Original subtitles

"Go to India!" they said.

"It's going to be the biggest thing in the new Asia.

"And the city you should see first," they said, "is going to be the biggest thing in the new India."

They said, "This place is hot!"

They were right! The temperature was outdone only by the humidity.

The locals didn't notice. They were too busy.

Bombay is India's boom town - it's official.

Since the economy was de-regulated in 1991,

free-enterprise capitalism has set free the energy of entrepreneurs,

especially in Bombay, which has the most know-how, the most everything.

There are 12 million people here, and more arriving every day.

I got the impression they were all out there, proving to me THEY could take the heat without sweating.

Some of the entrepreneurs were in action right there on the pavement.

The open-air ear cleaners were probing with that extra vigour

small businessmen acquire when they know they'll be allowed to keep the profits.

There was a time when they would have had to pay tax on the wax.

The pavement dentist also shows the benefits of the economic boom.

More people want their smiles improved.

Missing teeth are replaced with teeth that once belonged to others.

With the aid of his receptionist,

he can give you a full set, filed to fit.

You'll be smiling someone else's smile,

but you can't deny he saw a gap in the market.

Under the old economic system, a dentist would have had to pay off eight officials to stay in business.

Now it's only four.

He has to pay them twice as much, but he saves on paperwork.

Less paperwork, more bridgework.

WOMAN LAUGHS

As Bombay faces a big future, the street-corner astrologers do well.

Everyone with a piece of the action

wants to find out what happens next.

This astrologer had a low-rent office,

but didn't skimp on my particulars.

What is your name? Clive James.

JAMES.

Date of birth?

Er...7th of October... 7, 10...

19...? 39.

39.

Time?

Time - morning, evening, afternoon?

Evening.

What clock? Midnight.

'Armed with my vital statistics, he consulted

'a set of astrologer's log tables,

'and predicted my past with more accuracy than I could.'

1975...'85, this problem.

1985? '85.

Er...I can't think of one.

Insult!

Insult? Ah, yes. And quarrels...

'He was right. I had been insulted in 1985.

'A TV critic had said that my eyes

'were too close together.

'But TV critics had insulted me every other year as well, so it scarcely counted as clairvoyance.

'Next, he consulted my King line, and daringly deduced

'I was not the next King of England.

'But he got closer to home.'

Paralysis in heart.

Paralysis in heart? When? Two troubles.

When? 1996, say. 1996, I'm going to have heart trouble? Heart trouble.

And paralysis. I think I'm having it now!

'He predicted that I'd be ironed out by a heart attack in 1996.

'Since I weighed 50 pounds more than him and was sweating all over his boutique,

'I couldn't give any prizes for soothsaying.

'I was ready to have a heart attack any time he cared to name.

'By now it was high noon, and I was daydreaming about air-conditioning.

'I hailed a taxi, in the mistaken belief that the air would be cool inside it.'

OK!

'An oven would have been cooler.'

ENGINE COUGHS AND GRINDS

'An oven would have been faster.

'The taxi had a starter motor, but it wasn't connected to the engine.

'The driver relied on the passenger.

'This was free enterprise at its most ruthless, its most fiercely competitive.'

ENGINE SPLUTTERS INTO LIFE

'My driver was the only man I had so far seen sweating besides myself.

'Given a fair chance, he was going all the way.

'But Bombay also has plenty of people who aren't going anywhere.

'At the first traffic-lights, they started to show up.

'In the West, when somebody begs from you,

'you can look through him, if you don't mind seeing your reflection.

'The average Bombay beggar is harder to wish away.

'Officially, beggars are not a problem, because they don't exist.

'But they're always there, against your window, like a conscience in a bottle.

'In Bombay,

'you can get rich enough to ride in a big car, but no amount of money changes the view.'

Hello!

When the taxi fell apart, I was back on the street.

The only sure way to close your eyes

to the harsh facts is to open them elsewhere, preferably in the dark.

In audience terms, India has the biggest film industry on Earth.

Most Indian movies are made in Bombay, also known as Bollywood.

