Bollywood Movie Stars

Like many people, we (mostly rusty) have always considered ourselves movie star material, but could never break into the industry. Some of you may know about Rusty's failed attempt in the Philadelphia American Idol tryouts in Sept. 2007, where, as Kelsi put it "he froze up like a scared little bunny rabbit." (Rusty disagrees and claims he was trying to show his "strong, quiet side").

In any case, we were walking down the street and minding our own business in Bombay when a man approached us with a business card from a modeling agency and offered to pay us each 500 Rupees to be in a Bollywood movie the next day. Although we were initially skeptical and thought it may be a scam, as you can see from these pictures, he wasn't joking (or was he?). We are now Bollywood stars!

Bollywood is India's primary movie industry and the second largest movie producing group in the world, next to our own Hollywood. Like Hollywood, the films aren't always timeless classics, but we have learned to appreciate them for what they are. One universal rule in Bollywood movies is that ALL movies MUST have several musical numbers, whether the movie is comedy, action, or drama. To convey what this means, imagine Bruce Willis in the movie "Die Hard." Got it in mind? Okay, now imagine the exact same movie with all the action, but titled "Die Hard the Musical" with Bruce Willis performing in multiple dancing and singing musical numbers. That is the essence of Bollywood.

Needless to say, the movie that we played in was a musical. It had the tried and true plot where the ballet dancer falls in love with the bad boy dancer, played by India's six-fingered wonder dancer, Hrithik Roshan. Hrithik can get away with saying "I'm all thumbs" in the literal sense, as he has two thumbs on his right hand. The nice thing is that this quirk is supposed to be very good luck in Indian culture, and the guy is quite a pretty boy and decent dancer to boot... a genuine triple threat... or is that quadruple threat if you count his extra thumb?

After costuming and make-up, we were ushered into a studio set up to look like a dance club. We had the modest hopes of getting a little screen time for our Bollywood resumes, but were completely overwhelmed when Kelsi was chosen as the first lead extra. In this role, she was assigned to be the main person in the background behind the dancers. Rusty was asked to sit on the floor at Kelsi's feet, and claims that this position should be titled "Assistant lead extra," although Kelsi isn't sure if he'll make it into some of the shots. She thinks it might be more appropriate to call him "assistant to the lead extra." You can see his picture up top and make the call as to whether you would want to see much of him if it was your movie.
In the end, we spent all day as extras in a super cool club scene, cheering for the dancers and doing something which the directors termed "dissing," "talking trash," and "being haters." We did our best, although Rusty kept trying to stand up (he felt it was a much deserved promotion). We also had a hard time knowing what trash to talk, so we just stood there saying "hub, hub, hub" with really animated expressions. Definitely Oscar material!

Taj Mahal

We LOVED the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. What's not to love since this wonder of the world was built as a love monument by the king for his wife who died while birthing their 14th child. In the picture above Rusty is trying to gently explain to Kelsi that he probably won't be able to afford building a similar monument for her (even though he still expects 14 children).

Rajasthan India

Rajasthan is the region in India a lot of people think of when they think of India. Rajasthan is a desert state, on the edge of the Thar Desert, and has an interesting history of conflicts, wars, and accords between the local Rajputs and their neighbors, the Muslim Moghuls. The eventual meshing of these cultures led to a mystical desert land full of amazing architectural forts, camels, and colorful costume. Before going to Rajasthan, Rusty was a bit burnt out on sight seeing, so we compromised by picking three cities and arranging a fast schedule which didn't leave room for showering nor laundry for a week - AGAIN!. It turned out that we'd arrive in a city on an overnight sleeper train, spend the day touring, then depart that evening on another sleeper train. The three cities we visited in Rajasthan were: Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer.

The desert cities all had their unique beauty and interesting aspects. One of Kelsi's favorite things throughout Rajasthan was the local Saris everywhere (picture up top). Saris are BEAUTIFUL Indian dresses made from a single, long piece of brightly colored and ornately decorated cloth wrapped around as a skirt, blouse, and shawl. The costumes of Rajasthan made Kelsi think of her cousin Louise all the time here - reminiscing about their enjoyment of the fashions of NYC they loved seeing together on their trip there right after high school graduation. The sari's in the photo above are surprisingly mellow, but the overall photo composition was so nice that we felt like posting this picture as a sample of Rajasthan.

Jaisalmer was the most remote town in Rajasthan that we visited, had the smallest population, with part of the city existing inside an old fort, and is the launching place for camel safaris to visit villages in the Thar desert. Although we had ridden camels in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, why pass up another camel safari offer? Here's our Indian camel riding safari pic:


This safari was a bit more fun than in the Gobi, as we all had the reins of our own camel. Not only were we allowed to direct the animals on our own - the guides kept hollering for us to whack our camels harder, kick our heels, make them run! It was fun! That was the first time we'd run on camels. Their gate may be the most comfortable in a trot somewhere between walking and running, since the trot gives the smoothest ride (unlike a horse where walking or running are the smoothest, not trotting). Bumpy as it may have been, running through the desert on a camel is definitely thrilling!

