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31 December 2006 -
News
Updates
On the back lot at the other Bollywood - New York Times
China v/s India - Forbes magazine
India's best beaches - Forbes magazine
On
the Back lot at the Other Bollywood
31 December 2006, New York Times, By Donald Morrison
HOLLYWOOD, shmollywood.
Give me Bollywood. As serious film fans know, India’s Bombay-based,
Hindi-language movie industry is the world’s largest, grinding out 800 or so
features a year, vastly more than its California rival. And these are
movie-movies, where boy meets girl, boy loses girl amid angry parents, evil
gangsters, rapacious landlords, corrupt politicians, fistfights, machete
fights and communal warfare until, three hours and five dance numbers later,
love and justice prevail. Cut. Print.
But for tourists,
Bollywood can be a flop. The half-dozen or so major movie studios in Mumbai,
as Bombay is officially known, are not open to the public — as are, say,
Warner Brothers, Paramount and Sony Pictures, much less Universal Studios’
theme park. You can pay $100 a person to a Mumbai travel agency called
Bollywood Tourism for a morning demonstration of cinematic techniques and an
afternoon at a working studio. But the price sounded steep to me, and the
itinerary a bit basic for film-savvy foreigners. My friends in India had a
better idea.
For the real Indian movie
experience, they said, go to Tollywood. As Bombay is to Hindi films, the
central Indian city of Hyderabad is to movies made in Telugu, the country’s
second most widely spoken language. Some 150 features a year are produced in
and around that bustling metropolis, more movies than just about anywhere
else except Bombay.
And the true tinseltown of
Tollywood is Ramoji Film City, which, according to
Guinness World Records, is the largest filmmaking complex in the world: more
than 1,600 acres of back lots, plywood streetscapes, sound stages,
warehouses, post-production facilities, hotels, restaurants and a full-blown
theme park. It is certainly the best value. Admission is 250 rupees for
adults. Back home at the multiplex, you’d pay that much for popcorn.
Though Ramoji Film City is
one of India’s most popular tourist destinations, with up to one and a half
million visitors a year (the Taj Mahal gets three million), most foreigners
have never heard of it. Knowledgeable friends arranged a car and driver for
the 16-mile trip from central Hyderabad (a hotel would have done the same
for about $40 a day, and there are daily bus tours for less).
Eventually we spotted the
Ramoji logo on a 40-foot-high billboard — nearly as big as Los Angeles’s
famed “Hollywood” sign — looming two miles in the distance over the
Arizona-like scrubland. We were horrified by the long line in front of the
ticket window just outside the park. But then we noticed a shorter line for
the Royal Package, a special guided tour for 750 rupees including lunch.
When in Tollywood, live large. A 20-ish man in the crisp khaki trousers,
white button-down shirt and blue tie of midlevel Ramoji functionaries
brightly announced: “I’m Shiva, and I’ll be your guide.” Fade in.
Ramoji Film City, Shiva
informed us as we started rolling, was founded in 1996 by Ramoji Rao, a
media baron (newspapers, TV, films) who, at age 70, lives on the premises in
the only house that isn’t fake. At first, Film City simply made films. But
within two years it was welcoming tourists. Now it draws as many as 28,000 a
day, while playing host to at least 100 film production companies a year —
in Telugu, Hindi and even English.
Among the English-language
films are Harvey Keitel’s 2002 thriller “Beeper” and “Quicksand,” a 2002
military drama starring Michael Dudikoff. Left over from the Quicksand shoot
is what looks like an airplane hangar with “United States Marine Corps”
stenciled on the side. The studio’s Indian films include some genuine hits,
like the actor-director Raghava Lawrence’s 2006 blockbuster “Style.”
Bankable stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Karisma Kapoor have done time at
Ramoji.
No stars were present nor
were films being shot that day, but there was plenty of movie magic on
display. We passed Discovery Pond, a multilayered, two-acre lake that
changes shape when the water level is raised or lowered. Also Flashback
Street, a leafy, quarter-mile avenue lined with 19th-century gas lights,
which can be replaced with one of 60 other lamp designs as needed.
A European-style
residential street is sharply curved, allowing several films to be shot at
once without crossing sightlines. One of many rambling gardens contains a
rock promontory called Suicide Point, where star-crossed cinematic lovers go
to end it all. “And if the movie is a flop,” Shiva said, “the director can
use it too.”
