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HDTV Diary
india 2
PHOTOS BY BILL ZARCHY, EXCEPT AS NOTED
Monday 12 June 2000 We drive a few blocks to a public elementary school in an attempt to see a computer lab in a school mostly attended by poorer kids. The staff receives us with the warmth and hospitality we have grown accustomed to here in India. But it's the first day of school, things are not too organized, and, worst of all, there's no electricity yet in the building. Not to worry, though. We have our generator parked out front. In a flash Heera, Uday and our lighting crew have not only set the lights for our scene in the lab, but also tied in and supplied power to the building, so that we can start up the computers! It's still a bit of a struggle, though. Not all the computers work too well, one starts to smoke, and it is over two hours before we are able to shoot a dozen students using the machines. Kids are massing in the courtyard -- this school has over 4000 students, and we grab shots of them. The children all wear simple school uniforms and the women teachers wear colorful saris (I am constantly amazed by the fact that nearly all of the women we have seen in Pune are wearing traditional dress). We set up in a corridor and shoot hundreds and hundreds of students walking in past the camera, at first very calm, then more excited and a bit wild. This is great material. Nothing illustrates the future of India better than shots of kids. We poke the camera into a classroom door and shoot by available light, with beautiful streaks of reflected sun coming in through the windows, rimlighting the kids and teacher. We interview Mr. Shikarpur in the school corridor. He has been instrumental in bringing this and other computer labs to the poorer schools in India. He articulates much of the high-tech theme of our India segment in an elegant manner, saying, among other things, that the Middle East had oil to lift itself up, and India has Information Technology. We are bowled over by the amount of usable visual and theme material we have accumulated in a few short hours in the school, and very honored when the headmaster presents us with flowers as a gesture of friendship and thanks. After wrapping out of the building, we stage our photo with the entire crew out front, then bid goodbye and thanks to our lighting crew. Heera will stay with us till we finish shooting, but the rest of the guys are heading back to Mumbai today. At a bridge over the river through town, we film crowds of people, mostly adults, flocking across by every means possible. They travel by foot, car, truck, auto-rickshaw, bus, scooter, bike, etc. -- a sea of humanity on the move, a great visual of India's greatest resource -- people. We get shots of signs for cybercafes and billboards for internet ventures and "dot-com" enterprises. As we finish our last shoot in Pune, we are joined by Asrani, Manju's husband, a well-known comedic actor and director. On the street, he is asked for autographs, and later he joins us for dinner. |
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Computer Lab at the Elementary School PHOTO BY LARRY LAUTER |
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A second grade classroom... |
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...about 60 kids in a room with one teacher |
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The schoolyard on the first day of school |
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The school gave us flowers |
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On the schoolyard: Sushil, Randy & Larry |
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Some kids in the yard. People were friendly and curious and eager to pose for pictures. |
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Manju has apparently told Asrani that our group is pretty calm while working, even in the midst of chaos. We discuss how much more fun it is to work with nice people who are confident in themselves and what they do, than with some of the screamers we have all experienced. He tells us he has appeared in about 120 movies, as well as numerous TV programs and series! In Bollywood, Bombay's film capital, popular actors can be scheduled in two-hour shifts and appear in several movies at once. At one time, Asrani was shooting six films at once, sometimes leading to hilarious continuity problems. It's a fun evening, and I realize with a pang that it will be sad to leave these lovely, warm people, especially now that our bodies are starting to adjust to the time change. Only two more days in India! Tuesday 13 June 2000 A morning of flavor shots. At a square about a mile from the hotel, we shoot many high-tech and dot-com billboards, showing the wide proliferation of information technology in India, which has paralleled the growth of the middle class in recent years. We arrive at a local college, which Sushil has contacted. We have many shots of young children and adults, but we are lacking faces and portraits of the college age crowd, India's immediate future. As we are ushered through crowds of students to meet with the assistant principal, Randy notices that Jon seems to be the only one there wearing shorts. By our next