NPR has a story on outsourcing animation to Mumbai, apparently Rhythm and Hues has built a big facility out. The story is worth a listen.

Many Indian animators are thirsty to bring their experience and art to an Indian film with Indian themes. Hopefully the exchange of ideas and art, even in this commercial environment, can be two ways.

Tags: India

Well, I'm floating back to SF for a bit to work with phoenix edit. Since the shoot is delayed and I am getting paid by the job instead of by the hour, I figured heading back to SF and picking up some work is the way to go before I come back for the shoot in Feb. I will still be happy to upload and post to the blog, particularly when I go backpacking in March.

Tags: India

Well, it's official, the shoot has been delayed. They won't start shooting until January so it's looking like I will come back in February to do the various effects shots. After the film gets scanned in, I will swing back by Mumbai and take some big TB hard drives home with me and do all of the post in whatever office space I happen to be working in in SF. I have had a lot of days to take the city in and explore the bits I am curious about. I think it would take 10 or 12 lifetimes to explore every neighborhood and even talk to a fraction of the people to hear the individual stories of Mumbai. I keep focusing on the larger, bigger picture, and then as soon as I generalize, individual lives pop out at me.

I am now faced with the decision of going home early, trying to get a few jobs in and then heading back, or traveling now for a few weeks, and then heading there, and back again, and then traveling to Oregon, and then to SF, and then Mumbai, and then traveling, then taking the ring to Mordor, etc. I am figuring it out in the next few days, and trying to make decisive decisions based on financial situation versus life experience situation. It's looking like some very good friends of mine are taking the plunge and coming to India next spring, so I would like to maximize my time here then. Also, paying rent in an apartment I'm not using in San Francisco is blasphemy and madness.

I have met some good peeps while I am out here, a few americans here and there. I enjoyed some time meeting a friendly fellow named Jacques, who teaches at the American School and is a brilliantly multi-talented linguistics guy, a half french-half texan, and moonlighting actor. I typed up his blog and we went and got 1 or 2 or 12 kingfishers and shot the shit. If I take anything home with me, hopefully it is the newfound desire to ask anyone what they are doing, to talk to anyone, and to just invite random people off the net or street to go get a beer. Take the plunge, and you will be rewarded. I think traveling does this for you because it places you outside your comfort zone- you have to make friends to survive. Also, traveling to another land is humbling. It forces you to realize that you don't know everything, in fact; you don't even know how to get milk because you don't know what it's called, and you don't know where to turn left because you are bewilderingly lost, and you don't even have a clue what tastes good because it all tastes like fire.

Also with the time I had, Melissa and I traveled down to Colaba, the tourist section of the city, but in addition the financial center, and British section. We went to Leopold's, which is a fisherman's wharf type place with everyone who is there a foreigner. I hadn't seen so many white people gathered together like that in such a long time, I was literally a bit awestruck. "Jesus", I thought, "No wonder everyone stares at me in my neighborhood. I am a fishbelly." We met a few backpackers, a dude from NY and a dude from Sydney and then got to hear all of their traveling stories. I am definitely ready to zip up the backpack and take off after hearing some of the cool stuff they had seen.

Last post I did 5 things I loved about India, and then I promised to post 5 things I hate. However, I don't want to use strong language like hate, as hate is taken seriously here, and it's quite rude to use it unless you mean it. In fact, often times Indians will not tell you "No" even if you are asking a legitimately neutral question. "Is the bathroom this way?", will elicit a response to not offend you but won't be in the positive or the negative. In fact, most Indians have a head gesture associated with this, a sideways wobble whenever you ask a question that could be construed as "Of course," "Possibly," "I really don't know," and "If I spoke one word of English, that would let me communicate with you, but I don't. However, you are smiling and nodding, so I will too."

Also, since I do plan on seeing a lot more of India, I shouldn't over generalize about 5 Indian things here. In fact, one of the food stuffs I mentioned in the last post is regional. In fact, everything in India is regional. Including language, religion, ethnicity, caste, and custom. Musical and movie taste is the only universal, as our DP says, a particular shade of gorgonzola.

So I will fold in 5 things that bother me here, and how they relate to Mumbai as I have had a lot of time to reflect upon the city as a whole, probably more then San Francisco, because it isn't my home.

5. They are creating an ecological time bomb, and will eventually kill the planet.

Sorry. I know that from my perspective this could be construed as racist, hypocritical, or mean. I also know that the U.S. per capita far outpaces India in terms of general C02 emissions, tonnage of waste, etc. But India will destroy the biosphere. There are a billion people here. There are gonna be more. A lot lot lot lot more. And they don't care about ecology or environmentalism. It's not even a consideration. To say that India has only just the potential of destroying the world is like saying George W has the potential to come out of the closet while working for an NGO in 2009. The potential may be there, but it is not going to happen. India will not throw the brakes on. They can't for various reasons, and me separating my paper from plastic in San Francisco and arguing with my other small chunk of liberal elitist pampered educated friends about what is the most green mode of transportation will not stop a billion more people from being born and killing the earth here. It's staggering.