Everyone goes to the movies, from the rich to people who have no other roof over their heads.

FAST, RHYTHMIC MUSIC

You can soon see the big attraction

that Bollywood movies offer - escape.

You can escape from a harsh life.

You can escape from your fellow man.

You can escape from everything except the sheer nonsense up there on the screen.

Everyone in a Bollywood movie

either sings, dances, or sings AND dances.

The hero and heroine are not allowed to kiss,

but they are allowed to sing and dance.

In fact, they're rarely allowed not to.

The only suspense

is whether the hero's hairstyle will hold up.

Anil Kapoor's hairstyle is famous for its durability.

The choreography tries but fails

to unhinge his quiff.

For the audience, it's a dream of power, of doing it all on your own.

HORNS BEEP

Back outside in the hot light,

the people of Bombay are never alone for a moment.

Victoria Terminus is where a lot of Bombay's new citizens arrive.

The building dates back to the Raj.

For students of imperial architecture, it's a masterpiece,

evoking a time when the rulers of old India

brought South Kensington with them.

The sahibs are long gone,

so, when a low-budget sahib arrives, he can count on plenty of attention.

As I tried out the fortune-telling weighing-machine,

I drew a crowd, keen to see if it would collapse.

They were doomed to disappointment.

The card said, "You have lost seven pounds of sweat, but watch out for a heart attack in 1996!"

In the station's great days,

great trains took great people great distances.

The greatest were the white nabobs, but the occasional maharajah could afford a seat.

Everybody else had to travel outside, hanging on.

Now they all seem to be doing that, but at least they're all Indians.

Some carriages are women-only,

which suggests that male commuters can't be trusted in a crowded train.

The rush-hour trains are so crowded

that gangs of children earn a living picking up the litter from the tracks and selling it.

It was the slack part of the day, so there was room for me to get inside.

I didn't have to cling to one of the scrums that form around the door in rush hour,

shedding people at each stop, and often in between.

The passing air cooled the carriage to less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit,

so I was at my most suave when I finally arrived at Film City.

Film City was dominated by this set for an epic movie called Rajkumar.

The set was made of plywood and plaster of Paris,

and exterior shooting had to be completed before the monsoon washed it away.

You might think these movies are "made"

like a couple of colliding cars make sculpture.

But this one showed signs of being assembled with some care.

Actual rehearsals were taking place.

Sir, you're the director? Yes.

'The director, Punkuj Parrashar, seemed a together sort of bloke.'

Look around? Sure. Don't get in the way.

OK. Can I stay here? Sure, here.

The movie's star was the famous Madhuri.

She was about to shoot a crucial scene

in which she'd see the male lead's hairstyle.

I stood out of the way.

I didn't want to blow a take,

because we professionals know time means money.

OVER LOUD-HAILER: Excuse me, sir? Please come aside? Thanks. Please.

Thank you.

YELLING

MUSIC AND SINGING START UP One, two, three!

CYMBALS CLASH

MUSIC STOPS OK! OK.

INAUDIBLE

Everybody went on standby while Madhuri prepared for her next sequence.

The busiest person on set was the choreographer and dancing mistress,

who demonstrated the routine one step at a time.

INAUDIBLE

Madhuri cranked up the grand passion and copied the dancing mistress

while an electric fan tousled her abundant hair and the extras.

I was well aware how privileged I was to be so close to Madhuri.

350 million people would watch the finished routine in the cinema.

Male fans would throw coins at the screen in an attempt to attract the attention

that I was getting from her just by barging in.

For the last shot, she drew on her reserve tank of ecstatic abandon.

And that was the end of the day.

Although I had ruined a take, I was allowed to talk to the star.

Do you do it all little piece by little piece? Yes, not in one go.

And the teacher...? She teaches me the steps and I do them.

Then you put it together? Yes. I'm impressed!

Maybe I could do that? Sure! We'll try it.

'She thought she was joking.

'But I was getting an idea.

'The world of movies looked more attractive, the more I saw reality.'

The film company kindly provided me with a limousine,

but the road back to town was an eye-opener.

This wasn't the poverty you get after a natural disaster,

with children starving to death.

