Day 103 - Bollywood in Budgee Springs - Chapter 1 (2345 words)

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Bollywood in Budgee Springs

Chapter 1

“Oh dear god, what have I done?” Charles Maximilian Clarke Junior (Aka Max) stared in horror at the screen in front of him, the blood slowly draining from his face and the full import of what he saw there hit home like a punch to the gut.

His wife Polly was watching with him from the comfort of their living room sofa. She put a hand on his and patted it kindly, she not as horrified as her husband, but then again she had a lot less to lose and much fewer people to disappoint. “Its not that bad, I mean you must have known at some level what was going to happen. I'm sure it will not be … as bad as you think it will be.”

“You're kidding right? He's going to kill me. They're going to kill me. They will line up around the block to take turns killing me, Doc will revive me, patch me up and then the next person will take their turn in killing me!” Max's eye's were dancing back and forth as he tried to follow the visuals on the screen a whirling dervish of colour and noise.

“Now you're just being overly dramatic.” Polly was amused, but was trying not to show it.

“Me? Over dramatic? Have you seen this? I am the soul of underestimation and understatement by comparison.” He could not tear his eyes away from the screen, even though he could not really tell what on earth was happening or when he could, why it was happening.

“Oh well, it's done now, do you want a cup of tea?”

(two days earlier)

Charles Maximilian Clarke Senior (Charlie) was sitting at the mayor's desk staring across it at his son, he was not used to being on this side of it, even after being away from the seat as Mayor for almost ten years now. He had been Mayor of Budgee Springs for over half his life now and even when he was no longer in the job, he was still treated like the man in charge. He held the post of the town's elder statesman, through the ill-fated experiment when a outsider came in and tried to run the town (and failed), when the town elected a woman for a term of four years, but never quite making the leap to being 'accepted'.

He had offered to help the first new mayor, but was rejected and he never quite made it to half way through his four year term when the town fought almost every move he took to modernise the place, and to put Budgee Springs on the map. There was the ill-fated Big Budgie, which seemed like a good idea to the new Mayor but was far from a winning plan to the residents not wanting a gargantuan green and yellow Melopsittacus Undulatus hovering over the gateway to their quaint rural New South Wales town. It seemed like a natural fit for the town. It was a native Australian species, it was green and gold, it worked for Ballina with the Big Prawn, the Big Pineapple in Woombye was a world famous attraction, and Tamworth had the Big Guitar and the country music scene. It was a 'get' for a town and if it got heritage listed you were literally 'on the map' and so the new guy in town set about creating the town plan to get the Big Budgie for Budgee Springs.

There was just one problem though, no one wanted it there. It was an ageing town with an ageing population and little to no industry left. There was not the desire or the need to chase the tourist dollar, at least not then anyway. He could have argued for the Budgie, he could have convinced the town council to have some forethought and plan for the future, he could have even just discussed it with them, and it would have been a totally different outcome. He didn't do any of these, he just started work on it. He put his own money into it and commenced the work, not consulting and not discussing, managing to piss everyone off at the same time and ensuring that not one cent of council money got assigned to finishing the project. The now infamous giant Budgie existed as a wire-frame statue ten metres high on a farm outside of the town where a number of locals would drive past it on a regular basis, remembering how the outsider, who thought he knew better than anyone just threw his money away on the empty bird.

He had lasted the first year with every innovation and every suggestion he made being shot down ignominiously, then he started to take it personally and it all went downhill from there. His resignation was accepted without question and Charlie stepped in without a moments hesitation and covered it all without batting an eyelid until an election could be arranged. There was no earthly way that an outsider would ever be appointed Mayor of Budgee Springs ever again so the locals were polled for sensible and acceptable candidates. To everyone's surprise Marge Watson put her hat in the ring and even more shocking, Charlie backed her with his support in public. He recognised the folly in being completely intransigent as a town, and saw that in the younger (than him) woman was still mature enough to be able to manage the town and juggle the business of not letting time get too far ahead of them.

Marge was Mayor for two terms, eight years in office and while she put her own stamp on the office Charlie was always around to offer advice, a sounding board and course corrections when needed. He was not the Mayor, you would get that answer from anyone you asked, but if there was an 'unofficial' and 'honorary' one, then it was Charlie all the way. Marge mothballed the wire-frame Budgie and put it on the back paddock of the Farm her late husband and she had tended for most of their adult lives. John was a hard working, honest man and a good friend of Charlie and his family. Charlie's son, Charles Junior was there playing with their daughter for many years growing up in Budgee Springs. He started going by his middle name of Max pretty much from junior school onwards, it was a small town and his Dad was known by everyone, and just appending junior or senior was never going to cut it in Budgee Springs. Max and Polly were peas in a pod and no one was too surprised that the friendship grew all the way through school, a university trip to Sydney for both of them and then then the eventual relationship that married Charles Maximilian Clarke Junior to Polly Watson, the heirs apparent to Mayoral families in Budgee Springs.

