Good old (New) Delhi

My dear friend Michelle pointed out that I owe you all a post. Truthfully the last few weeks have not been all that exciting, mostly just work. We did take a trip to go whitewater rafting, which was awesome although kind of similar to whitewater rafting in the US. There were a couple things that made it extra special though. The first is that we were in the Ganges river, which is believed by Hindus to be holy and is a major pilgrimage destination. It was extremely convenient because we were able to multitask by rafting and washing away our sins at the same time. Cliff Jumping!!!

The company’s official method of transportation from the end of the rafting back up to base camp was to stand by the side of the road and hold our thumbs out. A truck finally pulled over and we all climbed in the back and sat on top of their cargo, bouncing along and loving every minute of it. Halfway there the truck stopped and guide hopped out and walked away without a word. Now that we are accustomed to bizarre India-instances such as this, we were unphased by the fact that we were now in a random truck with some guys who didn’t speak English and just sat tight and sure enough they dropped us off at the base camp and asked for 100 rupees.

Squeezed in the back of the truck. As you can see, Little Ditty have really embraced India since we got here. Just kidding! Those are my other two roommates who arrived after us, Aakash and Monisha.

Since I’ve mostly been in Delhi the past few weeks, I thought I would bestow upon you a few random knowledge nuggets about this place I have come to call home. First, it is common for menus in restaurants here to refer to appetizers as “titbits”. Can you honestly tell me you are mature enough to not crack a smile at the word titbit? Yeah I didn’t think so. So without further adieu, here are a few titbits about Delhi:

1. It really is brutally polluted here. The city is covered in a permanent cloud of smog and you can feel (and smell) it every time you breathe in. To make matters worse, the other night we were walking along our street when we heard a loud truck approaching from behind. As it was about to pass us we realized it was dispensing a huge cloud of yellow awful smelling smoke that was then hovering over the street. I had a brief moment of panic where I decided this was chemical weapons terrorism and they hadn’t yet perfected the colorless or odorless part and were using it anyway. Despite my panic, there really was nothing we could do to avoid it and had to just keep on walking down our street through this chemical cloud. We asked someone and apparently it is mosquito poison. So now not only am I breathing in your standard toxins, but poison as well. Awesome. The next morning I read in the paper about a large debate in India about whether or not to allow genetically modified food. So far they have forbidden it because it might be dangerous. As I licked the poison off my lips I couldn’t help but taste the irony.
2. It is socially acceptable for men in India to pee anywhere, and thus the edge of the sidewalk is the most convenient place. Unfortunately there is not really a trash removal system either, so the litter and urine combine in the heat to create quite a smell.
3. On a more positive note, Delhi actually has a ton of trees and parks. Our street is lined with huge trees and we are within walking distances of some pretty nice parks complete with fake lakes and everything.
4. There are about 3 motorcycles for every car in Delhi, and it is not uncommon to see a family of 4 or 5 all squeezed onto one motorcycle (one kid in front of dad, one squeezed in behind him and one in mom’s arms at the back).
5. Lastly, homosexuality is not accepted here, although it was made legal over the summer – and by legal I mean not marriage but rather just being homosexual in your own home. It is, however, socially acceptable and quite common for men to hold hands while they walk or to sit with their arms around each other. It is also socially acceptable for men to order Bacardi Breezers at a bar. So often I’ll go into a bar and see three guys all sitting with their arms around each other enjoying Strawberry Breezers.

So there you have it, I hope these bits o’ tits have enlightened your day!

Sorry I haven’t posted in so long, I’ve been helping my new boy toy Brad Pitt pick out his latest child. Ok fine, I’ve just been doing work but I had to come up with something to top the whole bollywood with Julia experience. One thing I will say is that now that I’m an experienced extra I just can’t watch a movie in the same way. Every time I see someone walk across the screen in the background I just have to analyze their performance. What is their motivation for walking that path? W have they chosen that particular pace? The complexities of the mind of an extra would blow you away. But alas, now you are no longer reading the blog of a h/bollywood movie star, but rather just a tireless NGO worker who packed up her life and traveled halfway around the world to devote herself to the greater cause no matter how challenging that may prove…I know, how incredibly lame!

This past weekend was Diwali, the biggest Hindu holiday of the year. Luckily, since I live in India I get to experience things first hand and don’t have to just read about them to understand them. Diwali, also known as the festival of light, celebrates the return of Ram after 14 years of exile. (www.wikipedia.com) Two weeks ago we celebrated Dasara, which was when Ram won one hell of a battle against Ravana, aka a mean monster slash devil. So now he's back and we are ready to celebrate!

