Day 16: Bollywood!!!! (Technically 'Tollywood')

Apologies for the late blogs. Internet aint the best, and when ur here u just get immersed.

It happened! I saw a bollywood movie (technically a tollywood movie because it was in Telugu) in india. but first let me set up the day. on sunday is market day in the biggest village in the area, Penukonda. Penukonda has so much history, as this was the summer palace for a king over 600 years ago. We arrived by jeep as the staff at SEDS buy their foodstock here. Augustine, our supervisor, also rocked up as he had just dropped off the other students to their placements. So i got to experience first hand the market life of India. My goodness, stalls everywhere; fruits, vegetables, spices, millets, chickpeas, grain - all these things for sale. Colours filled the sandy, dusty markets with everyone’s produce. It was so pleasing to the eye. We also went to the meat department where skinned goats and sheep were being hung for all to see. One man scared Cait as he held a goat’s head to show her that goat meat was sold here bahaha.

It was lunch time being foreigners our stomachs couldnt eat much at all. So Ronny our Belgium volunteer took us to his favourite bakery. It was here a small young girl was begging to give us money. It was too hard to ignore her, yet thats the advice we are always given. ‘ignore her, she’ll leave you alone.’ But why? We have this sense of ‘i cant help her’ - but i could have, ‘if you give her something, you’ll attract others’ - this maybe true and i cant help everyone but i can at least help her, ‘you dont know wot she’ll use the money for, or if this is some kinda of scamming ring’ - yes, you could be right. All these thoughts went through my head, so instead i just talked to her in telugu. i asked for her name and age. i think that kinda shocked her, firstly that i knew telugu, but secondly that someone actually took an interest in her rather than ignore her. So for about 20mins she followed us begging for money for food as we went to find this bakery. we found the place and bought food and also bought bannanas at a nearby stall. i offered to buy her bananas but the advice i was given was to ignore her (even though its so hard for everyone to, trust me, its always been playing on ronny’s mind too). but she didnt want it, no, she wanted money. its saddening. truly it is. again the thought reoccurs - the only difference between me and her was that we were born into different circumstances.

after that incident, ronny took us to his picnic spot away from the markets and into the villages (once we entered here the little girl stopped following us). Here we saw a village built into the ruins of an old fort. the ruins of a 600 year old well was here as well, and u’d think the ppl would turn it into a heritage site or at least preserve it….but instead its a rubbish dump, filled with sewage water and plastic bottles and bags *face palm*. We continued journeying through the streets and saw more old ruins - more ruins being unpreserved, history wasted away. Finally we reached our destination - gigantic lake, but it was empty. The monsoonal rains for some reason havent come so the lake is just bare and barren. villages are now just digging up the lake to use the mud as bricks. But what a sight it was. Panoramic views of just hills. wow.

After the picnic, it was the grand moment, we watched a movie. We entered the theatre and ppl were crowding the ticket booths as tickets only went on sale 15mins before the showing of the movie. Its interesting that there appears to be a divide; men and women would go to different booths (just an observation). prices were 40 rupees (just under 1AUD). We found out why. The seats were of hard plastic, and there was no aircon for the 3hour movie, just ceiling fans, and only half of them worked haha. so we were pretty much sitting in a hot tin shed, but who cares! They movie played after the word ‘panasonic’ lit the screen and the input details visible in the corner (so i can only assume they are just playing the movie off a normal projector haha). They sound system is also in 2.1 and i swear u need earplugs as its on so so loud. Rohith came with the children who live at SEDS as well as the staff, which would have been such a treat for them. that was really really nice of SEDS to do. 

We watched the movie ‘Bahubabli’ - the most expensive movie made in India. It was an epic movie about how the main actor (or 'hero' as they call it in India) was the son from a great empire…..or so i think it was- it was all in Telugu and i understood nothing of it. It was especially confusing when there was flashback 1 hr into the movie and they used the main star to play his father….man that got so confusing. But the cool thing is that you dont need english to enjoy the movie. why you may ask? Because the was filled with action scenes as well as the typical dance repertoire, but more importantly, because the crowd will tell you whats going on. You see, when ever the hero does anything amazing or outstanding, the crowd would whistle and cheer, clap and applaud while its happening. And with that people would share the joy by talking to the person next to you during the movie. So pretty much i had a running explanation of the movie as it progressed. During the intermission (Yes there’s an intermission) all us non-speaking teluguians just chatted outside about what the heck did we just watch? But all in all the movie was brilliant. The songs are really catchy too, that we keep singing it now (im writing this blog on friday 7th aug). I’ve shown the staff the songs on youtube and we all keep humming along to it.

It was time to go home, and much like Zimbabwe and thailand, we shoved 15 ppl into a jeep. so so good, particularly wen we overtook a highway patrol 4wd and they didnt do anything about it….This Is India.

Fun Facts #1: they guy who plays Saiyeed in 'lost' and also plays a role in Sense 8, is the nephew of Rajen, the guy who started SEDS!

Fun Facts #2: indians don't eat with their left hand cause thats their hand they use to wipe their bottoms

Fun Facts #3: I've recently started only eating with my right hand