For the poor here, there's always food if they look hard enough.

But they don't have time to do anything else. This is poverty as a way of life - career poverty.

The richer Bombay gets, the more poor people

come from the country for a chance to earn something.

The wealth at the top should 'trickle down'.

The official story is that it's already trickling.

But it could trickle a bit harder.

Nobody out here is in any danger of drowning in affluence.

Only a few miles away from Film City,

Juhu Beach is where the stars live,

cooled by the spray of waves and the sea breeze,

high in apartment blocks with windows open towards the West.

'Famous actress Shabbana Azmi spends a lot of time helping the poor,

'so you can't blame her for spending some time here.'

To me, I think India, and particularly Bombay,

is about living simultaneously in several centuries.

You have people living back-to-back from the 17th to the 21st century.

You can see a bit of Bombay that's medieval,

and then you get into a very swanky office or a fabulous residence,

and somebody's using the microwave while someone else is cooking on the pavement.

People at any given time and place encapsulate all the differences that arise out of these contradictions.

That's what Bombay - and India - is all about.

Why do people keep coming to Bombay?

Because there's nothing for them in the villages where they live.

They come not in search of housing, but employment.

Can they all make a living here?

Anybody can make a living in Bombay.

If you have energy, and enterprise, anybody can make a living.

There is this little... there is this man who just occupies a little place

on a pavement outside a big jeweller's shop.

All he's got is a little tin box in which he has his weapons, his implements, whatever.

He strings beads and makes earrings.

I go to him every now and then,

and I am amazed how his paraphernalia is contained

in that little tin box.

He's doing well and sending money back home to his family.

Every time I see him I feel, "Wow! That's what Bombay is all about!"

There is opportunity for all and they will keep coming here.

Could you live anywhere else?

Nowhere else in the world. Nowhere else.

I bitch, I moan, I grumble.

When I get caught in the traffic and the pollution, I want to scream.

Yet take me out of Bombay for ten days and I'm gasping for the pollution, the traffic and noise!

I say, "Please, I don't want this sanitised, wonderful, beautiful air, I just wish to get back to my city!"

CAR HORNS BEEP INCESSANTLY

If Shabbana has a soft spot for the pollution, she isn't soft in the head.

Bombay is polluted because Bombay works.

Even the garbage is someone's stock in trade.

That trash the poor live in is picked over for negotiable junk.

Everything organic rots, but everything inorganic is recycled.

The city is a huge recycling plant.

It folds back into itself, lives off itself.

The only problem is that too many people are in on the act.

Not all the new people in Bombay come from the country.

Weddings are big business, and marriages produce children.

The ceremonies last two days. When I wandered into one by accident, I thought it was a festival.

'A girl told me the groom's party would think I knew the bride,

'and the bride's party would think I knew the groom.

'So all I had to do was stay cool - the hardest thing to do in Bombay.'

The groom arrived, looking stunned.

Many Indian marriages are arranged, and he looked as though his had been arranged under anaesthetic.

Luckily, he had a couple of brothers to hold him up.

WOMEN SING

The groom's party slow-marched into the pavilion,

where the bride's senior female relatives waited to check him out.

The bride looked overcome with joy.

The groom looked as if he had never met her before in his life.

Maybe he was readying himself for the challenge,

which, for an overwhelming number of Indian men,

is still to generate an overwhelming number of male children.

What's going to happen to all those children? That was the question that kept on nagging,

even as I was carried away by the glittering tinsel, the generous warmth,

the cheerful determination to take the visitor by the hand and shake the last drops of sweat out of him.

VERY FAST MUSIC PLAYS

Even if the people who are getting richer see the point of having fewer children,

will the poor ever agree? All they want is more boys.

Girls are still thought of as an unfortunate by-product.

Many are "lucky" to be child prostitutes.

There'll be no weddings for these young ladies.

A cynic might say prostitution at least gives them some kind of home to go to.

Thousands wander the streets with no-one to look after them, or nearly no-one.

The city doesn't do anything but throw the boys in jail if they're caught stealing.

