My winter production kicked off in full earnest today – at 0530 in the morning to be precise. For a change I was on time while Roshan lay fast asleep in the comforts of his ‘razai’ and just as we were about to leave he realised he couldn’t find the car keys – great start to the day I thought. Made it to Kurseong station minutes before the departure of the 6 am ‘school train’ to Darjeeling. After much hesitation, I set up tripod at the station and to my surprise no one realy gave a shit which is another reason why I love this part of the country – people don’t object to the use of cameras or crowd around someone filming. Anywhere else in the country and I would have instantly been greeted with the all to familiar, “hanji, permit hae aapka?? ” with a good 7000 spectators watching the proceedings by then.
If my computing skills are anything to go by, we stopped at no less than 22 locations en route to shoot the train from and contrary to what I had imagined, we were always playing catch up. Almost lost the chase on more than a few occasions. That steamer was going great guns this morning and was only 20 minutes late at Darjeeling. I say ‘only’ cause it’s no surprise if it turns up a couple of hours late on most mornings. Managed to goof up a lot of my shots but overall the experience was more than gratifying..
brat's ramblings 