Woken up by my alarm at 08.45am, did not have enough sleep. Got up quickly because I want to check at Bentley’s Hotel for a cheaper room. Insisted with the managers – normally it was all full booked till january 10th.
India is the country of the NO, says Suketu Mehta, and he’s damn right: that NO is your test and you have to insist to get past it. Finally some people checked out and I could visit the room: facing Colaba Causeway with a double window, it’s a very very noisy room but also very spacious, normally for 3 people. I decide to take the room (1220 Rs). It has a work-table and I can make sound recordings from the traffic -Horn Please!- and try out some specific settings with my camera.
When your hotel room is facing a busy street the air is really stinky and there ‘s a lot of smog. They say that one day walking through Bombay is equal to smoking two and a half packets of sigarettes a day!

Due to this hotel-change-commotion, I missed my appointment with Shumona. She needs to be at the office all day, and we send some emails back and forth to make later phonecalls. At the end it turns out that she has to leave for Delhi early next morning, so I won’t meet her. A pity, I would have liked to see her experimental movie, Ayertee.
Aniway, I think Shaina’s environment is much closer to mine, so probably she’s better placed to help me finding the right people for when I come back in march. I’ve met at her place this nice girl who was very concerned about NGO-filmtopics and seemed very handy, but she’s from Kerala and doesn’t speak Hindi.

This will be the most important task: find a collaborator, by preference a woman, speaking perfectly Hindi and English and interested in the subject of Mahila Samiti. She will have a key role in the production process of the project. Before I leave Bombay, I absolutely need to go to Bandra once more, to check information with Shaina.