There are days when being an architect (ahem....cad monkey...ahem) gets a bit monotonous and you flutter and wiggle inside in search of different flavours. I felt strangely liberated when I drove around Pondicherry one night looking for the casting agent’s house. Veronique Meuron had advertised for 100 female and 300 male extras for a French television series and I had decided to check it out. She was desperately searching for someone to play “The Indian Beauty”. The role description was not as flattering as the title. The bad guy (played by Jean-Hugues Anglade) is in bed with two women when his sister (played by Milan Jampano) breaks in with through the door to kill him. The two frightened girls jump out of bed and run out screaming. I was to audition for that role. She took a couple of pictures and showed us around her office cum apartment. There were print outs of giant Excel sheets all over the walls co-ordinating actors, animals, props etc with the shooting schedule. We would be engaged for three days to shoot at a palace in Chettinad and paid a decent sum of money for it. It sounded a perfect paid vacation plan.
I was hopeful of getting the part when a call from her shattered my dreams a few days later. She had found someone better and moved on. I was bitter about it for a couple of days but eventually overcame it. There were other pressing things to take care of at work. Life, however, never moves in straight channels but meanders and twists when least expected.
The agent called me again in the middle of the afternoon and said they urgently needed someone to play the part of the servant, would I be willing to come? I forgot all the drama and heartbreak of the previous days in a second and nodded like a puppy dog. So, while the female protagonist in the script goes from being a deported prostitute in France to a princess in India, my role took a reverse turn.
Morning found me stuffed in a car with a troupe of other actors being transported to Chettinad. It is quite amusing to be trapped in a van with aspiring actresses for twelve hours. Other than the constant re-touches to the makeup there was incessant talk about actors, directors and future assignments. It is sad to see these little girls carry the weight of so many dreams on their emaciated shoulders. I felt like a bit out of place but did my bit to participate.
When we reached the shooting location in the middle of nowhere an ugly shock awaited us. Because of the rains they had rescheduled the plan and had already shot the scene for which we came all the way from Pondicherry. The casting manager was in a soup and did not know what to do with us. We were beginning to get really angry at the situation also. A few frantic cigarettes later he managed to squeeze us in the third day’s schedule. We would get paid as promised but for different roles. We accented.
To shoot, we moved to the ghost town of Kanadikathan in the Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu. It took the production team two days to figure out what they wanted to do with us. This gave us enough time to explore the region around. I had read a lot about the grandeur of Chettinad houses but nothing can prepare you for the real thing. One house stretched for half a kilometre and had a thousand windows. The magic of courtyards, the magnificence of hand carved granite pillars and the mystery of dark rooms and windy staircases was enchanting. Sadly the trade from Myanmar that supported such extravagant lifestyles stopped long back and the younger generations moved to the cities leaving behind these architectural relics. Some houses just decay behind huge padlocks while others have a negligent keeper or squatters selling the richly carved pillars one at a time.
These architectural distractions calmed me down a little as the vanity of the whole venture had begun to trouble me. By the afternoon of the third they called us to another palatial house were the scene was to be shot. A fake market was being set up complete with fruit and vegetable stalls, cows and goat, beggars et al. Inside one of the courtyard the makeup team had set base and were dishing out French soldiers, Indian kings and natch girls by the minute. There was lots of confusion as the French and Indian crew tried to co-ordinate with each other.
We were dressed up in 19th century natch girl style (I had 10 other mates doing the same thing) and waited for our scene. The central courtyard of the palace was set up like a king’s pleasure house. We were required to stand along the edges of the scene to entertain French guests. The main female character would then burst in to rescue a kidnapped child. The scene for so silly that me and a couple of other extras had a hard time controlling our laughter. It was shot 17 times with different camera angles. It was midnight before we left for home. 
The ridiculousness of the whole adventure still makes me laugh. A part of me now exists on celluloid somewhere in French television (if it is not cut off during editing). It was nice to peek into another profession albeit for just three days. I now have a newfound respect for the movie industry people for the amount of time, money and energy they put into making films.
