The Hangover

On the other hand, 8216;8216;My boss has to run all day to find and convince people,8217;8217; Khan laments. So any foreigner will usually do. And since his agency gets paid per head, the pressure is always on.

This time it8217;s for the Yash Chopra extravaganza Neal 8216;n8217; Nikki. Shooting has wrapped up in Canada, so they8217;ve created the 8216;Vancouver Yacht Club8217; on a set behind Fun Republic in suburban Mumbai. The Russians, Ukrainians and Indians are already at the studio with their own make-up and clothes, treating this gig as the ticket to a long career in Bollywood. I stumble in and get handed a white polyester dress with green flowers and falling sequins that I8217;ll have to wear with my brown motorcycle boots. It8217;s anything but glamorous.

And couldn8217;t the Neal 8216;n8217; Nikki crew have been kinder to unsuspecting 51-year-old Australian Eileen McMahon? She looks at the various costumes available to her, all about five sizes too small. McMahon is the antithesis of the young, hip profile they8217;re going for, and she8217;s left alone with a crew member who, according to McMahon, is becoming more and more agitated by the second.

But McMahon plays along. 8216;8216;He was telling me to put on this dress that I knew wouldn8217;t even fit over my head,8217;8217; she recounts once she appears on the set with all of us wearing ill-fitting costumes and looking way worse than our Russian counterparts whose clothes seem tailor-made. 8216;8216;When I finally did get it on, I was literally falling out of it. The guy told me I looked good. I told him I looked disgusting.8217;8217;

The raspy, male-like voice of the day is actually the female choreographer Vaibhavi Merchant hurling commands through a microphone as she hides in a corner watching every take on a screen. Tanisha Mukherjee8217;s job is to hammer out her last choreographed moves. My job is to smile, be energetic and dance while holding a fake rum-and-coke, trying to remember not to drink.

Vaibhavi finally emerges at about 1 pm, thoroughly frustrated. 8216;8216;You almost had it that time,8217;8217; she yells at Tanisha, 8216;8216;but you started to think.8217;8217; Even we agree the actress can8217;t dance as well as the Russian extras.

I start to think why it8217;s 2 pm and lunch still hasn8217;t been served. At the canteen there8217;s an endless line of extras, mostly the ones from Colaba, peppered by the tall Russian blondes on contract and the Indian regulars who look less than thrilled at the prospect of another meal here. And, of course, Tanisha and Merchant don8217;t have to queue up for food.

After lunch, the longest haul begins as we8217;re told by several set assistants that shooting will wrap up at 10 pm and not 8.30 pm, as promised. A mood of self-preservation sets in, and two French girls refuse to dance anymore. One set manager angrily yells, 8216;8216;If you8217;re not going to dance, get out!8217;8217;

There8217;s also a bit of self-amusement. Extra Amanda Peling from Vancouver can8217;t stop giggling at the appearance of everyone8212;8216;8216;no one in Vancouver dresses like this. They grabbed a bunch of hippies off the street and expected us to pull this off?8217;8217;

And the ones with the biggest stake in all of this8212;the young Indians with dreams of breaking into a nepotistic world8212;already seem to have acquired the necessary attitude. As all the extras line up to get their meal tickets for the evening snack, one girl shouts, 8216;8216;Indians before foreigners!8217;8217;

It8217;s a rare peek into a major Bollywood production, but at Rs 500 a day, it isn8217;t worth it. But the film-makers will have at least one foreigner sitting in a theatre soon, fishing for familiar faces and wishing she8217;d been served a real rum-and-coke.