But there is a Christian mission that tries to help.

It's called the Pavement Club, and it's run by Lawrence Hardinge,

known as Mr Lawrence by the children,

to whom he and his wife spend their lives giving the ghost of a chance.

The street children can come to the Pavement Club once a week.

EXCITED CHATTER

Mr Lawrence believes if he doesn't catch the children before the age of 12,

they'll be goners.

INAUDIBLE

Unless they can be convinced early that a clean nose pays,

the boys are headed for a life of vagrancy, crime and no hope.

As for the girls, unless they can be talked out of it,

they'll have a brief career of cashing in on their bodies,

but they won't keep much cash.

Men are ready to protect them in the worst ways.

Inside the church hall, the school is run by Mrs Lawrence.

Teaching equipment consists mainly of a blackboard and a few slates.

Not even the brightest pupils

are going to make up in a few scattered hours

what the children of the well-off take years to learn.

The street children even have to be taught how to play,

in the only fairground

they will ever be able to afford, because it's free.

Mr Lawrence stages a compulsory cheering session,

to help them let off steam.

It's a tribute to their energy that they have any steam to let off.

CHEERING

The climax is the only square meal

most of the children will eat all week.

Every other day, they'll take what they can from the bins

outside the restaurants and tourist hotels.

This is their day off from real life.

Back outside, real life starts again.

Around the Gateway of India,

the first thing Western visitors to Bombay saw when they sailed in,

you see the street children's real life.

INAUDIBLE

At its best,

it looks wild, free and kind of cute,

like the life you'd have chosen if they'd let you out of school.

But what if they'd never let you in?

'Mahindre Shinde is a street child who made it.

'He works for the Salvation Army,

'and no longer sleeps on a toilet roof.

'But he's one in 100,

'and the next generation of young hustlers

'are still pulling the same tricks.'

The water children sell at Victoria Station...

Is it clean? No, they refill it.

They don't care if it's washed or not washed.

Bottle from garbage bin.

They fill with the tap-water,

and lid put on, and go near the train, "Mineral water!"

Didn't the police move you on? Yes.

They treat very badly. They chase us, they beat us with sticks, sometimes whips,

they take us to the local jail.

Did you ever go to jail?

I've been seven, eight times.

Five, six hundred children live there. They're treated very badly.

In jail you get a bed and a meal. Isn't that paradise?

No, it's like a parrot in the cage!

How did you move up from a street child

to a man with a good job?

Er...I used to make shoe-shine here.

One Englishman used to come and I used to shine his shoes.

Not only me, but other shoe-shine boys also.

He used to give chance to boys to shine his shoes.

He gave us ten rupees. That was 10, 12 years ago.

And some of the boys, he put them in a school, and some he got them jobs.

The boys you grew up with, where are they now?

Some are doing well. Some are going with the drug - most of them died.

Some of my dear friends are dead.

What kind of drugs? You know heroin? Heroin?! Yeah. Very cheap here.

About 50 rupees a gram. You can get any corner of Bombay.

You're remarkable, but most street children haven't got a chance.

They're really looking for one chance, but...

Maybe one day they will have chance.

If they get chance, they immediately will change their life, I think.

Mahindre will get ahead in the new economy.

He's exceptional. The new economy is for the exceptional.

The stock exchange is jumping with mathematicians on the make.

For those who can read, write and do deals,

fortunes are made every day in Bombay.

Everyone is too busy to figure out where the unexceptional fit in.

But the old economy is still there, behind a wall,

and anyone working in it can only pray that privatisation won't wipe out his job.

Surely the washing-machines are on their way.

Until then, your laundry is still whacked out in the traditional manner.

I realised why my shirts came back from the laundry

with that stonewashed look I hadn't seen since the '60s.

I realised why one of my shirts hadn't come back at all.

It was still down there, having the sweat-stains beaten out of it.

Even with a couple of new movies to watch each week,

being anything except rich would make life in Bombay too tough to contemplate

if it wasn't for the open-air entertainment.

Cricket came to India as the rich man's game.

But the poor couldn't be kept off the grass.

