they’re going to walk down to the main road – against my advice, but what can you say? The Indonesians are across the road trying to negotiate with one of the drivers to take them back and get back before his folks can come out and make some cash on the side, but so far no takers.
Oh, and by now, yet another elephant has come up the street and parked himself next to the original. I think that the first guy is actually offering to take someone on the elephant – as a taxi, but I don’t think going down the busy street for as far as we need to go would be too good of an idea.
Anyway, this Indian guy who came out with the group of guys who headed down to the maid road asks me how long I’ve been there and I say at least an hour. He wants to know where I’m going and I tell him back to the Taj. Just then his car pulls up, and I can’t exactly understand what he’s telling me, but it seems like he’s saying he’ll drop me off – just “get in,” “get in.” Well, I foolishly do, not knowing what in the world is going to happen, but it looks like this is my only shot – I was just about ready to head back in to the party and wait it out, although someone said he thought it would be at least another two hours and the last time I looked, they still hadn’t started the food, and it’s about 10:30 by now.
So I’m in the back of the biggest car I’ve seen – still just Camry-size, but that’s relatively big for here. This guy speaks pretty good English, and he introduces himself. He works for some shipping company, and he wasn’t coming and one of this customer’s called him today and so he flew up from Mumbai (Bombay) to have dinner with him and come to the party. He was in the Indian navy and at one time he was stationed in Moscow. I tell him what I do and we talk, and I get about 75% of what he’s saying, but I still don’t understand where we’re going. Eventually I ask where he’s staying and he’s going to a house that his company leases here in town and then he’ll have his driver take me to the Taj. Sounds pretty good, but I’m still a touch apprehensive, particularly when we don’t turn onto what I think is the road back to the hotel and we’re heading into what I think is the heart of the city – you can tell because it gets brighter and the chaos gets even more hectic if you can believe it. I have NO IDEA where I am, in a car with a guy I just met, and I realize no matter where I were to get out, I’d have the same difficulty in getting a cab, but it seems like it should be easier now that I’m back in the true city.
But we drop him off (the driver goes in the wrong gated entry at first, and has to back back out onto the six lane highway, and he heads down the wrong side of the road to the next “driveway” with cars rushing down on us, but it’s not the first time I’ve been in a car or bus going down the wrong side of the road, so I no longer get concerned about such details.
He gets off at a VERY NICE place, wishes me well, speaks to his driver again in Hindi or whatever, and off we go. Now I’m even less comfortable, but we’re making progress at least. After several minutes, I can tell that we’re back in the diplomatic area of town, and know that we can’t be too far from the hotel, but I have no idea where it is. Then we pass the American Embassy, and I feel comfortable for the first time in hours – for some reason I know that at least I could go there if there was a problem. But in a few minutes we’re back at the Taj, I give him a tip of 500 (he was worth it) came home and went to bed – it was about 11:00 and the last 90 minutes or so were some of the most interesting of my life!!! I’m worried about those Indonesian guys – I would guess they’re still at the movie night. Oh well.
So that’s what I’ve been doing! It’s now 6 AM (I’ve been up since my usual 3:30 wake up time). I need to prepare my introductions for this afternoon.