There is a mock airport
terminal, with a parking lot, ticket counters, metal detectors and the
interior of a wide-bodied jet. Nearby is a large building with four facades:
a library, a Christian church, a hospital and a government office. “The hero
and heroine can meet in the library,” Shiva said, “get married in the
church, go off on their honeymoon from the airport, and nine months later
she can give birth at the hospital." A woman in the back of the
van piped up: “Where’s the courthouse?”
Ramoji Film City calls
itself a one-stop movie factory, where a producer can walk in with a script
and out with a finished film — shot, edited, mixed and ready for theaters.
You need extras? Ramoji provided 2,000 for a dance scene in “Style.” Food
for cast and crew? Sound-proof generators? Cactuses? Palm trees? No problem.
THESE marvels are also
available for corporate events. Procter & Gamble India was host to 3,500 of
its dealers here earlier this year. For two million rupees, you can have
your wedding reception in a suitably cinematic location “Tell us what color
sari you are wearing,” Shiva said, “and we’ll replant the flowers to match.”
You and your guests can
stay over at two Ramoji-owned hotels and sample the delights of Fundustan, a
sprawling arcade of rides, slides and games. Or tour Eureka, a vast complex
of movie-making lore. There you can take in live shows of Bollywood dancing
and acrobatics, or stroll through Wild West, a campy frontier street with
its own show of gunslingers and kung-fu fighters duking it out on a
sand-covered stage.
Or you can eat. The van
dropped us at the Sitara Hotel for our Royal Tour buffet (the three Indian
restaurants in Eureka offer lunch for about $3 a head, and Western fast food
is widely available). The Sitara gives new meaning to the word baroque:
murals, filigrees, sconces, chandeliers, stained-glass ceilings and a vast
selection of both vegetarian and “non-veg” Indian dishes. “Excuse me for
asking,” said an exotic-looking woman who approached our table, “but where
are you from? We’re Turkish, and we haven’t seen any other Westerners here.”
A glance around the room
confirmed this odd fact. Of the maybe 10,000 people we had seen that day, we
and the Turks were just about the only non-Indians. Not that it mattered.
Shiva’s patter and just about every sign and announcement were in English.
Even the crowd was impressively English-speaking, as well as polite,
well-dressed and incorrigibly gregarious. By day’s end, everybody on our bus
seemed to be zapping their cellphone numbers to each other.
I traded e-mail addresses
with our guide Shiva, a recent college graduate who said he would soon be
taking time off to pursue an M.B.A. “I want to be a writer,” he said upon
learning I was a journalist. Then why get an M.B.A.? “It’ll help in my
career,” he responded. You mean screenwriting? Directing? “No, hotel
management. Here it’s not that different from show business"
At Ramoji Film City,
your one-stop initiation into the world of Indian cinema, everything is show
business.
Top of
the page
Sneak
Peek 2007 –
China
v/s India
21 December 2006,
Forbes magazine, By
Ruth
David/ Shu-Ching Jean Chen
An
India story is not just about information technology and the services
industry. Companies in sectors like retail, telecom, manufacturing and
pharmaceuticals will expand globally while consolidating India operations.
Cross-border mergers and acquisitions will continue, with the average deal
size increasing in value. In India, the number of people working for foreign
firms is bound to increase, but there will also be a rise in the number of
Westerners working for Indian firms as they set up bases outside their
country. Despite political pressures within India’s ruling coalition and
disagreements with state governments, reforms in the power and
infrastructure sectors will make sustainable progress.
Even
though the Chinese banks have sold shares to public investors, they are
still corrupt, ineptly bureaucratic and ill-managed. Sadly, they can remain
the same for a long time and still prosper. Short of a financial meltdown,
Beijing can always again bail out the big banks, which are without exception
controlled by the government. As long as there is no meaningful democracy,
there would be no angry Chinese taxpayers to vote with their feet.
Top of the page
India's Best beaches
20 December 2006, Forbes magazine, By Lucy
Maher
Looking for a party?
Forget Ibiza, Rio or even Bondi Beach, Australia. These days, India's
shoreline is seeing all the action. On most days, the country’s thousands of
miles of shoreline are packed with tourists sunbathing, families picnicking,
and locals sampling street food and browsing trinket-filled kiosks.
Take
Goa. Located along India’s southwestern
shores, the area in the 1960s and '70s was a haven for hippies who took to
the sand to watch the sunset and indulge in moonlit partying. Today, the
scene is more commercial. The beach is lined with vendors peddling fare,
such as pani puri (crisp semolina balls) and chaats (fried dough, often
mixed with yogurt and onions), as well as bare-bones guest houses available
to rent overnight.