At Azad Park on Sunday, there are a dozen matches going on at all times.

It isn't uncommon for a fielder to be participating in two matches at once.

Anyone is allowed to play.

They assumed from my lithe physique that I was an Australian fast bowler,

and I didn't disappoint them.

After touching up the ball with a nutmeg grater, I bowled a screamer.

Instead of hitting a six, he was caught for a duck by silly mid-off

two matches to the south.

One of the nicest things about Bombay

is that you needn't be loaded to enjoy a day out.

While rich playboys roam the globe, crashing their power boats and their private jets,

everybody else goes down to Chowpatty Beach.

FAST DRUMBEATS, TINKLING BELLS

WHIP CRACKS

It might not be a lot, but it beats the average daytime TV talk show.

Shutting yourself away is unusual enough to rank as a special event.

The general opinion in Bombay is that everyone's in it together.

No-one can expect to be alone without being looked at.

'Religion is a form of entertainment, too.

'Indian religions put on a show anyone can enjoy.

'The ashram is a combination of music hall, holiday home, animal house, wax museum and carnival.

'A guru expounding fine points of the ancient teachings

'might add an element of the lecture hall,

'but otherwise the general effect of a good day out is hard to beat.

'The friendly decor encourages exploration.

'The swami in charge asked me whether I was a man of faith.

'I told him I was Church of England, and he said, "Never mind,"

'but that I should expect a heart attack in 1996.

'Then he took me around to tell me which god was which.

'Some looked frightening, but not in a way to disturb your sleep.

'It was a sort of Disneyland diorama, without all that tediously convincing laser technology.

'As if I wasn't sweating enough, they started lighting fires.'

BELLS TINKLE

Most priests are men, because they have to do a lot of profound stuff.

But women are allowed to ring the bells.

There was something for everybody.

The feel-good factor was a bit subdued, but so was the fanaticism.

Apart from the occasional riot,

in which Hindus and Muslims slay each other by the hundred,

Bombay has good religious co-existence.

There are no oppressed minorities,

just a deprived majority - the poor.

I didn't see them,

but I was assured they'd be allowed in if they turned up.

Religion helps them to transcend the need for material goods.

I have always found that the need for material goods

is easier to transcend after you've got some,

but maybe I've failed to open my mind to the East.

Meanwhile, Bombay is still opening its mind to the West.

Pierre Cardin unwrapped his first collection aimed at India.

'Despite the heat, I felt bound to put on a suit.

'I had been warned that everyone would be dressing up,

'and indeed they had.

'The women didn't have to dress up much,

'because Indian women wear saris all day.

'They always look wonderful.

'A fine sari arrived draped on the fair form of India's leading popular novelist, Shobha De.

'Her outfit seemed unbeatable to me,

'and I wondered what Pierre could pit against it.'

POP MUSIC PLAYS

The answer was...hula-hoops.

I'm old enough to have participated in the hula-hoop craze,

and often wondered what happened to them all.

Here was the answer - they all ended up in Paris.

Pierre turned the hula-hoops into snappy little export numbers

for well-off Indian women who weren't having enough trouble

climbing into chauffeured limousines.

INAUDIBLE

Pierre had also designed some outfits for Indian men

to express themselves in

when their wives came home wearing hula-hoops.

I felt the audience had trouble stifling its scepticism.

But the Bombay socialites are very polite people.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Pierre Cardin!

When Pierre appeared to take a bow,

they showed respect for his advanced years,

instead of wrestling him to the floor

and beating an explanation out of him

for why he thought hula-hoops could improve on a sari.

I found it harder to forgive him,

but I got one thing from the evening - I met Shobha De.

There's a trickle-down effect in Bombay.

Whatever happens here happens to the rest of India five years later.

And it's the place which respects... worships...success,

and by success I mean money, specifically.

Bombay is a city that doesn't...

It doesn't matter which class, which caste you belong to.

People in the rest of India are obsessed by things like that.

This is a city where you make it - it isn't a place for losers at all.

Is everyone going to get rich?

I hope it happens,

but what does happen is that Bombay is seen like a big, juicy mango.

