- 4 months ago
S02E10 India (Kolkata/Mumbai)
June 5, 2006 Travel Channel
Over the years, Tony Bourdain has fallen in love with India. The
culture, the cuisine, the communities - it's all delicious and enchanting. Tony travels to Kolkata and Mumbai, formerly Calcutta and Bombay, to rediscover the magic of this beautiful land.
June 5, 2006 Travel Channel
Over the years, Tony Bourdain has fallen in love with India. The
culture, the cuisine, the communities - it's all delicious and enchanting. Tony travels to Kolkata and Mumbai, formerly Calcutta and Bombay, to rediscover the magic of this beautiful land.
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TravelTranscript
00:00like many i came to india searching for knowledge wisdom and enlightenment or so i thought until
00:15finally i came to understand my true quest was for brains these are your brains these are your
00:21brains on food street i'm anthony bourdain that's right i write i travel i eat and i'm hungry for more
00:51from a distance india looks like a fever dream one catches a fragment of a vision a small taste of
01:01the exotic and suddenly it's gone but are all dreams created equal is one man's bollywood film
01:09fantasy the same as another man's dream of the perfect brain sandwich to be in india anywhere
01:14in india is to risk being endlessly enchanted and repelled until your senses want to shut down
01:21nowhere is that more true than in the coastal cities of calcutta and bombay recently renamed
01:26kolkata and mumbai these are the two cities in india that most remind me of my hometown new york city
01:33with their dense interweaving of classes and cultures i'm looking to dig into the sweet
01:38sides of these places and see how urban indians work pray and play india demands to be taken on
01:46its own terms and i'm here to do just that i never miss trains to ride the trains eat the food play a
01:53little cricket in short to try to get a taste of india just the way it is first on the list i'm off to
02:02kolkata via indian railways the preferred means of transit for five billion indians a year
02:07welcome to second class this is how much of india travels and where one gets a big slice of the
02:15culture up close and personal you can really get the sense of a place by striking up a conversation
02:20with the locals i'm talking to alarm who's from kolkata i don't like tourist food you know i want
02:25to eat your food not food for tourists conversations between strangers are a frequent pleasure on indian
02:30trains luckily for me english is often the common language for a country that has 22 official
02:35languages somebody told me there are 200 languages spoken in mumbai that's a lot oh and speaking of
02:43a lot have you noticed any vendors on the train tea food games shoe shines drag queens called hegera
02:52selling a form of good luck which is actually the absence of the bad luck you would otherwise suffer
02:56from not giving them any money i was waiting for livestock men's suits and tax-free municipal bonds but
03:02i think that's in a different car so after an extremely fresh salted cucumber snack it's good
03:09i climbed up into a sleeper to avoid any more bad luck and maybe take a nap
03:15it's actually uh kind of comfy i could uh almost fit here still beats the hell out of amtrak
03:24and i'll tell you the condition of the bathrooms is about the same
03:27i'm really glad to be traveling into kolkata by train the landscapes we pass by mark the transition
03:34from the relaxed pace of rural india to the busy urban world some people dread the noise and confusion
03:41of modern cities but i just love the sense of energy and endless possibility food sports media
03:48everything at once and a little too much that's what i'm looking forward to train stations may look
03:54the same around the world but you know when you've arrived at 100 year old howrah station in kolkata
04:00something you gotta get used to real quick in india crowds and traffic i'll get an analyst
04:11ah ancient calcutta its location along an important branch of the ganges made it a religious center long
04:17before there was in england but it was england that made it the capital of british india until the honor
04:22went to new delhi in 1911. always an important port it became a magnet for rural indians from
04:28all over the subcontinent the kind of melting pot of indian culture i'm on my way to meet mr
04:34kaushar our man in calcutta as they used to say we asked him something like hey what do working
04:39people do for fun around here on their day off and before we could explain the western concept of
04:44political correctness to him he showed us just that and in this neighborhood the leisure time activity of choice
04:53is cockfighting now ordinarily i am poor violence and i like cute animals and i'm certainly against uh
05:03the wonky killing of animals restored and cockfighting in general but i do enjoy the delicious taste of
05:09poultry uh and at the end uh i get to eat the loser yeah right so nothing will go to waste it will all
05:15become part of the food chain and and and a bunch of hungry people will also get a snack out of this
05:20okay i think that with that as a salve for my conscience let's get ready to rumble you lead the
05:25way yeah there we are who are the contenders he looks pretty vicious right away i start betting on
05:33something i know nothing about this makes the game's organizers very happy i may be bluffing but
05:39i can definitely talk a good game this fight's gonna be over soon what'd you say no mas hey nobody
05:44even wants to mess with mine india's had cockfighting for thousands of years and thankfully it's normal
05:50here for the birds not to be wearing knives or pointy objects i don't think it's normal for them to be
05:55getting along so well however no no no it looks like you're gonna make a tongue kiss so love you
06:01after a half dozen different fight cards all with the excitement of watching ice melt we go to plan b
06:07okay off to the old ballpark i wouldn't have thought there'd be a feng shui component to any of
06:12this but apparently a change of venue was just what the fight doctor ordered ah that's a welterweight
