Hey and goodmorning.

Today is sunday and i'm very very tired. Lead practice this morning was just focussing on surviving. I'm not kidding or exaggerating, when my alarm went off at 3:10 and i had gotten a good three hour night of sleep i though it was a good idea to go to practice, which ofcourse it always is. But man was i ever tired. I found myself in the far back of the shala, still feeling quite strong but oh so tired. I made it through all the standing positions without bigger problems but as soon as we jumped through to the sitting ones i felt a strong urge to sleep. I noticed that in all the forward bends i was closing my eyes resting my head on my knee. Haha serious. It was quite nice though when i'd reached bujapeedasana (which was a challenge cause i'd put mosquito repellent cream on my feet that had become slippery while doing my practice). Both the guy beside me and his practice were so beautiful so i did'nt seem to mind sitting waiting watching.
When we we're doing backbendings i got this rush of emotional relief which i've heard backbendings can sometime do cause you're opening your chest so much. I've heard all kinds of stories of people doing weird things after backbendings even crying. yeah my backbendings were good and left me with such an urge to giggle.. yes that's right. I felt this wave of happiness and giggles and also knowing that laughing now would not be appropriate so i held it back. I still had that giggly feeling in me for the rest of the practice and while we were doing the last uppward dog after uttpluthi i had to let out a small giggle. i've never had that giggly feeling during practice before, i've heard of it but today i experienced it myself. Maybe lack of sleep helped me.

I walked home after practice together with my friend Per who lives on the same road as me, we had a nice talk and i told him about my crazy day i'd had yesterday and i was so tired i accidently threw my water bottle across the road.
When i got home i showered, feeling happy and a bit proud of getting up and practicing, then i layed down on my bed, had a nice giggle..and fell asleep.

Now to tell you why i was so tired and why i got to bed so late i actually need to start by telling you about friday. Cause it was friday that things started. After lead practice friday, a nap, and a nice breakfast with my friends i went together with my friends Anna and Anna to the southern star pool. We were tired and a day at the pool was exactly what we needed.
We had a lovely time at the pool, swimming, sunning and talking and laughing. While we were there two guys came up to us, and indian man and a russian man. They asked us if we were interested in being with in a movie. Being swedish or maybe just being suspious we asked "what kind of movie?"  They told us they were shooting a bollywood movie at the lalita mahal palace and they needed western looking people to play brittish people.
We talked to them a while and agreed that we could not come today(friday) but we could come tomorrow (saturday) because that is our day off.

So Yesterday we woke, ate breakfast together at Om Caf'e and then headed around nine o'clock to the coconut stand where we were going to be picked up, there we met a guy that practices yoga with us. A driver picked the four of us up in a bus and then we drove first to lakshmipuram and picked up a few more western people. We were total maybe 10 people on the bus. Then we drove to the lalita mahal. As soon as we got close to the palace we saw cameras and reporters and cars waiting outside. We got out of the bus and followed our guy in to the palace, where we soon saw people walking around setting up scenes, people wearing really fancy ballroom clothes and also people wearing t-shirts saying "asst cameraman" "costume designer" and ofcourse "director"
I almost had to pinch myself to remind myself that this was infact really happening and not just a crazy dream..this really was the set of a bollywood movie, and we were going to be in it.