People want to squeeze it for all it's worth.

So you have this influx of people here,

because this is where they want to make it.

Nowhere else in India has the same magic, the same glamour.

If you make it in Bombay, you've made it in the rest of India.

I passed some poor people outside your door, as you must every day.

How do you cope with that?

It's a tough question.

I really don't know how to answer that without sounding very insensitive or...or deadened.

When you've encountered poverty every day since you were born,

it sounds horrible, but it...anaesthetises you.

Is that the right way to pronounce it? Yes.

You stop noticing it, you stop reacting to it.

It makes you feel terrible, but you can't be on a permanent guilt trip.

You do what you can.

You don't have to talk about what you do for the poor -

that's crass and vulgar -

but you can't do a self-flagellation trip every day.

You learn to live with it eventually.

Tell me about the movie industry.

I know Hindi movies are fantastically popular.

I've seen a few myself.

But I have quite a lot of trouble understanding the rules.

The lovers aren't allowed to kiss or touch, is that right?

Yes, but they can rape one another.

And the girls are on top now. That's OK.

Roughing each other up is OK,

very, very rude comments about each other's bodies, that's all right,

but the minute it comes to kissing,

then you cut to a bush that's shaking violently,

or flames of passion somewhere in the distance,

or you have two little birds kissing in the bushes, or butterflies.

I guess kissing is really not seen as part of Indian culture.

We have a great erotic tradition in literature, poetry and sculpture,

but the Moghuls came along and killed our libido.

Then came the British for 400 years, with their Victorian mores... Ah!

And they did a very effective job of wiping out all that heritage.

So it's our fault? Absolutely!

'Shobha De had convinced me of what I had suspected for some time.

'In Bombay, anyone can do anything,

'if they can just get a leg-up first.'

OK, let's go.

'Anyone can become a taxi-driver

'as long as he can find a taxi that works.

'Even if it doesn't, he can pretend that it does.

'I had got used by now to how the same taxi-driver kept turning up.

'He was following me around, pushing his taxi as fast as I could walk.

'I respected his determination not to be defeated by lack of equipment.

'I'd wanted to be an actor, but was unfairly stopped by lack of talent.

'Bollywood movies could be my way in,

'so I went downtown to the Bombay equivalent of central casting.

'Initially, I had my usual trouble finding the address in the back alleys.'

OK.

CHILDREN YELL

'But, again as usual, a few hundred small boys quickly gathered to help.

'One of the boys

'helped himself to my watch, and I didn't notice until later.

'Well, it was only a 24-carat gold limited-edition Cartier original.

'I thought the guy on the door was the casting master, but he was only the guy on the door.

'The casting master was working the phones.

'The temperature rose as I climbed.

'By the time I got up there, I had worked out an opening line to impress him.'

He wants to meet you.

Have you met Sir Richard Attenborough? Yeah.

Yeah? I have done a lot of work.

You know film, Gandhi? Gandhi? Yeah. Here for 35 days shooting, and...

'He made it clear that, without his assistance,

'Sir Richard would have had to film Gandhi's funeral scene

'with six men and a pariah dog.'

3,000, 6,000, every day! Uh-huh?

All the actors were working? All the actors were busy!

'Subtly, I got him to the point.'

Are you casting for that film with Madhuri in it?

Is there any chance I could get a part in that? YOU?! Yes.

Some romantic part? No?

'I wondered if I was getting through,

'but finally he told me to go downstairs

'and wait with everybody else.

'I went down into the comparative cool,

'where extras and bit players sit waiting.

'Some of them have to wait a long time.

'Some of them strike up lasting friendships.

'Some of them haven't worked since Gandhi - the man, not the movie.

'An hour went by that felt like year in a sauna,

'but finally the lucky names were read out.'

Hello. Just listen to me!

The following persons have to reach Film City by morning, 9.00am, with suit.

READS A LIST OF INDIAN NAMES

..and Clive James.

'Bombay actors are very generous,

'and none of them physically attacked me

'for winning a part they would have given back the eye-teeth for

'that they got from the pavement dentist.

