See, Believe, Do

Rule Number One (and only) for India: Never say, “It can’t get more surreal than this,” because, guaranteed, within five minutes of uttering that statement, India will prove you wrong, every time.

Via via my host family, I was asked on Monday evening if I would be interested in helping out with a documentary film about the life of Edward Sargent, who was a prominent figure in the Christian missionaries of Tamil Nadu. His primary concern was education and he was highly instrumental in developing schools for the children and specifically initiated one of the first girls’ schools in the area. Currently, there are several schools named after him, including a Teachers Training school and a school for the mentally handicapped in Tirunelveli.

Although I am not a practicing Christian, I fully support its core tenets of faith, hope, and charity. I am more in line with the Vaishnavites concept that Jesus was one of the Avatars of the concept of Vishnu, the Cosmic Preserver, rather than the solitary incarnation of God. Along with Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, and other important spiritual teachers are often considered to be such avatars of this theological ideal.

Having had Sargent’s message and dedication to education explained to me, and thus knowing that he was indeed not like many of the Portuguese Missionaries in Goa, who had precipitated a nearly four-century long era of virtual prolonged inquisition and persecution, I was quite happy to join the crew. And, so the fun began.

Caroline, who is a rather well-known director, especially amongst the southern Indian Christians, is the driving force behind the project. She has filmed documentaries on various personalities ranging from prominent Indian and Sri Lankan athletes to the Christian missionaries such as Sargent. Another one of her subjects was Bishop Caldwell, who actual was the first person to compose grammar books on Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu. Caldwell, a linguistic genius to begin with, did the most obvious, yet brilliant thing. He learned these languages from the local children of the area and constructed the grammar books upon his living experiences.

Caroline and her son, Handel (the chief camera operator), both from the Palayamkottai/Tirunelveli area had a highly successful children’s show for many years that garnered up to 7 million viewers at its zenith. Glad I didn’t know those kind of numbers when I signed on!

So, Caroline and Handel were in search of “white people,” and they heard rumors about a yeti-like sighting in Madurai of a middle-aged white guy, being me, who was lurking around the highways and by-ways of the city and environs. They came to Pradeep’s house, explained the project and after a while, we shook hands and it was a go. Then on Wednesday, I was picked up by Caroline’s brother-in-law Cecil (amongst the Christian community, anlgo names are obviously more common) and his wife Asha and we drove down to the Tirunelveli area for two days of shooting.

While getting coffee on the outskirts of Madurai before our short trek southwards, Cecil was asking me about my Indian experience. I told him how incredible it has been and what an eye-opener spending time here can be. In rather typical Indian fashion, this delighted Cecil. Indians, from what I have seen, love to revel in the Chaos that is India and to by no means diminish it for foreigners, but rather to relish in its exaggeration. For them, it is just as much Chaos, but nearly it is more like a sense of national pride. The approach is so refreshing in that any pre-conceived idea of control that you may have is thrown out the window the second you step foot in India. The harder you try to resist, the more ludicrous you will become. Frustrated and annoyed, you may leave and never wish to come back.

However, Cecil’s attitude is more par for the course for Indians and one that I have tried to adopt since my arrival in Mumbai nearly five weeks ago. With a generous stroke, he summed up India as, “See, Believe, Do.”

In other words, you may hear something from someone else, such as the directions are to go South, but in reality, you are to go North. So, you need to see that for yourself. But, seeing is not enough as a government-issued signpost may tell you to go South, when you really do need to go North. So, at some point, you will need to come to a decision for yourself, and when you have Seen, then Believed which direction it is you should go, then you Do. Works for me. That pretty much ties it up in a neat package from what I have seen.

On the set, it was quite a See, Believe, Do situation. I don’t think that this deviated much from a normal movie set as I have heard plenty of such crazy stories from my sister who is in film, but everything still always has that quirky Indian twist here.

In addition then to rendering dialogues in Tamil and English, I was asked out of the blue on Wednesday, “How do you feel about horses?” “Fine, why?” Well, apparently Bishop Sargent road everywhere on a horse, so within minutes we piled back into the “I Belong to Jesus” bus, which was our transportaion, and leaving the school where we had been filming, we went to a farm outside of town. Set against the stunning backdrop of the Western Ghats and in a banana grove that had been burned down (I  imagine after harvesting? Need to find out that one...), I found myself in a small derby hat, bow tie, ruffled shirt being led around on a white horse for stock footage as a couple dozen Indians looked on with great amusement as wild turkeys, goats, and chickens fluttered and frolicked around. But, then, we needed to go another Palm grove, which was down the street, so we (the horse and I, and the trainer) left the farm and went walking down the main street that runs out of town.

Well, considering I literally doubled the white population that day of the entire region. Tess, Handel’s friend from the UK who is helping on the movie, had been the only white person that she had seen there for the few weeks she has been here. As such, seeing me, perched upon a white horse in period costume, well, let’s just say it was my turn to see the Indians’ nearly drive off the road. Finally, I found something that could fluster the Indians!

I won’t lie, it was flat-out hilarious to see the faces peering out from the mini-vans filled with school children or of couples and families on motorcycles, literally craning their necks in double-takes to see if they had really just seen a big white guy on a white horse in a bow tie and a derby prancing down the street. This is the stuff of urban legends. Children two generations from now will hear about this curious apparition that nearly caused a major traffic jam as he road off into the twilight of the palm groves at the foothills of the Ghats.

In addition to the horse riding, I had to do a very ill and near-death scene, which you can see the process for below.

I would say, “it doesn’t get more surreal than that,” but, if I do, I know that India will inevitably give me another dose of reality, which is always waiting just around the corner...