As we came in people were running all over the place and they sent us to costume design. As soon as we had reached the costume design a woman threw a light blue dress at me and told me to go put it on. So i did, it fellt like one of those ugly bridesmaids dresses you see in movies. Then they told me "go to hair and makeup!" So i went over to where they motioned and there were women there fixing girls hair, motsly western girls, but there were plenty of indian people too.
So this indian woman told me to have seat and she started fixing my hair, brushing it, curling it and putting it up nicely. Around this time my friends Ann and Per came, who were just going to use the pool at the palace but wanted to have a look at us too. So i got my hair all fancy made, then i got makeup done at another place. Then the costume designer came over and handed me these huge earrings and necklace and bracelet that looked like pearls and diamonds for me to wear.
Suddenly i felt like i'd been with on extreme makeover or something. After not have been wearing makeup for two months it felt like i was wearing a mask, especially since i don't really use that amount of makeup at home.
I was the first of my friends to be ready and the people working on the set told me to go in to the ballroom. So i did and i walked in to this place that looked like a 1940's ballroom, huge ceiling and dinner tables a stage and a big dance floor. I mean really it was quite the thing it was really so beautiful. There were lots of people in there and a huge camera and lightning everywhere. People running around wearing headsets working. This really was a movie set, and i was going to be in it. I found myself standing in the middle of the dance floor wearing my jewellry and fancy dress and higheeled white shoes thinking "how did i get here"
"you look nice" a guy said who was wearing a read uniform, "thanks i said, but i feel completely lost" the guy had been on the same bus as me and was a yoga student from lakshmipuram. We stood there talking for awhile until someone came and told me to dance. All of a sudden i was supposed to dance walz with this russian man, There were lots of western looking people who were dancing and soon i realized my friend Anna across the room smiling at me dancing with a guy from Afghanistan. So we danced. And we danced.
And they counted "5, 6, 7, 8"! "left, right, left, right!" and they shouted "CUT!" It was a ballroom scene and we were playing the brittish people it was the year 1945. We were still in india and it was hot. They filmed the scene of everyone dancing, and around us people sat at tables pretending to talk and drink, they filmed it from all kinds of directions. Yelling cut etc. When they were happy with a take they'd move the camera and we would wait and then we'd dance again. It was so weird and surreal and i got eye contact with my friends and we laughed and you could tell we were all thinking the same thing "is this really happening?"
Yes infact. it was.
After dancing for two and a half hours. Doing the 5, 6 , 7 ,8 and back and forth in higheeled shoes we started getting tired. There is so much waiting around when making movies i had no idea it was so hard. At 1:30 they said we could have a break and we all went outside and got lunch.
We got a 20minute lunch break then they wanted us all back inside and the dancing went on again. It got a bit tireing. Even though we all did our fair share of laughing and evryone was talking to eachother. We were getting tired. Around four o'clock me and my friends were talking and kind of saying, yeah this is fun but we've been dancing for five hours now and maybe this is enough.
Well we went to the bathroom and walked around the palace a bit. Then soemone came out calling us.. "you need to get back in there and dance!" "but we are tired we dont want to dance, can't someone else dance for a while?' "no that is not possible" haha wtf? A man pointed at me and said "i have your dress on the movie now, you have to dance"
So we went back and we danced, and we danced. And our feet were killing us and i was getting tired of the russian dude i was dancing with, he was starting to get on my nerves after having to try to be social and dance with him for six hours.
Time passed and we danced, and we ran away for three minute periods every now and then to drink water or try to sneak some rest...and they'd call us back.. "you blue dress!! where is your partner?" we danced and we danced.

Yes.. i am not kidding.. I danced from 11 in the morning til 8 o'clock in the evening with only a 20 minute lunchbreak.
It was such a strange experience being on a real movie set. As time went on and they were moving the cameras there were less and less couples dancing since they were shooting at a special place, of course me and Anna and Anna were a few of those last copules. In the end we were four couples dancing and dancing..and ofcourse the main actors and actresses.
After one little short pause of maybe five minutes of going to the toilet they asked me or rather told me "you keep on dancing" and i told them i was getting tired and they said "where is your dancing partner" i amswered "i don't know" "well what is his name?" "sorry i don't remember" I didn't rememer his name.. sorry but i'd met like a hundred different people and introduced myself and heared their names it's hard to remember everyones name. They were kind of like "okay whatever here's a new guy you can dance wiht, does he look anything like the guy you were dancing with earlier?' I looked at my new dancing partner, asked his name and where he was from(the usual) Afghanistan. and i told them "actually he couldn't look more different" they didn't really seem to care so i asked "could i atleast please take of these gloves now, it's really hot!" ( i was wearing these fancy lacy white gloves that went up half my arms) "No you can't take the gloves off, they are very important" I laughed then at the whole bollywood movie thing, how me wearing the gloves was an important part but the fact that my dancer had gone from being (and looking) very russian to being (and looking) very much afghanistan...didn't really matter at all. So what should we do? We laughed and then we danced some more.
Around eight my feet were killing me, i'm not used to wearing high heeled shoes, nore dancing and the combination for nine hours straight was not so nice on the feet. So i danced barefoot, telling the guy from afghanistan "you better not step on my feet now" and  he didn't.

