When we arrived at IndiCorps, we were right in time to join the IndiCorps fellows and volunteers (mainly US and UK residents from Indian descent) for lunch... on the tile floor. I had a very nice conversation with a guy who in the past had worked for Shell in The Netherlands and is now actively involved (already for 2½ years) in the IndiCorps Frisbee Project. After lunch we could participate in a group session on ´How to write a column´, outside... on the grass. Very useful for us (IBM-ers) too, as we can use some of these tips for our blogging. In order to prevent participants from dozing off, an ´energizer´ was applied: aerobics-type steps combined with shouting. At the end of the session, very practical ´survival´ tips were provided. For example: if your energy level is low, you can eat/drink ´Ragi´ (incl. instructions on how to prepare this). Our visit to IndiCorps was a very interesting experience. For more information on IndiCorps, see: http://www.indicorps.org/.
When we left IndiCorps, only four of us continued sightseeing as Eva and Dominik decided to return to the hotel to work. The four of us visited the Jain Temple. Jain is a very strict form of Hinduism, where followers are not allowed to eat anything that grows underground (e.g. potatoes, garlick). The temple was very beautiful, but no pictures were allowed inside so I cannot show it. The day ended with a great experience: the six of us went to the Drive In Cinema. ´Sunset Drive-in, an open Air Cinema with the largest screen in Asia, is located at Ahmedabad. It is first of it's kind which can room about 665 cars at a time. More than 6000 people can enjoy watching movie at a time.´ (see: http://www.sunsetdriveincinema.com/home.html). The cinema is about 500 meters from our hotel (which is why the street is called Drive In Road). At first we intended to rent a car and driver to watch a movie, but we had discovered that it is also possible to watch a movie if you don´t have a car. In short: we walked to the cinema.
At the cinema it was quite a challenge to find where pedestrians were supposed to go as we entered through the car entrance. When we had found it, there was a counter with two lines: one for men and one for women. One person could buy the tickets for the entire group (no separation between men and women), so Annamari and I bought the tickets as the women line was much shorter than the men´s. After the line to buy the tickets, we were guided to another line: the line to enter. This line was mixed man-women and many people were pushing and jumped the queue. Finally we arrived at the outside stone seats and the movie started... At least that was what we thought. But that was not the case: first there were 30 minutes of commercials.
At 23:00 (two hours after we left the hotel to go to the cinema), the movie finally started. It turned out hat we were watching the movie ´Blue´; a popular Bollywood movie from 2008 (guest) starring... Kylie Minogue!?! Some striking aspects with respect to Bollywood movies (at least this one):
- 5 minutes after the movie started we thought we were back to commercials (resembling e.g. Bounty advertisement). However, as it turned out this was no commercial but part of the movie.
- The ugly guy gets the beautiful girl.
- There is a lot of attention for women´s bums
- ´Bollywood erotic´ scenes take a long time
- Anything in written text is in English, spoken text is in Hindi with sometimes an English line in between (e.g. Hindi text -´But you can call me Nicky´- Hindi text)
- It can take quite some time before the first Bollywood dance is displayed (in Blue it took at least 15 minutes)
All in all, it was a really enjoyable experience, but we still left before the (3 hour) movie ended...
Hope this experience doesn't influence your choice when your back home ;-)
ReplyDeleteYeah, a Bollywood movie marathon! Let'do that when you're back, Mapje. Paul can take care of the meatballs (hot or cold).
ReplyDelete