Diwali is pretty sweet in that it combines Christmas and the 4^th of July into one – people decorate their houses with Christmas lights and set off firecrackers (there is also some praying and cleansing of the soul involved but I just saw the lights). By firecrackers I don’t just mean those little sparklers either, everyone sets off their own 4^th of July style fireworks. It actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it: rather than have the city waste its precious money and deal with the logistics of setting up a fireworks show, they just make them legal and let the people set off their own show. Plus, in a city of 12 million, this means that the fireworks are going off literally all night (actually more than just all night seeing as Diwali was Saturday and it is now Monday night and I am still listening to the blasts go off it was cute at first but it is getting a little old). Delhi doesn’t have any skyscrapers, so as long as they were bright enough to shine through the pollution you could see fireworks going off all over the city. We live on the top floor of our apartment, so we were able to climb up on our roof and literally watch fireworks going off in 360 degrees all around us, which was surprisingly cool - until our neighbors set one off that fell about three feet from us and we freaked out and went inside. My other favorite part of Diwali is the traditional gift basket, which for some reason always contains random British and American snacks. They sell them in all the stores and it is literally a basket filled with totally non-Indian items. One of our organizations here bought us one and it contains: one pepsi, one box drink of Tropicana juice, a small bag of Lays, and a few mini Cadbury bars. So random, but much appreciated none the less.

...And it just keeps getting better

Ok, now I’m starting to wonder if some member of the Eat Pray Love crew is reading this blog, because they have managed to make my India-dreams come true. To start at the beginning, yesterday Jack and I were called back to the set for some more of our critically acclaimed (and everyone always says I’m my own hardest critic) work as extras. When we arrived at the set we noticed a definite lack of white faces. It turned out they were filming an Indian wedding scene and thus had about 60 Indian extras and 2 white extras. Who were those two whities? You guessed it, yours truly and Jack. Luckily we’re used to sticking out like sore thumbs at this point, so even though the rest of our posse was gone we quickly adjusted and it was just another day at the office.

The morning was off to a good start, the filming was in Delhi so the commute wasn’t as long and they didn’t try to stuff any extra people into our cab on the way there. It got even better, however, when they busted out a bright pink sari and told me that was my costume for the day. Cristie I hope you’re reading this because I know I was joking about showing up at your wedding in a sari, but now I’m seriously considering going back to the set and stealing that one because not only was it bright pink but it also had a ton of sequins on it and was pretty much amazing. So don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Its tough to say who looks more natural in their costume - me or Jack?

Of course I was also decked out in bangles and fake jewelry that reminded me of the type of things 4 year olds put on when they’re playing dress-up. I was fully prepared for another day of standing in the background when all of the sudden I was whisked away and asked to talk to the choreographer. As I was running behind him trying and keep up with his brisk no-nonsense walk, I learned that he was there with a troupe of Bollywood dancers to do some dance scenes for the wedding reception. I have to insert a side note here so that you all can get a mental image of el choreográpher. He had clearly spent an hour on his hair that morning and used a full container of gel to create some sort of an elvis-meets-McDreamy look. Then he added a bright pink button down shirt tucked into skin tight black jeans and topped it all off with some tiny round sunglasses with purple lenses (very Elton John). He was a kick.

I was so distracted by his looks that I almost missed the part where he tells me that in addition to the Bollywood dancers they want to have some other dancers, including cute kids a white person who is there for the wedding. Yes, you read that right. I spent the next half hour busting out Bollywood dance moves with some professional dancers complete with hip shaking, bangle rattling, and overly-expressive fake smiling. I get the distinct feeling I was out of the shot the entire time and it was actually just the American crew playing a prank on me, but the joke is on them because not only have I now fulfilled my dream of doing a Bollywood dance in a major motion picture, I am also fairly sure that some bigwigs will see the footage and sign me on to more roles immediately.

Later in the afternoon I actually ended up standing next to Julia Roberts in a scene where we tossed flower petals up in the air. I had the distinct privilege of then picking said flower petals out of Julia’s hair. It took all my strength to resist pulling out a chunk to sell on e-bay. This of course led to intense bonding in which we became best friends, agreed to go on a shopping spree, she slipped me a quick thousand bucks just for being me, made me the Godmother of her youngest child, you know, the usual. Actually, to be honest I’m pretty sure if she had seen my dancing earlier in the day she would have been asking for my autograph since it was pretty clear which one of the two of us was cooler and more talented.

Anyway, I think I’m done with my Hollywood experience, the 4am starts are getting a little old and to be honest there is no way I’m going to top yesterday’s experience anyway. So when 2011 rolls around and this movie finally comes out look for the white chick dancing her heart out as Tulsi walks by and you can say with pride that you read her blog back before she was famous.

Forget Bollywood...I'm going straight to Hollywood!

