A talent scout, Vikas, came to Vikas Samiti to find some white extras and selected me, Anna and Ellen. A car picked us up 5.15am yesterday and took us to the airport, and we proceeded to spend the rest of the day waiting. We had a brief experiment with a scene in a chai shop that was quickly scrapped, so that on the whole of the first day we earned Rs1000 for contributing nothing to Hollywood’s cause, except eating its rather good meals and getting 60km of free transport! We met plenty of interesting people – some Israeli extras, some other English extras, plenty of Udaipuri families and friends, most of whom were interconnected in some way – and caught substantial glimpses of Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson (Natalie Portman and Anjelica Huston, also starring in the film, were not in any of the scenes being shot that day).
My triumph came today when I had to spend approximately three hours wheeling a trolley back and forth for a glorious 2-3 second shot. On take twenty-seven (or thereabouts) one of my colleagues, a portly middle-aged shopkeeper with a red cravat, presumably donned for the occasion, leant over to me and said, “Well, Jon, this is an adventure. Really an adventure.” What was genuinely fascinating was to see the meticulous detail of it all – every moment planned, every aspect of the set accounted for, including a mock temple and a fake toilet which we had to wait in for hours during the red herring chai shop scene. It was also interesting to meet some of the people involved in the technical crew, most of whom were from Bombay, Delhi or Calcutta and belonged to an apparently small circuit of Indians who work with foreign shootings and avoid the chaos of Bollywood like the plague. A couple of them spoke such fluent American English, and had such un-Indian mannerisms that I took them to be from America until they said otherwise. All in all a curious and lucrative experience. [18]
The Darjeeling Ltd
This evening, I had reached the end of the esplanade and was about to turn back when I realised with shocking clarity that the man sitting on the wall to my right was Vishal, the cream-skinned beloved. Before I could make any cowardly retreat, he spotted me and we greeted each other warmly. He introduced me to his three companions and I treated them to a theatrical account of my day in film. I was showing off shamelessly and that continued as the conversation developed into a romp through a galaxy of topics - Vikas Samiti, life in Udaipur, the millionaires at Devigarh, Rajasthani tourism. Initially, the three friends contributed to the conversation, but as we cast our net wider - capitalism, evolution, the nature of reality - it turned into a battle of wits between Vishal and me. The difference between us is vast: he is an ardent communist, an unyielding creationist and he describes himself as a parapsychologist, fascinated with dreams and their meaning.
At some point we walked further along the road that curves round past more chai stalls and snack bars, and turned off up some steps to an unprepossessing strip of municipal garden. By this stage the sticky night had closed in and it added a strange magic to the conversations that followed. He drew an elaborate diagram in my notebook, representing reality and consciousness and their relationship to dreams, but his explanation was confusing and his smile, with its sensuous blend of wit and scorn, unsettled me.
Some time later, I was in the middle of an impassioned explanation of Darwinian Natural Selection when he cut me short with “How should we live our lives?”. The question was so unexpected and so brutally concise that I told him instantly what I really believe: that we should strive for a balance between contentment and yearning; that in the short term we should always try to be happy with what we have, or else we face misery, but that we should never be ashamed to dream and yearn, because turning these dreams into reality can be one of the ultimately satisfying experiences of our lives.
“Are you sad? Does anything make you sad?”
“Vishal! You jump from topic to topic - I feel really breathless!”
“This is my way, Jon. I like to stimulate people. And, by the way, you’re not answering my question. What makes you sad?”
“Well, of course there are some things,” I said slowly and hesitated. I was on the cusp of laying bare my soul when sense prevailed and I thought better of putting my inner life into the hands of a virtual stranger, whatever my desires towards him. I obfuscated light-heartedly and he smiled and shook his head. “I think you are hiding things. You’re obviously not telling everything.” I corkscrewed round the subject and, while clearly dissatisfied, he seemed resigned to moving on to a less penetrating question about the nature of friendship.
Eventually the night-garden symposium finished and we all walked back to where the boys had parked their motorbikes, laughing and joking as if nothing had happened. “That was heavy!” laughed Vishal as he started his bike and I hopped on. “Time to take mental rest now!”
Ever the shot-caller, he steered the conversation to something trivial which occupied us until he dropped me off at Vikas Samiti. I don’t know what to make of him. He is certainly more difficult than my imaginary version of him, but he is also more real and more interesting. True to his intentions he has certainly stimulated me, and I paced up and down for half an hour on the roof before coming down to write this.
Footnotes
[18] In December 2007, Ellen and Anna and I went to see The Darjeeling Ltd in a cinema near Piccadilly Circus. Sadly, of my trolley-wheeling triumph there was no evidence, although we recognised some of our extras.
Next Post - Saturday 20th January 2007: Udaipur (will be posted Friday 20th January 2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment