Bollywood

Bollywood openly touts something Hollywood always tried to conceal: it is much cheaper to gather all of the ethnic faces around you and film them standing in front of a backdrop of their country than it is to pack up production and travel there. Thus, recruiting whities in Mumbai is big business for directors who want to set scenes in the West.

We’d heard other backpackers talk about being extras nonchalantly; remarking that it was only Bollywood, and that the billion dollar, million viewer industry was really no big deal. We’d seen them play it off with the cool detachment of a 50s greaser and we wanted it. We wanted it bad.

We wanted to shrug our shoulders about hamming it up with Indian stars on par with Elvis and Ted Danson. We wanted the locals we met on the trains to gasp when we dropped Bollywood names, and we wanted to brush away their awe as casually as we brushed away the sweat dripping unceasingly from our brows. There is something truly infuriating about people who run into big names and think nothing of it, and we wanted to infuriate.

We set out early on Ben’s birthday for a full day of wandering around Mumbai in 104 degree heat prepared to do whatever we was necessary to get noticed by the Bollywood scouts. I wrapped my luck rocketship underpants around my head for extra potency and Ben greased himself to battle a local monkey, confident that the stunt would draw every talent scount in town, but it wasn't necessary. Our recruitment took about three minutes.

I assumed it was due to our astonishing good looks and the considerable influence of my rocket ship underpants. Then, the ugliest German guy wearing no underpants at all was recruited right behind us. He looked like a cross between Dolph Ludgren and Thundro from the Herculoids. And his shirt… well if tie die came in vomit then that was it. So much for standards.

When we got to wardrobe they made the German guy take off his shirt. I swear that act alone will raise the box office revenue $100,000. Then they dressed the birthday boy in a lavender suit and me in some leather pants. They must have glimpsed my inner rock star.

We spent the next eight hours holding fake drinks in a London “club” scene, watching high-heeled Philippina girls fumbled and collided their way through a 16 count dance sequence.

All in all we had a really good time. We made some great friends, we wore cool costumes, and we stood close enough to Amatab Bachan (the biggest Bollywood star in the galaxy) to see the stitching in his hair piece. At the end of the day they handed us two butter and cucumber sandwiches (with the crust cut off to show they cared), 500 Rupees, and dropped us at a bar where we proceeded to tell every local who would listen that we just spent the day hanging with Big B (Amatab’s pet name) with none of the nonchalance we'd so coveted.