meeting, with the principal of the college, he is convinced Jon is the only man in India wearing shorts, a fact which comes up more than once. Even after a month on the road together, Jon is still the New Kid. The principal is happy to have us there. We set up the camera outdoors on campus as unobtrusively as possible, which is about as subtle as a bull in a china shop. We are, of course, a complete novelty to the young Indian students around us, but they are more reserved than the curious, staring people who hang around us when we shoot on the street. We shoot many interesting portraits from a distance on the telephoto end of the zoom. The campus crowd here is energetic but low-key compared to the traffic outside, bright-eyed, handsome and smiling -- young women in saris and in the first western dress we've seen in Pune, men primarily in shirtsleeves, a number in Sikh turbans. Pune, the educational center of this part of India, cranks out 5000 software engineers a year. The future of India. Back to the Blue Diamond for lunch, final packing and checkout. A long bus ride back to Mumbai/Bombay, partly in the rain, then we check back into the Taj Mahal. "Welcome back," says the doorman with a smile. The front desk has expected us, our registrations are filled in, we grab our keys and off to bed. |
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Our full India Crew, including drivers and kids eager to get in the picture (on right) |
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Heera Saroj, our gaffer |
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Atrium of the Taj Mahal Hotel in
Mumbai (Bombay) |
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Wednesday 14 June 2000 Mumbai ! Last day in India, and it's sunny. I grab some still pictures of the Taj Mahal Hotel. My room here seems larger than my house in California. The atrium hallway is lovely and I shoot a vertical series of stills to piece together later. We go out into searing heat and humidity and high sun to shoot crowds. According to my SunPath program, the sun is now 85 degrees above the horizon! Randy's been talking about the evolution of the film in his mind. He'll probably start with Alaska, a solo story about a woman getting her degree via the Internet, then bring in Costa Rica, a community story about providing access to the outside world for an entire village, then climax with India, a national story of vast proportions. So we need crowd shots everywhere, and it's not difficult to find 'em. We do several shots in downtown Bombay, especially near Victoria Terminus, the classic old trainstation, the oldest in India. Here we set up various shots, some wide angle, some long lensy, all packed with humanity. In each setup we let the camera run for several minutes, sometimes panning around and using selective focus to highlight certain faces, often just letting the floods gush through our field of view unadjusted. I shoot a series of stills of the station square to build a Photoshop panorama when I get back. The heat is oppressive. This is the worst we have seen in India. Sushil and his crew are cool as cucumbers, some in long shirts. He knows a theatre manager nearby and we climb several staircases to shoot from a window high above the street. The station is opposite, the traffic below. Lenses don't get wide enough to show this. Back down to the street for a couple of architectural closeups of the station, and, baby, that's all she wrote. All of a sudden, it's a wrap on the day and Bombay, a wrap on India, and a wrap on the whole show. We hug sweatily, to the amusement of the passersby who have stopped to stare at us and share in the moment, whatever it is. One of them tries to look through the lens of the camera. As Mangal sets up to take a photo of us posing in front of our last setup, several well-dressed street-starers step forward to get included in the picture. As we scrunch closer together to fit in frame better, one of our non-invitees puts his head on Randy's shoulder! We drop the gear at the Taj, then leave the hotel on foot to go shopping. I realize that this is the first time in India that I have not gotten into a vehicle and been driven to a location. Immediately we are engulfed in the street life. Pitiful beggars, hustlers, "friendly" souls touting various shops of indefinite location or selling oval, speckled balloons three feet long. But the four of us gringos are with Sushil and Om and Mangal, and we're not bothered too much. We shop for gifts and souvenirs at a state-run, fixed-price store and quickly acquire dresses, salwar khameez (the long-dress-over-pants outfit favored by many more modern women in India these days), pillow covers, little wooden toys, fabric. Lunch is a treat at Status, a downtown restaurant featuring vegetarian South Indian cuisine, none of which I recognize. My favorite dish is a kind of small round cracker covered with red mush and then topped with grated stringy yellow stuff. Sushil tells us the names of things, but my brain can't absorb them. He promises to email me with a list of what I've eaten, in case people are interested. His last international clients were a German crew who ate no Indian food, so he is glad we attack the local cuisine with gusto.
After lunch, we are stuck in stalled-dead traffic in a large square. Om calls out something to Sushil, then leaps from the van and goes bounding off across the square, in and around the stalled cars, trucks, buses, taxis, three-wheelers, and pedestrian. About fifteen minutes later, we have advanced about 50 yards, when we spot him running back on an intercepting course to ours. He jumps back into the van with a smile, then presents us each with a present, a small, clear vial with a grain of rice mounted inside on a small sliver of paper. The rice grains are inscribed. Mine says, in 3 lines: BEST WISHES BILL ZARCHY FROM OM MANGAL The presents are, of course, a sensation. The man who inscribed the rice, Om says, did it quickly while he was waiting, used a very fine brush, and had no vision assistance. We love these people. We go to a Fashion Street, lined with stalls selling all kinds of clothing. Jon and I buy shirts at several establishments. In each case, Om and Mangal and Sushil ask us to pick out the kind of thing we want, then they carefully inspect each garment for irregularities and quality of workmanship. Finally, they negotiate the price in a careful Hindi word ballet, sometimes triple-teaming the salesman. After one purchase, I ask Sushil what's being said. Apparently the proprietor has asked for 200 rupies per shirt (about $4.50 US), Sushil has offered 50, they've settled at 100. "Yes," I say, "but what's the attitude?" "Friendly," he says, "Always friendly, not insulting." I wonder if the friendliness is common in Indian haggling or primed by his contagious gentle manner. They drop us back at the hotel with plans to meet later for the late-night airport run. Later that afternoon, we four go out again to shop a bit more. No longer accompanied by our Indian friends, and not too sure where we are going, we are accosted on the street more and more. We wander into an air-conditioned shop and make a number of silver purchases. The owner offers me a cold drink as he processes my credit card and asks about our visit. When I tell him the subject of the film, he snorts. In an eerie echo of Mr. Shikarpur's line at the school in Pune, he states, "People say computers will lift India the way oil lifted the Arabs, but I think computers just put people out of work." By this time, Jon and Larry have wandered off. Randy and I look for them briefly, then head back toward the Taj. As we near our luxurious oasis, I decide to stay out a bit longer, very conscious that this is our last day and this is a part of India I've seen little of. Now the street people descend in earnest. Beggars with missing limbs, with beautiful, mud-streaked brown faces, tote infants and grab at me, demanding my help. Hustlers follow me for blocks at a time, despite my denial of any interest in what they're hustling. And now, because I'm a man out alone, the touts get sexual. "You want boy, sir? You want girl? You want massage? Blow job? Anything you want." I pass street stalls selling all kinds of goods and various fried foods, often covered with flies. Finally the scene gets to me and I double back across a street I have just crossed, trying to shake off some of my fans. I start to walk very quickly. A man calls out to me, asking where I'm from. I ignore him as he keeps yelling at me. Suddenly I realize I have no idea where I'm going, but I force myself to continue the end of the block. I'm still only a couple of blocks from the Taj Mahal and in no real danger, but the harassment has rattled me. The hotel tower looms into view, and I head off that way. In moments I am engulfed in air-con and luxury and soon in a shower. I never pretended to be an adventure-film maker. Late that night we are picked up by Om and Mangal in a huge bus for the long ride to the airport. On the way, we pick up Sushil and Manju along the way, as they live on the same side of town as the airport. Manju gives us presents and we ooh and ah over garments for our wives. She makes Randy promise to send her a Fart Machine. The airport is chaos. Arriving shortly before midnight, we have to fight to keep porters from grabbing at all our gear and throwing it (literally) onto the x-ray belts. We struggle to separate the hand-carries and keep things from being taken out of our control. The porters stack things up high and ignore our protests. The tripod case drops onto the cement floor. Check-in at Lufthansa takes a while, as they hem and haw with Larry over the excess baggage charges. The agent wants us to empty the air out of the tires of our Magliner equipment cart for "safety reasons," but this will make it impossible to use at the other end. They relent and agree to ship it as is. Meanwhile the porters feel they have been underpaid for their unwanted assistance, and they hang around and pester Larry for more money. Finally the process is done. The bags are checked through to San Francisco through Frankfurt, we have the right number of claim checks, and we settle back to wait for our flight. |