As many of you know my real reason for coming to India was not to save the world, but to become a Bollywood star. While I have made very little progress on that front, I had the unexpected chance to get a taste of Hollywood this week. It goes like this:

I saw a posting on a listserv to be an extra in a film by Brad Pitt’s production company called Eat Pray Love, staring none other than Julia Roberts. I signed up and was told I would be contacted shortly, only to hear nothing back. The whole thing operated in a very “India” way, meaning that I got a call on Sunday asking if I could leave around 4 am the next day to go to the set. As if I have nothing better planed for my Monday. Well, actually that was true so I told them yes of course. They told me they would call back with details. At 8 pm on Sunday I still hadn’t heard anything, so I had to call them to remind them. Sure enough they still did want me, had forgotten to call me back, but yes, a cab would be arriving at 4 am to take me and Jack to the set. Obviously Jack was also involved because we clearly can’t be separated for a full day without having severe separation anxiety.

The cab showed up at 4:45 and was already full – so Jack and I had to squeeze in for the bumpy hour and a half ride out to the Ashram, where the filming is taking place. A bit of background: Eat Pray Love is based on a memoir and includes a part about the main character travelling to India to stay at an Ashram to meditate, do yoga, and find herself.

Apparently while they were filming in New York they forgot to do a wedding scene, which is a flashback scene to a wedding in Connecticut in the early 90s. So the production company rounded up 60 white people from Delhi, had us dress in our nicest western suits and dresses, and shuttled us all out to a hotel near the Ashram to film this scene. The first crazy part was hair and makeup, where I was transformed from a sleepy bedhead to one crazy looking wedding attendee. I forgot that stage make up is not exactly flattering. The shade of pink on my lips has not been seen since the mid 80s and my eyelids rivaled Mimi’s from The Drew Carey Show. After feasting on a fabulous catered breakfast we were off to the set. The second crazy part was seeing a bunch of Western Europeans sitting around in sleeveless dresses and suits and ties. I don’t think I’ve seen more than three other white people together since I’ve been here, so to suddenly be surrounded by them dressed to the nines was quite a trip. Unfortunately, Jack and I were not even chosen to be in the scene. Although we had both seen Julia, it was surprisingly anti-climatic; who would have guessed she kind of just looks like a person in real life? We were definitely bummed to have missed our 15 minutes of fame as we drove the hour and a half back to Delhi.

At 9pm, however, our luck changed as I got a call from the production company asking if we could come at 4am the next day and stay at a hotel near the set to be extras for the next three days. Considering we get paid over twice as much per day as the daily equivalent of our NGO salaries, not to mention the fact that being on a movie set is far more exciting than working from home, we of course said yes. Please note that we are not completely neglecting our jobs, we both brought our laptops and have been doing work at night and in between scenes on the set.

Being an extra has actually been pretty cool. There are about 10 of us who are called “core extras” meaning we show up every day to do the general Ashram scenes. We’ve all bonded since we have plenty of time to hang out and we’re quite the motley crew – some Lithuanians, Russians, and Brits, me and Jack and another guy from the US, and an Aussie – all dressed in authentic Indiawear. There are a few scenes of me walking around in the back, as well as one where I am checking new arrivals into the Ashram. So when the movie comes out do look for me in the back saying goodbye to Richard. It was a very emotional day and we were quite sad to see him go J

I think the coolest part, though, was being chosen to be the stand in for a smaller character named Corella. (Same hair color and height, combined with my obvious talent and good looks and natural ease in front of the camera won me this role). The part is played by Sophie Thompson, who I learned from google is Emma Thompson’s younger sister and was in Sense and Sensibility and Emma. She has been so much fun to work with and is really chatty while we’re not working. As I’ve learned, the role of the stand in is to walk through the actor’s movements and lines so that they can check all the lighting. First we watched Julia and Sophie (aka Team 1) do the scene to see what they do, then they call in Team 2 (me and Charlotte, Julia’s stand in) to recreate it. We then run through it numerous times, pausing throughout etc. It’s a little weird to know that some big shot director is sitting in his folding chair watching your face intently to see how the light falls across it. Then comes the highlight, which involves Julia Roberts coming back to take over and making eye contact and smiling at me. Considering the only “celebrity” I’ve made eye contact with before is good old Ben Bernanke, I thought it was pretty cool. Not to mean any disrespect to Ben, he is after all The Man.

The other cool part about being a stand in is that everyone, the assistant directors, cinematographers, cameramen, etc, are all standing around watching the scene with you so you get to whisper with them and learn about what goes on behind the scenes in movies. They were all really friendly and have worked on a lot of pretty sweet movies. Plus now they all know me by name, so when I’m walking with the other extras and they wave and say “Hi Suzanne” I get major status points.

All in all, its been a jam packed 4 days (we did get to sleep in until 5:40 today which was absolutely luxurious) and I have to say that while trying to save the world is pretty cool, being on a movie set has its perks too. I apologize for the lack of pictures, needless to say cameras are absolutely not allowed on set.