coca cola and the bbc

what a crazy last couple of days...
we arrived in mumbai on monday night, and on tuesday morning we were approached to be extras in a bollywood commercial. who can say no to that experience! it turned out to be an ad for coca cola about a clown falling off a bike. we were two of only 20 or so people there (not including all of the tech people filming the thing) so were featured prominently throughout. not sure if it will ever make it anywhere, but if it does, you'll be able to google it in about 1.5 months. we did that all day tuesday and wednesday morning. wednesday evening, we were sitting in the leopold cafe (which still has bullet holes from the attacks in november) and our table was filmed for the bbc. our south african friend was interviewed, and we'll all be on the bbc's indian financial report on sunday! (could you tape this, mom?) pretty amazing.

wednesday night we were supposed to take the train to arambol, in goa, but we could only get waiting list seats, and they weren't confirmed, so we stayed one more night in mumbai. we ended up spending the next day with our friend from italy in the largest slum in asia. it was very intense. talk about poverty. but there's a realization that we all had: in some ways the poor people in india are better off than the poor people elsewhere... yes, they live in abject poverty, but there is a large and somewhat sustainable community. there are also very cheap services & goods available to them. it's not like the u.s. where if you're poor you can't afford anything. chai is cheap, and you can find street food for a few rupees. i'm not saying it's an easy existence, but the people we met (we were mostly surrounded by kids) smiled all the time. and it was amazing to see that the people who have the least asked for nothing but attention and photographs. my earlier disappointment with the people here has been largely reframed by meeting locals and straying from the tourist trail.

so, now that we've left mumbai (on an overnight bus last night, arriving in arambol this morning), we've entered the other extreme... people with money relaxing on the beach. it's a change i appreciate for what it is, but i wouldn't trade the experiences we had yesterday for anything. intense and raw, but real and worthwhile.