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Bombay street corner: Randy, Sushil and Om |
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Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai |
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Thursday 15 June 2000 At 2 am we board a Lufthansa 747 and suffer culture shock. Instantly we are out of India, soaring through the air in a big tin can with German attendants. The famous German efficiency is quite evident in the speed with which they serve our meals and the gusto with which they attack their jobs. The food is mediocre, even here in business class. I finish reading "A Passage to India" on my passage from India. A headache follows me all the way home from Mumbai. Nine grueling hours later we arrive in Frankfurt for a two-hour layover. Remarkably, I have been able to sleep on this first hop, as much as 5 hours. We crawl onto another '47 for the final 11-hour leg to San Francisco. Final leg for me and Randy and Larry, anyway. Jon will leave us at SFO and continue on to Denver and Austin, another five-airport day. No sleep now, but I watch 3 movies and read a book called "Traveler's Tales of India." At one point, while standing up chatting with Jon, I set down a napkin on a cart and I am scolded by a flight attendant. We land just before noon Thursday local time. We are a bit early and wait a half hour for a gate. Eventually we deplane and head for the baggage area. As we stand before the final carousel of this job, we comment on how fortunate we have been. Through Costa Rica, Alaska, and now India, every bag has arrived with us, every time. But we have spoken too soon. The conveyor spits out many bags, but few of ours. After a while an announcement is made in German (but not in English) that several containers of luggage have been left in Frankfurt. The agent tells Larry that 120 bags have not shown up. So much for the famous German efficiency. Fortunately, we have carried the most valuable pieces with us -- the tapes (our show!), the camera and lenses -- and we get the large monitor, tripod, magliner, and shelves back from the airline. The other 15 checked items are not there. Our minds reach dimly back through the haze of travel. We worry about the chaotic scene at Bombay's airport, and wonder whether something might have been lost there. Oy oy oy, if it has been. Much of what's missing is equipment rented from Videofax, and we are concerned that it arrive soon. We explain the problem to some friendly Customs officers, and they agree to expedite delivery of our stuff once it arrives tomorrow. America seems calm and cooperative after the discombobulation of India. We part company, sending Jon off to Texas. All of our personal suitcases are among the missing. On the drive home, Larry's fiancee Jen wonders "what will happen to Bill's suitcase this time?" Friday 16 June 20000 I get a call at home from a courier for Lufthansa, coming to bring 2 bags to me. From the descriptions, I gather that he has my filter case and a small duffle I use as my kit, but no suitcase. A while later he delivers the two to me and advises me to call the airline if I'm still missing something. About 10:40 pm I get a call from Sam, a bellman at the Ramada Hotel in San Francisco, advising me that he has a large black suitcase there with my name on it, apparently delivered in error by the airline. What do I want him to do with it? I thank Sam and call Larry, who tells me that all the gear was delivered to Videofax by 6 pm, and a courier will deliver Randy's and Larry's bags around 9:30 or 10 pm. My suitcase will be the last piece in the puzzle. I call the courier service and tell a machine about their mistake and ask them to retrieve the bag ASAP and bring it to me. I advise them to call as late as they need to. Saturday 17 June 2000 The courier calls after midnight for directions. Some time before 2 am he arrives with my big black pullman -- none the worse for wear after being muddied by Continental, ripped and repaired by Alaska Air, stalled and released in Frankfurt by Lufthansa. I open my luggage and discover that the inscribed grain of sand from Om and Mangal has broken, but I hope to repair it. At last I have all my stuff and it feels like the trip is really over. No doubt I'll sit in on postproduction a bit (always timing my visits to coincide coincidentally with lunch). I look forward eagerly to seeing this material projected on a 40-foot screen, but for me, this job has ended. |
first uploaded 18 June 2000