06:17he's running for the hills that rooster's just not a hater i'll translate saying what'd you say
06:25about my mama oh that's okay i didn't say nothing about your mama come on man he called you mcnugget
06:30you're gonna stand around for that as more birds are brought out it becomes obvious that this non-event
06:35is being staged for our benefit only these roosters seem perfectly prepared to live together in harmony
06:41until such time as they hit the plate i'm left with a familiar sense of moral conflict i mean on the
06:47one hand is it really poor taste i'm uncomfortable i'm beyond uncomfortable i hate myself oh nice
06:54rooster and yet another part of me feels we'd like some chicken by the pool i know i would
07:03i looked into my heart and saw that the answer to my dreams was to get the hell out of here
07:09now this may seem a bit touristy chef yeah uh so the rooster scene didn't turn out so badly after
07:15all what do we have here in my defense i'd like to make a few points firstly this is not as
07:21originally planned the loser of a bloody conflict involving farm animals exotic books secondly the
07:27original plan now looks increasingly like a terrible idea from almost any perspective my karma would have
07:33been really awful if that scene had worked out i would have been complicit in some way in a terrible
07:40cruel and degrading and exploitative and ugly spectacle and finally the chefs at the taj bengal make one
07:47hell of a chicken dinner but tomorrow i search for answers is the wheel of karma much different than a good
07:56soap opera
08:17one of the enduring images of india is that of the hindu faithful performing their religious duties on the
08:22bank of the ganges river the large stone steps that cover the embankments are called gods and it is
08:28from these that ritual bathings cremations and offerings to the gods occur i've hooked up again
08:34with our guide kaushik to explore a bit we are at the loha khat this is the ganges a lot of people
08:40coming early morning for their holy gift and this is done the full length of uh ganges yeah incidentally
08:47this structure in the background is the howrah bridge to a kokata native the howrah has a kind
08:52of resonance that the brooklyn bridge would for a new yorker aside from being an engineering marvel of
08:57its time the howrah may be the busiest bridge in the world today back when there were only 330 million
09:03people in india the hindus used to say that there was only one god but with 330 million aspects
09:09represented by different gods and goddesses this approach has resulted in a lot of temples so there are
09:15individual temples who you might pray to for specific purposes yeah each worship is done for the
09:22reason of one cause or to stop one evil in life right incidentally if you're going to be reincarnated
09:30in india i highly recommend being a cow the service is excellent
09:40now wrestling may seem an odd form of worship to some but physical culture has long had a place in
09:45the religions of the east they actually keep themselves fit also physically so that's also
09:49part of worship i used to wrestle in high school actually i was on the wrestling team i was a
09:54difficult guy to wrestle because i had to reach it was a vicious choker too it was a dirty wrestler
10:03what can i say the gorilla monsoon school of wrestling didn't really focus on spiritual fundamentals
10:08how many other gods like this where people date you cannot count the numbers right but these kind
10:17of open hearts that are around 100 or 150 this is not an unusual no this is a very open place yeah
10:26anywhere there are gods temples or places of worship in india you're sure to find a flower market nearby
10:32and right underneath the howrah bridge is the biggest flower market in kolkata and this is a
10:37wholesale market which caters to requirement of special marriage ceremonies so they're making these
10:43garlands for weddings and also to put on your grind at home as an offering wow honestly until you viewers
10:52are prepared to invest in 3d holographic television with global surround sound and the smell-o-vision option
10:58there isn't much i can do to describe this place i think i'm ready for something to eat deep fried
11:03stuff with a potato sounds good fast food around here is very fast puri alubaji is just fried up
11:10flour the puri or bread with potatoes vegetables and curry these puris were only minutes old but we asked
11:17the vendor to make a few from scratch around here handmade means handmade this isn't what you'd call
11:24a hairnet and rubber glove environment but it has the flower market workforce seal of approval
11:30and a couple of thousand years of field testing and that's good enough for me and the results
11:38spicy delicious how much does this cost
11:44two rupees that's less than a penny it's a good cheap meal but we've got to run i've been promised an
11:50inside look at the exciting world of television
11:58okay it is indian television
12:02and in a foreign language
12:04and it's a soap opera
12:07tucked away in a nondescript neighborhood of kolkata is the studio
12:12director jishu dasgupta is a very busy man
12:15he's responsible for two of the top soap operas currently running on indian television
12:20known as cereals here these shows run six nights a week one of them is a comedy but
12:26teethy a teethy is what i would consider a classic soap opera endless plots and subplots many of course
12:32involving affairs kidnappings and the apparent epidemic of total amnesia that afflicts soap operas
12:37around the world while the actors and cereals can achieve mythic levels of stardom here
12:43their working conditions are surprisingly down to earth cast and crew share a communal lunch where
12:48i get a chance to talk to a major indian actress with a familiar last name mamata shankar who plays
12:54the mother on the show has made a pretty good career for herself but the shankar most americans
12:59have heard of is her uncle indian classical music master ravi shankar i figure she gets enough
13:05questions about him but not nearly enough lunatic story ideas for the show okay how about a bunch of