The highlight of our camel safari was the evening, when we set up evening camp under the desert skies in the sand dunes. Our Muslim guides, unlike their Hindi brethren, have no qualms with killing animals, and decided to butcher a small goat for our supper. Rusty thought the little goat was so cute that he was saddened to see it killed, and neither of us ate it. All the same, we enjoyed the campfire and the tasty chapati (flat bread) the guides cooked for us on the rocks surrounding the fire. We thought that the goat experience might have turned us into avowed vegetarians until we found bacon in a restaurant a few days later. If God doesn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat (per Homer Simpson).

Another of our destinations in Rajasthan, Jodhpur, is known for its blue buildings and the Mehranag Fort. They paint everything blue because it's supposed to signify a high caste (societal ranking), and there's supposedly a side benefit of keeping bugs out . . . In any case, it was BEAUTIFUL and one of the reasons Kelsi really wanted to visit. Who wouldn't want to visit an indigo town?


The fort in Jodhpur sits perched atop a cliff-edged mountain, and is currently set up as a museum with one of the best audio tours we've ever encountered. It was really interesting. We loved hearing about the fort's defense systems, and found it fascinating how the main entrance into the fort had a sharp turn right leading to a spike-studded gate in order to not allow room for an elephant to get up speed to batter down the fort door. Due to the surrounding cliffs and inaccessible main gate, the Jodhpur fort was never overtaken. One of the most striking parts of the fort tour was the handprints of 22 wives that imprinted their hands into the wall on their way to throw themselves onto their Maharaja husband's funeral pyre to be burned alive with his dead body. Not something Kelsi is willing to do for Rusty.

Jaipur was the third city we toured in Rajasthan and was know for its pink buildings - another great reason Kelsi couldn't resist visiting. How could you not visit a flamingo pink city?! After touring around town, we stopped off to try out an ayurvedic massage. Aaaah. Ayurveda is India's specialty massage, and uses lots of herbal oils. Other than that, it seems fairly similar to a typical sweedish massage (unlike Thai massage where they beat you up you by twisting and stretching while doing deep compressions, etc.). Kelsi's favorite part is the end of the ayurvedic massage, where they drip LOTS of oil into your belly button for no apparent reason.

Perhaps our favorite attraction in Jaipur is its famous movie theater that is described as being decorated as something between Disneyland and a Hindu temple in the lobby. The theater itself has only one gigantic screen covered by a fancy curtain and a ceiling that looks like a lemon meringue pie. It was beautiful! The only show playing was a popular Bollywood movie (Hollywood is to USA what Bollywood is to India). The title of the movie was: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and we still have no idea what that means. The film was played in the Hindi language with no English subtitles. However, Hindi uses a surprising amount of English, so we understood about 70+ percent of the film since it was also an easily predictable comedy plot. It was quite a well made (albeit shallow) movie, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The audience was particularly entertaining, but we'll have to tell more about Bollywood in a separate blog post at a later time . . .

The Caste System Continues

India's caste system has the effect of organizing humans into strata to function as a society. Although it was officially abolished decades ago, we came across this pop-up ad on the internet...

Delhi & Varanasi

After we left India's North, we spent one day in Delhi before our Vipassana meditation class (which we described in a previous post). We were amazed how much we could see in one short day. We decided to hire a driver since we had such little time for a major city in India. Among other things, our tour took us past India's National Mall and main government buildings (Delhi is India's capital), the Gateway of India, gorgeous city parks, ancient mausoleums, the renowned Red Fort, the main Bazaar, and the Grand Mosque. We even had time to visit a snake charmer along the way. Rusty claims he wasn't scared when the pit viper struck at him, but we'll let you judge from the photograph (posted above).




We especially enjoyed our opportunity to spend over two hours at the Bahai Lotus Temple (see the picture above). It's a world famous building for it's lotus-flower-shaped architecture. It is a surprisingly peaceful place with the amount of visitors. We spent time in the visitors center learning a little more about the Bahai religion's attempted union of all core religious beliefs, and attended a prayer service consisting of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Bahai prayers. That was really neat in the beautiful acoustics that are also renown at the Bahai Lotus Temple.

Following our flash-through of Delhi, we caught an evening train to Varanasi, where we were fortunate to spend two nights. As well as being an interesting place, Varanasi has some of the tastiest and most unique Indian food we had so far on our trip in India. We had a stuffed tomato, which was full of amazing bursts of flavor with a sauce we used to dip our Kashmiri Naan. Kashmiri Naan is a type of India flatbread stuffed with a sweet mixture of dried fruits and nuts (it tastes better than it sounds). The only thing we've had in Utah Indian restaurants that is similar to the Kashmiri Naan is Peshwari Naan. MMMM! Our other favorite was the Kashmiri stuffed potatoes . . . We could go on, but Varanasi had all sorts of YUMMY Indian food. In our opinion, India really rivals Thailand on amazing spices and food combinations!
In addition to great food, being in Varanasi for several days gave us time to enjoy a magical boat ride on the foggy Ganges River in the morning and to catch up on showers and laundry before our ten day meditation course. However, our laundry smelled so bad after washing that we wondered if it hadn't been washed in the Ganges... a very likely thing in this particular town.

