10-16-19 - Jaipur - Bollywood
/Day 122. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
We leave Delhi for Jaipur fully knowing most of the day will be sitting on the bus. Thank goodness the bus is comfortable and the roads are decent. We experience our fair share of cows in the road - now old hat to us and the mandatory handicraft store bathroom break. We all settle in for the ride, expecting a pretty chill day.
Hmmm…expect the unexpected.
At one point, a man appears in the middle of the three lane highway frantically waving a wooden stick at the bus. The stick looks like something he picked up on the side of the road. From Leanne’s vantage point, it looks to her like a urgent call for help from a distressed driver. Our bus driver pulls over and gets out of the bus with the bus assistant. We don’t have a guide for the drive between cities so we are left to wonder what is happening. Kyle gets up and looks out the back of the bus window to an incredible scene.
There is a police car on the side of the road with their lights and about five cars pulled over. It turns out the crazed guy with the wooden stick is a police officer who is arbitrarily trying to waive vehicles over to the side where his partner is running around writing tickets and collecting wads of cash.
The police officer walks boldly onto the three lane highway in front of the oncoming traffic and points his stick at a white car, stands directly in his lane and vigorously shakes the stick to the side. The white car slows down and makes like he’s pulling over before apparently deciding he’s had enough of this crazy officer’s shenanigan’s and guns his engine and drives right at the police officer causing the police office to dive sideways and swipe at the car with his stick. The white car floors it and takes off into traffic like a bat out of hell. Apparently the driver needs more than a tree branch wagging policeman jumping up and down in the road to take it seriously.
Undeterred, the police officer strolls back onto the highway and starts the process all over again this time picking a big but slow bus which he successfully diverts to the pool of cars to await the extortion demand. Our driver has been back in the chaos for over twenty minutes when the bus assistant comes running back to the bus and gets a pouch stored in an upper cabinet and runs back. Hmmm…doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what’s in there.
This goes on for a half hour with some drivers successfully managing to successfully dart, zig and zag their way past the police officer while others are not so lucky. Finally our driver and bus assistant get back in the car. “Speeding ticket,” he smiles ressuredly and resumes his drive as if this was an everyday occurrence and he was just getting a cup of coffee. Man, we couldn’t have scripted anything close to as good as that.
Kyle comments that he thought he’d have nothing to write about for the blog with us being the bus all day long.
We arrive at the hotel in the late afternoon to meet the office representative for the tour company. He helps arrange for us to see a Bollywood action film called WAR. The Indian film industry puts out 2,000 films a year but somehow we manage to hit one of the top grossing films ever at one of the best places to watch a movie. According to CNN travel, the Raj Mandir is ranked as the third most enjoyable movie theatre in the world (behind an outdoor theatre in Athens, Greece and one in Texas). It is a stunning Art Deco theatre with only one screen; a relative rarity in the world of mega multiplexes. We sit in the balcony section for $7 ticket each (there were $3 seats too!) and pay a whopping $11 for everyone’s drinks, snacks and popcorn. $11 for 7 people. We are definitely liking this!
The movie is in Hindu with no subtitles, but it turns out that there are a couple key English words and phrases intermixed with the Hindu such that we can actually pick most of the plot line. In addition, it’s a super-fast paced, action packed movie such that subtitles are not necessary to explain people getting shot and things getting blown up. Apparently the two stars are the Indian-versions of Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey in their primes because every time one of the leads appeared on screen, the entire audience absolutely erupts in an ear-splitting chorus of hooting and hollering and oohing and aahing.
The movie plot is around two military agents who are out to find bad guys looking to blow up Earth. About halfway through, the two male leads break out in a song and dance musical number that gets the crowd screaming in an even bigger frenzy than the shootem, blow up scenes. The singing and dancing has absolutely nothing to do with the movie but we realize now that to make it big in Bollywood, dancing skills of lead actors are a must-have along with a six pack stomach.
We are supposed to leave at the intermission (what a great idea by the way - a built in bathroom break) to go to an Indian restaurant for dinner but Kyle adamantly insists he is not going anywhere until the movie is over and he finds out the ending even if it means skipping dinner. Kyle convinces the crew to stay for the rest of the movie and everyone is glad he did (except for a couple of the kids who feel fast asleep for the second half of the move). It did go almost three hours but Kyle absolutely loved the movie. What an enlightening cultural experience for us all to bear witness — India loves their movies and we now understand exactly why.
We go back the hotel and manage to wrangle some late night food out of the hotel restaurant so we end up getting to see the entire movie without going hungry.
