Indian Television

As much as I'm doing my best to see all the sites, get out and spend as little time as possible in my room while I'm here, I have done my best to watch and take in Indian Television (TV being pretty important in my life and all). Most Indian TV channels are in Hindi with the exception of a few English movie channels, ESPN, CNN, and VH1, which mostly plays bad MTV shows, South Park, and music videos. There's also one channel that seems to play Friends 24/7. The Hindi shows vary from entertainment news shows to channels constantly playing strange, smiley, bearded gurus preaching to the camera to channels that are very Telemundo-esque playing cheesy comedies and soap operas. Most channels however just play Bollywood music videos.

One very common thing here is American Idol style performance competitions. They're seemingly everywhere. There is this MTV show which is a contest for twins, though I can't really figure out what exactly is getting judged about them, they seem to just come up, answer a question or two, then move on. It's produced a lot like any other MTV show, overdone "cool" shots, bad interviews, etc. Anyways, here's a clip, which you should be able to get a lot from because they use about half english half hindi.



also there's Li'l Champs, a competition show for children only. Here's a clip I like a lot that also shows Indian Televisions love of using weird sound effects all the time, especially when something is funny.



finally, there is this girl who I see ALL THE TIME on Indian TV. Apparently her name is Saloni and she won one of these competition shows called Chote Miyan Bode Miyan. I have no idea what that means and no idea what she's saying in any of her performances. It appears that she's hilarious, and let's hope she is because, like I said, she's on TV all the time. Here is a clip of Saloni as a Police Inspector. This is pretty much what all of her performances seem to be, she comes out in some different sort of costume and performs a little show with a man. Again, I have never had one of these translated and could find no videos online with subtitles so I can only hope she is as funny as everyone seems to find her:



For a while I was thinking about just how strange Indian television is and was going to write a bit more extensively about that. But then Michael Jackson kicked the bucket and they started marathoning his videos on VH1 and I started to realize that of all the strange things I'd seen on Indian TV, it was no stranger than pretty much every music video Michael Jackson made, and no worse than most of the schlock on American TV. Still though I've found myself sticking to the English movie channels more and more.

New Things

On Monday we began our work with the school downstairs which is an able-disabled inclusive school. Basically they do their best to mix able children with disabled children and believe that helps everyones education. It was a lot of fun. I was in a class with about 10 children, all disabled in various ways, between the ages of 11 and 15. I had a great time and the kids really liked me calling me "Uncle" and "Sir". The teacher was going over telling time with them, drawing small and big hands on the board and asking them to tell her the time until she got distracted with something out in the hall. I waited awkwardly and quietly for a minute or two and then just got up and took over where she left off. From there I was in and they all wanted to learn from sir. They were practicing parts of the body so I taught them the song "head, shoulders, knees and toes."

Then today I worked a bit again with the same class and then went down to work with the nursery children. There were about 15 or so of them, only two disabled, and that was a lot of fun despite the heavy language barrier (the younger children know much less english than the older ones). We sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and I helped to count with them and teach them english names of body parts. Then, however, the teacher left me alone with them at one point and I slowly started losing control, they began running around and pretty soon one of them threw a toy at me. This, apparently, was the funniest thing any of them had ever seen and very soon they all began laughing and throwing things at me. Thankfully the day was about done and the teacher soon returned and took them all away to go home except for the two disabled students. Despite the mutiny, I had a very fun time and ended my day by having a tea party with a small girl with down syndrome.

Yesterday (Monday) I did two other new things that I don't particularly believe in. The first was hand washing my clothes which went well enough I suppose but certainly can't hold a candle to a good, old, American, whirpool washing-machine. The other was having a full-on astrological reading done. The girls are completely into that stuff but I was very skeptical because a) I'm a skeptic and b) It cost about $40 American and c) well, I'll let Bill Nye explain:

Despite my attitude I went through with it and now I'm tempted to believe in the stuff because, well, my Horoscope was fantastically positive. Other than this coming September which is apparently going to be a bit rocky for me I'm to expect prosperity, health, wealth, fame, success, lots of women and eventually a wife and children who will bring me luck in the coming years and throughout the coming decade. As far as accuracy about who I am and past things, one of the girls was looking through a horoscope book in a book store the other day and I looked through mine (Sagittarius) which was actually pretty accurate. Of the things the guy said about my past nothing was terribly off and some of it was very very accurate like that I started to really achieve success in my field in September of 2007 (right when we started making B.S. Detectives) and that I am lazy about things that I'm not passionate about but very hard working at the things that I am passionate about. Overall, I still don't really buy into the whole thing but I'm hoping he's right and that it doesn't work like a birthday wish, thus absolving any truth to my reading by telling everyone here. Regardless I can't help but feel a bit more positive and fortunate about the future, even though the reader didn't speak Hindi (Denise's friend Leenata translated) he kept smiling, laughing and shaking my hand throughout the reading, which has to be a good sign.

We then ended the day by going to the top floor and watching fireworks and a laser light show over a newly opened bridge connecting two parts of the city over the Arabian Sea. Here's a bit of the show:

Sunday In The Countryside

Today we had a lazy morning followed by a nice long drive out to the foothills surrounding Mumbai. We stopped for lunch at a great little spot called the Royal Stag with great food and a lot of strange rules (numbers 7 and 9 specifically):


Then we continued uphill to check out the view which was breath taking.







We were very fortunate to get there when we did because within about five minutes the clouds rolled in right on our heads and we were engulfed in fog and pretty soon rain. Check it out:



Eventually it made it look like this on our drive down:


Then on our way back we stopped for Chikki which is like Indian Peanut Brittle but with nuts other than peanuts. It's really only so-so and I'm not much of a fan. The other thing we stopped and got was cooked corn on the cob from a little stand on a bridge which was rubbed in lime and salt and was absolutely DELICIOUS, even this monkey thought so: