19.10.2004

Aspirational squalor set

I thought I should get in on the political demographics game and invent a label myself. How else can you describe the dirty, hectic, desperate street scene here when the telegraph poles are covered in posters advertising technical training in J2EE, .NET, and whatever else is the latest craze in programming. All a little incongruent - foreign - out of place - in a town where Siraj' book depot is not looking like implementing any B2B, B2C, or even ABC solutions soon. I never checked though, so I can't be sure.

*We* are sure though that Indian head wiggling is just plain weird. A little spooky. "Can you take us to Triplicane?" says we. "No" gestures he. No, wait - he's gesturing for us to get in the auto-rickshaw. Oh. That intensity of gaze, the comical wobbling of the head must mean...yes.

It still gets us every time.

It'll take awhile to re-program our body-signal processing routines to select 'means -> yes' instead of 'laugh now -> discreetly' but there you go.

We managed to bus it out to AVM studios today to get close to the movie scene in India. Chennai is striving to be the new Bollywood with a raft of tele-serials and movies being made here. Once you get signed in by security you're free to roam the sets at your leisure. We watched the filming of a typical loungeroom soap drama; it seemed to consist of nothing more than a bunch of women in sarees yelling at each other and their husbands. Hmm, what's new.

We're off to central station now to live in a train for a day, during which time it will get us to our next stop - Bhubaneswar.