The Ganges River is India's holiest river for the Hindu people, and Varanasi is the holiest town on the river. It is difficult to properly describe how heavily used and filthy the Ganges river is, so we will do our best. The easiest thing would be to simply say that they do EVERYTHING in the Ganges, but we'll elaborate on a few details of what EVERYTHING means.

In addition to the obvious things like swimming, religious bathing, and laundry, the Ganges is also used for helping the dead "stop the endless cycles of rebirth." At any hour, you can stroll past burning funeral pyres on the banks of the river with limbs and heads sticking out. However, before cremating a body, the body (often at the "stinketh" stage) must be washed in the river. You can only imagine that this isn't too wonderful for the water quality. However, on top of this, five classifications of dead are tied to a heavy stone slab and buried IN the river: pregnant women, holy men, animals (especially the many holy cows which wander their way around the narrow streets of Varanasi), children and one other we always forget. As if the dead aren't enough, the Ganges is also a flowing landfill, toxic industrial waste dump, and SEWER. Yep, all the sewage flows directly into the river. We read that the water contains several million fecal coliform parts per liter and the safe level for bathing (not drinking) is 500 parts per liter.

As the final and last thing to top it off, the Ganges is a PUNCH BOWL (take a look at the guy drinking the water from his hands in the preceding photo)! All the locals drink the holy Ganges River water as part of their ceremonies. We couldn't believe this without seeing it, so we had to take a picture to share with you all. All the same, this is holy water, and should be protected by the Hindu God Shiva (if the prevailing theory is correct). If anyone is interested in a bottle of holy drinking water from the Ganges just let us know and we'll see what we can do about getting that to you!

Vipassana Meditation

As many of you know, we had the amazing opportunity to take a 10 day course in Vipassana meditation in an ashram (monastery) located in Sarnath, India (the first place the Buddha taught after his enlightenment). It reminded us how, as Kelsi's friend Sharon put it, "different cultures have unique spiritual gifts that they have magnified and developed..." All in all, it was such a wonderful growth experience and SO HARD that we were both thinking on many occasions that we might not make it through the entire 10 days. Luckily we persisted to the end and found it extremely rewarding.

Vipassana meditation claims to be the original meditation teaching of Buddha. The teaching and the methodology bills itself non sectarian and claims it is not connected to any doctrines, dogma, beliefs, or truths. In short, Vipassana meditation aims for purification of the mind, which is achieved by three primary actions: (1) doing no harm to others, including a code of chastity and morality, (2) doing good for yourself and others, including a strict code of health, and (3) meditation by being aware of your bodily sensations and equanimously observing them.

Despite the supposed simplicity of the Vipassana meditation method, neither of us had ever meditated before, which made it surprisingly intense. We both had ideas of what meditation might be like: we had pondered things and thought about scriptures and life, but we didn't really know what to expect. In Vipassana meditation you don't think, you don't visualize, you don't chant. You simply sit and remain alert to your bodily sensations while not reacting with craving or aversion to the good or bad sensations. The reasoning behind this method is that human beings suffer enormously from their attachment and clinging to the sensations caused by the ultimately impermanent things of this world. By training the mind to simply be aware of sensations without reacting with attachment to them, we are able to let go of these attachments and experience life without misery.

This is a drastic oversimplification and inadequate explanation of a process which we experienced, so we recommend that you try something to get a small taste:

Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably and close your eyes. Focus 100% of your attention on the openings of the nostrils and observe how the air passes in and out. Try to maintain your attention as long as you can. If you are anything like us and 99.9999...% of new meditators, you won't be able to maintain your absolute, 100% focus and awareness on this one simple task for more than 3-5 seconds without an errant thought in the mind (even the thought of how focused you are counts as an errant thought). In other words, your mind is completely out of control, and Vipassana meditation tells us that we have become slaves to our thoughts, which we have little control over, and this is what causes human misery and suffering.

The course that we took on Vipassana helped us to build up mental strength of awareness by meditating 10-12 hours per day and living as monks and nuns for the 12 days while we were there: complete silence (no words, looks, gestures, etc.), segregation of sexes, vegetarian diet and no eating after 12 pm, wake up at 4 am and lights out at 9:30pm, and meditation all day. You can shower, wash clothes, etc. during the 2 hours of daily rest only. They house and feed you the whole time and charge nothing. You are free to make a donation at the end at your option and discretion with zero obligation.

It was truly a remarkable and memorable experience. It was amazing how such a simple practice of awareness led us to feel so energized about life and full of goodwill towards others. The Vipassana organization has facilities around the world (including several in the US). If you're interested in learning more about what we experienced or if you're interested in learning more about meditation, we recommend you to look into the website: http://www.dhamma.org/ We are so fortunate to have stumbled into this technique and definitely think that Vipassana is on to something and that meditation is a good practice for establishing personal peace.