Arresting India: An Exerpt From "The Further I Walk, The Closer I Get To Me"

Author Hong Mei and photographer Tom Carter spent a year travelling across India. Their journey turned into the adventure of a lifetime and led Hong to a write a book charting the experience. The following extract is translated from her new book The Farther I Walk, The Closer I Get To Me, and describes a particularly perilous episode when the two had a run-in with the local police.

Like a caravan of camels, the motorcade of police cars and wagons snakes slowly through the meandering alleys of Dharavi, the world’s largest slum. Tom and I are in the back of one of the wagons, staring forlornly out of the barred window. Locals peer in at us to catch a glimpse of the captives. We are on our way to Indian jail.

Days earlier we arrive in Mumbai in good spirits. We come up by train from the white-hot beaches of neighboring Goa along the coast of West India. From the palace-like Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus we hop a bus to Colaba district.

We check in to the Salvation Army, the cheapest accommodation in Mumbai (600 rupees per night). There are other guest houses, but they are terribly small and filthy. The only other options are expensive five-star hotels.

We spend our days wandering Mumbai, taking photos. At dusk we sit on the front steps of the Salvation Army, sipping ice cold Slice and reading White Tiger. Touts approach us. “Hey man,” a cool Indian guy in reflective glasses says. “You want to be in a Bollywood movie?” He has our attention, but knowing touts we proceed cautiously.

The next morning at the meeting spot there are fifty other foreigners also waiting to be Bollywood stars. Turns out we are all just extras. They bus us out to DY Patil Stadium. We expected singing and dancing and glamour, but it’s a movie about cricket, India’s favorite sport.

Nine blonde backpacker boys from our hostel are chosen as cricket players. Tom is not blonde and actually passes for Indian because of his Goa tan. But he is the tallest and is selected as the tenth player and given a cricket uniform. Me and the remaining extras are sent high up into the empty stadium seats. In post-production they will digitally multiply us into 60,000 spectators.

Beneath the scalding sun we watch from the distance as the “team” films and re-films a single scene of the fake cricket game. The film’s star, Shahid Kapur, dives to catch a ball and wins the game. Tom and the other extras run to embrace their hero. The vainglorious Mr. Kapur stops the shooting to fix his hair. He does this every five minutes. This is not an exaggeration. Months later, in Delhi, we watch Dil Bole Hadippa!. Tom’s appearance is mere fractions of a second. Shahid Kapur’s hair looks fabulous.

The next day the touts find us again. We fall for it and meet at the Gate of India for our next Bollywood acting gig. It’s for a Samsung cell phone commercial. No dancing. The star is Aamir Khan, we’ve seen him on posters all across India for Ghajini and, later, 3 Idiots. Tom and I are relegated to playing tourists in the background. In the afternoon we are sent to a studio. The extras are directed to stand around Mr. Khan in a prop subway car. I’m right in front of him! My heart thumps. I steal a snapshot and the director yells at me. When we see the commercial online later, there’s Tom but only the top of my head; I’m too short.

With the 500-rupee payment from our Bollywood debut we book a “reality” tour in Dharavi slum, where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed. No photos are allowed. But now that we know how to get here by train, we go back to the slum the next day, unescorted. Tom insists on photographing the patchwork of corrugated metal rooftops from a high vantage point. We walk into the grounds of the highest nearby apartment complex. I wait in the stairwell while Tom walks up to the top.

A man approaches and then interrogates me. “What are you doing here?” he shouts. “Who are you with?” ‘Where is Tom?’ I wonder increasingly distressed. Tom finally comes back downstairs. A group of men lock the gates of the front door and won’t let us leave the building. They accuse us of trespassing. They are all shouting at us. “Pay us or we will call the police,” they say. We won’t pay.

The police come. Not one, but an entire convoy of cars and wagons. Sirens and lights fill the slums of Dharavi. Is this real? Are we in a Bollywood movie again? We don’t know if the police are arresting us or saving us! “I’m so sorry,” Tom says. “This is my fault.” They bring us to the police station and request our passports, then start filing out paperwork. I’m Chinese. For the first time in India this concerns me. I could be deported …

Photos: Tom Carter