They had been happy in Sydney for almost twenty years, they had made a couple of investments in businesses he worked for and became partners in. They were doing very well for themselves. Polly and Max had a house, and they both had good jobs and came home to Budgee Springs for weeks at a time a few times per year. When they left Charlie was still the Mayor, they had heard stories about the retirement years later on visits. They knew about the interloper and they saw Polly's mum take up the mantle, their home town was in great hands and they were just not needed there.

Polly had an inkling that something was up in one visit, her mum Marge now the Mayor in the end of her second term was looking a little paler, a little thinner and just tired. She had been trying to keep her illness a secret, but as Polly only saw her once or twice a year, the difference was very noticeable to her, and the locals just saw a gradual change, which mean they saw nothing until it was too late. She was sicker than she let on and so on one of those trips, Polly came to stay and never left.

Max went back to Sydney, he did what he needed to do, found a home for their cat, tenants for their house and handed the reins of his business interests to a business manager and decided to telecommute as much as possible from the rural paradise of Budgee Springs. They moved into the family farm house, and Marge announced to the town that she was not seeking re-election, a move that surprised no one at all, it was a very small town after all. The shock was that Max, put his name forward and before he had discussed it with his Dad, his name was on the ballot and he ran, unopposed and was sworn in as the new Mayor of Budgee Springs.

His own mother had died when he was young, the town's only drink driver statistic, caused by an outsider driving through the town at breakneck speed when the was barely in his teens and had trouble processing the death of the bedrock of his family. That was the catalyst that had pushed him and Polly from friends to something more. Now it was over thirty years later that he had the chance to return the support, the love and care that she had given to him when he needed it the most.

That had been eighteen months ago and now the only thing he had managed to change was to name the road where he lived to be Watson Road, for his later mother-in-law, the Lady Mayor that preceded him and for his wife. That change had unanimous approval in the council, made up of the elderly friends and business owners that remained in Budgee Springs and of course the honorary Mayor Emeritus, Charlie.

For Charlie it was odd to see his son sitting across the desk, the boy who still seemed like that little child who cried for days when his mother had died so tragically. The boy who ran away to Sydney a decade later, though it felt like it was barely they next day to Charlie. The boy who still had given them no grandchildren, and now in his early forties was unlikely to any time soon. He could not come up with a reason to not let the boy have a go at doing his job, except that it was HIS job, not his son's. He knew that was unreasonable, he hated that he thought like that, but he did.

Charlie and the bulk of the town councillors were regulars at the Whistle, the pub in the middle of the main road, the only real road of the town, a few suburban streets lead away from it where towns folk lived, but half those houses were empty and most of the real residents of Budgee Springs lived on Farms. Every day at the Whistle Charlie 'held court' with his drinking buddies, there were no secrets between them and him, they had decades of trust and respect built up, let alone layer upon layer of their livers shaved away together. He knew everything that happened in this town and that was why he was here to see his son in the Mayor's office, the office that had been his own home for so long.

“Have you really thought this through?” Charlie was grumpy, he had to hear about this from his friends first, not his son, that annoyed greatly to have to be told something he should by all rights 'know'.

“It put Broken Hill on the map, and the councillors they thought it was at least worth checking out. I have to go today though, these things are decided very quickly you know. The Tax breaks are what makes them come here, I have an 'in' with the producer, we were in University in Sydney together. I called him and I get a chance to pitch before anyone else even knows they are looking. It's the opportunity of as life time.” Max's eyes were dancing, this was so far and above beyond anything the town had ever done, having a film made in their town. “Look if the movie is a hit people will travel out of their way to visit this place, for decades. Just look at New Zealand with Hobbiton!”

“And Broken Hill? It's famous for that film, with Vin Diesel in it. Pitch Black it was.”

“Well there's little ambient light from the cities there, it's so far away from anything, it does get very dark at night.” Charlie was running his finger along the edge of his old desk, it seemed too alien to do that familiar mannerism from the wrong side now.

“No the movie was called Pitch Black, I don't mean it was dark there.” Max could not be dissuaded by his Dad's ambivalence to the details.

“And it had this Petrol joker in it?”

“Not Petrol Dad, Diesel. Vin Diesel. Diesel.” Max corrected him.

“Well it's a stupid name, we don't need a bunch of people flooding in the town with their stupid names, making a big song and dance out of everything!” He thumped the desk a little harder than he wanted, still put out by his position at the wrong side of it.

“No Dad, don't be silly, this will be nothing like that, you'll barely even know they're here.”

Now, two days later as Max watched the compilation DVD of musical numbers, overacting and bizarre set pieces featuring dancers, crowds of people and choreographed Indian men and women doing their Bollywood experience in a show reel he could take to the rest of the Councillors he realised what he had gotten himself into.

The credits for the show reel alone was probably enough to give his father a heart attack.

“I'm dead.” he turned off the TV and sank his head into his hands.