When the city flooded in 2005 due to an unusually heavy monsoon season (which is debated as to whether global warming is the cause) the infrastructure of the city trembled and collapsed under the weight of a few extra inches of rain. Hundreds died and were displaced. The city became a sewer. One of the reasons for this is the ancient water mains, built by the British(!). An extra foot of water and they begin piping water into the city rather then out. Another reason is the quickly disappearing expanses of mangrove wetlands. The mangroves are nature's answer to a Britta, they clean the carbon dioxide in the air, and absorb the pollutants in the water, and can survive in near toxic conditions, and they do. The mangroves are getting systematically stripped by two of the main prongs of India's exponentially propulsive culture: western materialism and bone gnawing poverty.

I went and saw a swath of mangroves near me that have been preserved. Unsurprisingly, the upper class neighborhoods and complexes are near these last bits of green, while you are in the area you can feel the proximity of marginally less stale air, it's like sleeping with your head next to an air conditioner. I found construction here- a bridge being built at the edge of the mangroves here, some shacks slowly making inlets there.

Although supposedly entirely protected, local government is corrupt enough that enough rupees in the right palms will get you a golf course in the middle of the mangroves, and this exact scenario happened with the Lackawanda mangroves I visited today. Of course, several examples of this could be demonstrated in the states, and all over the world, (I haven't even been to China yet, which I hear makes Mumbai look like Walden Pond) but being in a city of this scale puts the enormity of the problem in perspective. I can't help but feel that 100 years in the future, Bombay will be more like cities in the US with marginally improved city services, and cities in America will be more like what they already live with here: choking pollution, exhausting heat, overpopulation.

Plus side: Smog makes for great sunsets. Click here for a bigger version of the sunset. This is taken from the roof of my apartment complex. Want another panorama? click here.

4. They are still bombing the shit out of each other.

What makes an Indian? This question is amorphous, leading, strange, counter-intuitive, and political. Indians are not bridged by a common language (in fact they have about 20 major recognized ones, that number variable on who you talk to) and more variety of religion then one could think possible. Hinduism, the major religion of india, has no centralized authority, practices, and, seemingly entirely necessary for a major religion, no universal dogma. I have been reading Shashi Tharoor's excellent collection of essays, The Elephant, The Tiger, and the Cellphone, which comments on geopolitical and social implications of India's 21 century boom, and who helped make it happen. While Tharoor is undoubtedly an Indian nationalist, he is not without a helping amount of scorn for what he sees as black marks on India's new place in the world. In particular, the fact that religious and political bombings still are common place here. I like a particular passage where he talks about India's box of crayola populous-

If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast. Indians are used to multiple identities and multiple loyalties, all coming together in allegiance to a larger idea of India, an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity.

That idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, conviction, culture, cuisine, costume, and custom, and still rally around a consensus. And that consensus is about the simple idea that in a democracy you don't really need to agree-except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.


Of course, the ground rules on how certain extremes choose to disagree is a constant shifting and sometimes deadly plate tectonics. There were political/religious bombings in Utter Pradish (UP) while I was here, and I wonder if the families of the 15 indians killed while doing their business about the courthouses in three major cities two fridays ago will hold the democratic torch of embracing many, or instead seek vengeance on those who took their loved ones away.

3. They've adapted all of the bad values of the West.

From TGIFridays, to McDonalds, western values have arrived here in a big way. I am not so much irritated by seeing American odious corporate overlord McCulture dominate different societies as I am by seeing the culture slurp at it with glee. I find myself always more interested in meeting the lower castes here, those who can't afford Levi's or GAP. I see a genuine curiosity and friendliness in these skinny young men, and sari clad women that is missing in the confident and brash western style indians. The idea of an alternate culture, or a people who choose to educate themselves yet consume less, is completely foreign. And materialism gets pushed to extremes. Rich, educated, Indian women, with freedoms that their mothers never had, embrace slutty, Juicy Couture, Paris Hilton looks and lifestyles, while the men embrace motorcycles, hair gel, and big biceps. (Or alternately, the Silicon Valley buzzword and money/productivity deification) I know I am in the L.A. congruent portion of the country (Bollywood) and the industry in Hollywood is just as bad, but again, I hope that not everyone views our gift of Lyndsey Lohan as embraceable kindred spirit or western morale she-witch destroying civilization. I want to convince them to view her as I do, utterly inane.

2. Only a small percentage of women have freedoms to live good lives.

This is without a doubt a male dominated culture. It's also a marriage obsessed culture. Many men are allowed transgressions while women are ostracized if they stray in their forced unions. Although of course, in Mumbai, I see very little of this, with the fast paced city life and westernized ideals. What I do see is a city of men, men everywhere, fixing things, building things, making business, and going to school. It's officially an 8 to 10 ratio of women to men, but from the ground, the ratio feel much higher then that. Sexual Harassment is freakishly called "eve teasing" and it is common enough to have a sign telling you not to do it.

Melissa, my roommate, is particularly stared at, commented on, and made to feel awkward in public. Women universally make less money here, however, being an American, it's hard for this kettle to call into question the color of the pot.

1. And to completely be a chauvinist contrarian to the above comment...

All the cute indian chicks in this city have boyfriends.

Tags: India