Day 115 - Bollywood in Budgee Springs - Chapter 12a (1327 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Bollywood in Budgee Springs

Chapter 12a

Ella Riddell could not believe her eyes, she took a step backwards, turned around and walked back into the alley behind the Whistle once more, got her bearings and then returned to the unrecognisable main road where Julie stood, unmoved from her spot her jaw dropped open at the sight of her home town transformed.

Where once had been the dusty main road of Budgee Springs, with it's wide open areas and space between buildings, a park and the focus on the main building of the Whistle, now there was three different streets from an Indian city or a town. Ella felt like she had been magically transported, like Dorothy to Oz, but somehow instead she was in a street in Calcutta, Mumbai or another Indian Metropolis. One of the pseudo streets, the first one the emerged into was very modern and very busy, with some of the cars and trucks dressed with new colours and overlays that suggested modern city life over a serious tarmac roadway. The other was a more rural town with merchant stalls and spice baskets on a cobblestone roadway, the street was now paved with what looked like hundreds of years of history in paving stones. The third was a more slum based street, the road was dirt but well worn, using the original dusty road of Budgee Springs that ran along side the main tarmacked street, the original dirt road which had never been built over. That third road was dripped in broken doors, wood and material billowing in the breeze like sails on the bay.

Ella and Julie barely knew where to start to look, to understand how this had all happened in such a short period of time, how they could rebuild a whole town like this. They walked a little further into the first street, cautiously not wanting to get in shot, but in this street they were alone. All the action was centred on middle stretch of road, the market place which was full of actors playing vendors, customers and the characters all in colourful costumes that added to the sense of alienation the local women felt so completely in the middle of the main road that they had know for over sixty years.

There was a difference to the light, somehow it was brighter and yellower than she remembered it ever being in town. The faces of the buildings were so very different now, like someone had built a newer, busier city scape over the surface of the old town street. The road was now full of carts and stalls, a thriving marketplace had sprung up in the centre of the wide road, allowing it to look like it was three streets intersecting where the park had been, but was now the hub of activity for the film crew.

The only thing that had remained constant was the war memorial rotunda at the very epicentre of town, it's sacred status had been maintained. All about it were cables and trucks, the equipment centres for the film crew, the cameras and lighting rigs all generated out of the same area, shooting into the three pronged street arrangements as sets. The curved silvery screens that bounced light onto odd angles and lit faces for close ups were racked and glittering as the sunlight danced off them and scattered into the remainder of the street, away from the direction in which they were filming.

Julie reached the front wall of the Whistle, reaching out gingerly to touch the new fascia of the familiar building which appeared to no longer be made of colonial style wooden and weathered boards, but now was a flat surface, like clay or brick and very Indian or Middle Eastern material. Her hand shot back to her side as if she had received an electric shock and Ella saw the surface that looked so earthen, ancient and solid ripple at the touch. Julie blushed and giggled before touching it again, once more tentatively but the reaction this time was not so shocking once she knew what to expect. Ella put her hand alongside Julies and in that split second the reality of the situation was shattered and the fact that it was all illusory was cemented in their heads.

The re-surface of the building was a material skin overlaying the exterior boards of the hotel. The material was visually convincing, it looked taut and stretched out, like a completely solid and flat surface, one that had been beaten by weather and age to give the appearance of centuries, but was a trick of the mind and the eye. It was cloth, a coarse cloth treated and coloured to represent the real building materials, but without any of the physical properties. A mask for a town, to disguise it's identity, to portray it as someone else entirely.

Taking her cue they walked to the edge of the modern section and found that the cobblestones were made of rubber and wood, plotted in tiled sections like a hastily constructed flooring placed onto the road underneath. It was utterly convincing until it was touched, then the rough edges, the inconsistency with reality became clearer by the context that you were looking for it. The crew were obviously well prepared and the trucks that had rolled into town had obviously been laden with the pieces of the set's façades broken down and stored for transport, to be reassembled and reconstructed like a child’s brick set of a town in parts.

“Break, Reset, Three Point Oh Two!” Ash's voice came loud and clear across the space and all hell broke loose at the sound of his instruction and the men and women of the set construction crew flew into action and swarmed through the market set and pulled pieces of it apart, turning what had looked hardened solid pieces inside out with a flair and visually stunning air that felt Dali-esque as the dimensions of reality were ultimately defeated in seconds and bent to the transformative will of the directors instructions.

Actors scurried from the middle set to the urban set, their costumes being discarded and replaced from stashed wardrobes hidden in the set, or reversed like the scenery was and re purposed for the next scene. The vendors and customers suddenly became businessmen and women on the street of a busy modern city, mixed with old buildings and modern glass faced ones, though they were undoubtedly plastic covered material in the set, among taxi's and bike messengers appearing out of nowhere and lining up to ride through the shot for the take, whatever it was.

Kiran saw Ella and Julie standing the middle of the scenery they were transiting through and had a quiet word in her assistants ear. Nathan ran from the directorial centre where he was working with Kiran and Ash, running errands and watching the bizarre re formatting of the sleepy little town that he had just days ago hated being within the borders of. This was another story altogether, this was the most exciting thing that he could have dreamed of happening, it felt like a dream. Kiran had adopted him as a pseudo employee and friend, keeping him engaged and helping her with the myriad of things that just came with the job.

“Nana, Auntie Julie, come this way, this way!” Nathan dragged them by the sleeves to the centre of the action, still dazed they trotted along under Nathan’s momentum of excitement and purpose. Julie was of course not his actual Aunt, but most of the women in the town had taken the same position with any youngster that came to town to visit the elderly relatives here, everyone who was not family was an Aunt or an Uncle, it was easier and less confusing to be addressed that way, and it was a much needed injection of being needed, by definition as a relative even if you really were not.