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A Mumbaikar Minute
10/11/07 21:51 Filed in: India | Professional
You can read all the books, blogs, and see all the photos that new media will serve you, but nothing can really prep you for the dirty, hot, chaos of Bombay. After the Gene Roddenbery-esque Singapore Airport, I got a true taste of India landing down. After touchdown, greetings were piles of ruble, muggy heat, and sheer human labor running and busy upon the airstrip itself. Where next to hand-painted, not-touched-by-a-hint-of-technology signs warning me of the dangers of Malaria were 30 inch plasma flat screens bolted on disintegrating brick walls, thick with layers of chipping lead paint. As metaphor, this works pretty well to describe all of Mumbai in general: a flatscreen bolted on a crumbling building. Infrastructure is roughly slapped and messily pasted upon the old, and not just one generation of technology and cultural difference, but several, as though Bach began composing as John Cage.
After meeting Tomas at the airport, my american producer, we jumped in the car to go to the bollywood studio to meet his indian studio exec. Again; the new pasted on the old, affluent mixing with the crushingly disenfranchised, and population density that made me feel that I was traveling in a human ant colony.
Loopy with jet lag, brain addled with the 3 text books I had read and annotated on during the 24 hours of travel, we arrived and promptly Tomas bought me new shoes. ("Umm... dude. You look like a homeless guy") He says this to me in a city of homeless, more homeless and poor than I thought could exist in any one place. It then occurred to me that I am not here to travel, not here to sight-see, and not here to observe for my blog, but to work. And part of working is impressing those here with the money and my personal presentation. In San Francisco I am used to resting on my personal appearance with many of my clients. Many of them enjoy the bike riding, pants rolled up, tight ironic hipster t-shirt chic. Here of course, money walks and talks and appearance is crucial.
After meeting Tomas at the airport, my american producer, we jumped in the car to go to the bollywood studio to meet his indian studio exec. Again; the new pasted on the old, affluent mixing with the crushingly disenfranchised, and population density that made me feel that I was traveling in a human ant colony.
Loopy with jet lag, brain addled with the 3 text books I had read and annotated on during the 24 hours of travel, we arrived and promptly Tomas bought me new shoes. ("Umm... dude. You look like a homeless guy") He says this to me in a city of homeless, more homeless and poor than I thought could exist in any one place. It then occurred to me that I am not here to travel, not here to sight-see, and not here to observe for my blog, but to work. And part of working is impressing those here with the money and my personal presentation. In San Francisco I am used to resting on my personal appearance with many of my clients. Many of them enjoy the bike riding, pants rolled up, tight ironic hipster t-shirt chic. Here of course, money walks and talks and appearance is crucial.
Waiting to go into a production meeting that never came, instead I sat and observed dailies from a current production. Through a run down office (chipping paint, faded posters on the wall) with a 50 year old brass sign that says "Mixing" we walk through a door and into a state of the art, air conditioned, 5.1 dolby sound mixing studio as large and current as anything I saw at Skywalker.
Sitting on the couch and being brought strong coffee, I watched them review the sound of the latest marginally taboo sex farce/music video/ beautiful people/escapist fantasy/Bollywood Epic.
Back to the hotel. sleep.