There are also more
upscale hotels, such as the Majorda Beach Resort, cafes frequented by
tourists and developments being erected for middle-class Indians eager for a
second home along the water. Boutique hotels such as the
Nilaya Hermitage
are also beginning to make an appearance, catering to a strong market of
American and European tourists.
It’s a way of life that
has become increasingly popular in the last several years. Thanks to the
country’s booming economy, many of India’s newly wealthy and those in the
expanding middle class are snapping up beachfront homes. Meanwhile, top-tier
hotels and resorts are attracting a wealthy, international clientele.
“It is a tropical beach
community,” says
Pallavi Shah,
owner of Our
Personal Guest, Inc., a New York-based tour operator which
specializes in packages to India. “There is a whole culture there. The
locals are still dressed in saris and going in the water. People are sitting
in the sand and hanging out in the cafes. People go there for holidays and a
lot of them have private homes there.”
But India’s shorelines
aren’t just about partying until dawn, erecting high-rise housing
developments or frequenting mammoth waterfront resorts.
Amalia Egri Freedman, a part-time marketing
consultant living in San Francisco, fondly remembers her 10-day stay in
Kovalam, on India’s southern shore. While there in 2002, she and her husband
found beaches with room to spread out, warm waters in which to swim and
quaint restaurants serving fresh local fish. She says no hotel was taller
than three stories and accommodations ranged from rustic lodges to
marble-floored, beachfront hotels that felt more like condominiums.
“Early mornings found the
local fishermen on the beach reeling in their nets. By midday, the beach was
filled with sunbathers,” she says. “Local women reserved sun chairs for us
in advance for payment and brought fruit salads, with all manner of tropical
fruit and topped with coconut shreds. By mid-afternoon, when the heat was
less comfortable, the beaches emptied out and the internet cafes hummed with
foreigners.”
Those eager
to get a taste of India’s shoreline have plenty of options. From Ayurvedic
spa treatments at the resorts in Kovalam to a week on the secluded islands
of Andaman or Nicobar, India's beaches won't disappoint. We've rounded up
the best.
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Situated in the Bay of
Bengal and partially covered by dense forest, the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, off India’s east coast, have remained
largely off the beaten path. That’s set to change. This year, the Indian
Center for Tourism and Culture announced it was building an international
airport in the area and is looking into opening 10 more of the existing 572
islands to visitors.
Chowpatty
The beach is perhaps best
known for the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, in which visitors turn out to
watch elaborate parades snake through the streets in late summer.
Goa
In the 1960s and '70s,
hippies flocked to the shores of Goa, situated on
India’s western coastline, where they set up a well-attended, summer-long
beachside party scene. Today, tourists have taken their place and can be
found sunbathing during the day and partying at the local resorts and cafes
at night. What’s more, Indians, flush with cash from the country’s booming
economy, have begun to buy second homes in the area.
Juhu
Situated on the shores of
the Arabian Sea, Juhu is one of the most popular beaches in Mumbai. Visitors
spend their time people-watching and nibbling on street food such as pani
puri, chaats and pav bhaji, all of which are sold by vendors manning snack
stands that line the promenade.
Kovalam
Tourists flock to this
stretch of sand, located about 10 miles outside
Thiruvananthapuram City in Kerala on India’s southern
tip. That’s because it boasts black sand beaches and a number of Ayurvedic
spas, such as the Manal Theeram Beach Resort, for which the area has become
known. The coastline is dotted with both budget lodging and more plush
hotels, and offers sea views from the hills of nearby Poomkalum.
Marari
One of India’s quaintest
areas, this white sand beach in Kerala, on India’s southern tip, gets very
little tourist attention since it has fewer offerings than its neighbors to
the north. Instead, local fishermen take to the waters in search of prey,
and beachcombers unwind at yoga classes and bike rides sponsored by the
Marari Beach Resort, which puts guests up in palm-thatched villas.
Marina
One of India’s longest
beaches, located in the city of Chennai on India’s southeastern coast,
Marina Beach attracts families looking to spend some time outdoors and
stroll along the grassy walkway bordering the beach.
Varkala
This Kerala beach, on
India's southern tip, draws a young, backpacking crowd and features a white
sand shoreline framed by tall palms and towering, curved cliffs. There are
also numerous shops dotting the streets, including tattoo parlors and
bookshops, as well as cafes and establishments that rent out shacks to
vacationers.
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