'They said various short Hindi words which I presumed meant good luck.'

With my precious work chitty in my sweat-soaked pocket,

I went back out to Film City in the familiar limousine.

They were still making Madhuri's movie. The extras were breaking for breakfast.

'Inside the soluble castle,

'the famous fight arranger and stunt director, Ravi Dewan,

'was setting up for a big fight scene.

'Ravi was a busy man,

'but he agreed to fill me in on the Bollywood movie business.

'In another part of the castle,

'it was quiet enough to talk about the downside of his profession.'

Is it dangerous? Very dangerous, because we don't have safety like Hollywood people have.

We don't have enough money to take time and energy and...

And we don't have airbags here to jump, or fire-fighting equipment.

You jump without airbags?! We jump without airbags. We put some boxes.

Did you ever get hurt? Yes, I broke glass. We don't have sugar glass.

You jump through real glass?!

Yes. You do? You can see the marks and scars here. Show me! Here.

Through a real window?! Yes. On my knees...

Do they pay extra for that? Yes. But not worth.

Is my sequence important?

Very important. It's a small sequence, but important.

Do I get a costume? Yes, I've got one which should fit you. Costume!

'The word was out that a new acting sensation had been discovered.

'The transformation was dramatic.'

SEVERAL PEOPLE YELL AT ONCE

'I was disappointed to discover that Madhuri hadn't yet arrived.

'What about our love scene?

'It turned out I was going to be in a fight scene

'with two heavies who handled their weapons as if born with them.'

Come, Clive, are you ready? Yeah, I guess so.

You rehearse with them once, then we'll shoot. OK. Slowly? Yes.

'I put in a request to rehearse as thoroughly as possible.

'It wasn't that I lacked agility, and no-one has ever questioned my physical bravery.

'I was only afraid of getting cut by the sharp thing the guy was holding.

'Having taken heed of Ravi's warning that Indian stuntmen actually ARE defying death,

'I tried hard to remember what I was told.

'But remembering isn't easy when you're up against a medieval warrior in dark glasses.'

..And pull you back. React to this.

That's good. That good? Yeah. OK.

HE GRUNTS

While my rehearsal continued,

the male lead, none other than the famous Anil Kapoor,

was setting up for a less crucial scene in another part of the castle.

SEVERAL PEOPLE SHOUT INSTRUCTIONS

He was facing the problem of keeping his hairstyle intact

under growing pressure from the plot.

'My rehearsal was starting to speed up.

'Gasps from other fighters

'showed their awareness that their jobs were under threat from a prodigious new talent.

Anil's hairstyle was under threat from his disguise.

How to make the most of his hairstyle AND the disguise was the problem.

Is this the real one? Yeah. Ready! Are you ready?

Action!

'Finally, my fight scene was ready for a take. The camera rolled,

'and I died a death marked by that understated authenticity

'otherwise so lacking in Bollywood movies.'

Cut it!

'The other actors feared I was really dead.'

Clive, OK, get up!

How was that? OK. Good.

You don't think it was too hammy towards the end? No, no, no.

Was that a take? Yeah.

Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. A worthy opponent!

'Ravi said he had never seen anything like it.'

I got a lot of offers to star in Bollywood movies, but I had to say no.

After two weeks of Bombay's trickle-down effect,

my shoes had filled with sweat so often, the soles were peeling off,

and I didn't have a shirt left that hadn't been smacked to a rag.

Also, I had a twinge of toothache in an upper molar

and, although there was a skilled local dentist,

I preferred to have it seen to somewhere else.

It was time to say goodbye and good luck.

I don't know whether Bombay will make it as a prosperous Western-style society

with fair shares for all.

I don't even know whether we've made it.

When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation,

he said he thought it would be a good idea.

How much graceful poverty do we have, amongst all our graceless wealth?

But the days are gone when we could come sailing in from the West,

look at the picturesque inhabitants and say, "Stay as sweet as you are."

They've had enough of being patted on the head.

They want what we've got. It's their turn. It couldn't happen to nicer people.

They might even manage to stay nice when it does.