Shortly after eight there was a few seconds where we could get away, me and Anna and Anna. We talked to the guy who was like our "manager" or whatever and said that we were getting tired and exhausted and could we please go home now, this has been fun but come on!! He said we could have some cookies if we liked and we kind of figured that since they weren't going to let us go home until this neverending scene was done we might as well eat some cookies..we hadn't eaten anything since two o'clock, So we went outside where there were all these trailers parked.. those kind of real "movie" trailers. And we sat outside in the warm dark indian night eating cookies and drinking chai tea. And we laughed and giggled. Just like we'd done all day. "here we are in india wearing these princess dresses, sitting outside in the dark eaing cookies on a movie set" Then we started joking around talking about our ugly dresses and i said i felt like a five year old who was dressed up as a princess, and now i was becoming a cranky five year old who wanted to through a fit screaming "i don't want to be a princess anymore!!"
It was hard work but at the same time great fun just because it was so unlike something i've ever done. They told us we were supposed to stay until 9 and we said okay..and went in again and continued dancing. Again my dance partner was gone, well actually the guy from afghanistan was dancing with his real dance partner, the one he'd been dancing with all day before my russian split. They wanted me to keep on dancing and i said.."well i've been dancing for nine hours now..and my guys gone what do you want me to do?" i kind of snuck out to the side and watched from there, then i found the guy who i'd talked to earlier that morning and we stood and talked and laughed about the whole situation of being on a movie set. Such a strange day. So the last hour of filming i wasn't dancing atleast, i was just standing talking and laughing with my new friend at the side..which incase you wonder makes time go a lot quicker than dancing.

At 9:30 they were actually done and finally we got to go take our dresses off and put on our regular clothes. I don't think i've ever loved my clothes that much before =)
After we'd changed and left all the clothes and jewellry we went outside, and they served us dinner. We were starving and it tasted sooo good. We sat outside in the warm night eating our indian food chatting with all the people. And it was just so fun. It had been such a strange and long day and we had really all been on some kind of emotional rollercoaster, one minute loving it the next minute hating it.
But all in all...what an experience!!
They paid us aswell we all got 1500 RS which actually wasn't too bad for being an extra on a bollywood movie. Then all of us western yoga students from Gokulam and Lakshmipuram crammed in to a little minivan(we'd come on a bigger bus)
and they drove us home. They said they had to keep on filming tomorrow and asked if we could come. We figured one day of constant dancing in india warm weather in fancy dresses was probably enough for us. And also we had practice at 4:30 am. So we said that sorry we would not be able to make it tomorrow. They were a bit irritated, but then someone mentioned that the last bollywood movie they'd seen they'd changed the main character in the middle of the movie without explaining why, so we figured it probably didn't matter that some of the dancers had changed.

I got home to my place sometime after 11. I was tired and somehow it fellt so nice being back in Gokulam and being in my apartment, it's strange how this place actually does feel like home.
By the time i'd washed all the makeup of my face and gotten in to bed it was nearly twelve and i looked at my alarm that was set for 3:10 and thought.."i'm going to need a big coffee for breakfast tomorrow!" then i feel asleep.


Now you're probably wondering if i've got photos, i'm sorry to say that i only have a few from before and after the filming since our bags were locked in i trailer during the filming so we couldn't take photos then. But atleast i have a few pics so you will believe me that this did infact happen.



Outside the Lalita Mahal palace where we were filming.


Getting my hair fixed.



My hair from the back



Makeup and hair from the front.


Me being a "brittish woman in the 1940's " also known as "Michelle ready to dance for nine hours"


People getting makeup done.


Anna, Anna and me happy to not be wearing our dresses after being on the movie set for twelve hours.



Happy to be home in my apartment on contour road and tired. Took me like 15 minutes to get all the makeup off.


Well as you can imagine today i'm abit tired after getting three hours of sleep and getting up for practice, i had a little nap after practice though, for about an hour then i went to breakfast at viviennes. Now i'm about ready for lunch. Gonna go upstairs and find Anna and Anna.

Oh yeah the name of the movie is Madharasapattinam. And according to someone we talked to it will be all over the world.. hahah yeah downloadable probably. Either way if you ever do find it in like a year or so.. look for me in the ballroom scene.


Oh india! you will never stop surprising me =)

take care.

mich.