13:10american backpackers show up at the tiki's house and one of the backpackers is a former chef and
13:16uh embittered ex-television travel show host do you think think that would work in there that would
13:22work perfectly provided the situation is okay because now titi and the whole household is going through a
13:31very big crisis which means that i'll be on the show as soon as all the other problems get solved or
13:36when hell freezes over whichever happens first back on the set and the problems keep coming
13:42the baby's missing probably kidnapped and i'm down to my last helpful plot suggestion
13:50ladies uh detective biff james international police i'm sorry it's taken so long to get back to you
13:56i have some bad news about baby she's all grown up now been seen in the company
14:00of the olsen twins totally sorry to tell you this i'm told that different soap operas are made for
14:08nine of india's many languages but that the phrase we'll get back to you means the same in all of them
14:16there's a ball there's a bat okay it's just like baseball right i mean how hard can it be i swing the
14:21bat i hit the ball
14:44as a sports fan i'm sometimes dragged into pointless discussions on why we americans don't care about
14:49soccer simple answer we don't deal with it yet i've never in my life been asked this question
14:54about cricket i think america is the only former colony of britain that neither plays nor even
14:59remotely comprehends cricket are we missing something i don't know but kolkata is considered the spiritual
15:05home of indian cricket and today i've come to meet up with nandan bhagchi food columnist for the calcutta
15:11telegraph musician and cricket fanatic all the colonized countries play cricket it's a almost
15:18like a religion i figured we'd start with what i knew and move on from there so only one guy from
15:25the from the opposite team is of the batter is the only guy from there's two batters there's two batters
15:31okay we'll start somewhere else there point does our inning end though that it depends on the version
15:36of the game in the longer version of the game which is five days long right five days that's
15:42five days right we make as many as we can you go in you make as many as you can that completes one
15:47inning right and they have a second inning right and the whole thing is repeated and they just take
15:54the whole sum total this is to simplify things right simplifying things is a good idea in a game where
16:01you can hit a valid ground ball in any direction so you can hit the ball backwards and still get a run
16:06and the fielding players can be arranged in almost any combination around the batter our staff has
16:12prepared a simplified visual aid to show some of the positions a cricket captain can field his 11 players
16:17into the wicket keeper is like a catcher and stays in that position bowlers pitch to one batter at a time
16:24the side that a batter hits to is the on side and the opposite side is the off side that splits our
16:30center field into long on and long off positions long stop isn't the opposite of short stop it's
16:36like center field only directly behind the batter things must get very busy back there since the
16:41oddly named third man and fine leg positions have options at deep short square and straight the basic
16:47infield positions include point cover square leg mid wicket mid on and mid off with a variety of options
16:54deep forwards and backwards i swear i'm not making any of this up all the infield positions can be played
17:00short except point still infield but back behind the batter again are the slips generally two of them
17:06well sometimes four or more oh and there's a gully and another kind of gully and finally a few positions
17:11so dangerously close to the batter they're actually referred to as silly as in silly point and silly
17:16mid on and silly mid off mind you americans would probably use a different name for a position 10 feet
17:22in front of a batter hitting 100 mile per hour hardball you're supposed to catch with your bare hands
17:27so that's the basic fielding for a right-handed batter did i mention that the entire setup reverses
17:32for a lefty now that's cricket still as an american i hold these truths to be self-evident
17:38complicated things can be simplified with a big stick and if you give me that stick i will get a
17:44piece of anything you pitch to me okay it's just like baseball right i mean how hard can it be i swing
17:48the bat i hit the ball yeah but uh but let's see if i can put some wood on a ball in a gracious effort to
17:54keep me from humiliating myself nondon insists i at least look at a real cricket batter and you know
17:59it's really not baseball baseball you're used to hitting horizontally but here you try to optimize
18:06on the size and the area of your blade by meeting the ball with a vertical blade you think almost a
18:12golf swing at it yeah all right i'm ready as i head out for glory nondon begs these guys not to hurt me
18:20i said he understands baseball the other doesn't understand cricket and he's not wearing any
18:25protection so take it easy okay and it's down and i don't want to hit this right there's the wind-up
18:33and the rookie smacks that thing like a little girl hitting a whiffle ball not good
18:41equipment problem damn wickets and the worst of it is because i don't remember the rules but i
18:47finally do get a piece of it there he did a good job on that that would be a foul i forget you can hit
18:53the ball behind it's almost authentic how about like right here that wasn't bad at all
19:05big whiffer thank you to say that he would be a member of the national cricket team no no way
19:11but he could be in a lot of fun games for sure so in a backyard game i'd probably be the last one
19:18picked okay but i maintain my major league street food skills and we head off for one of the many
19:23indian ballpark food options and what's he selling we call it moody it's puffed rice little potato
19:30it's like a wheat cracker deep fried yeah this is just a kind of sauce which is made with sugar molasses
19:38fresh cilantro and that's a meal all right
19:44so that's delicious i like that see fast food can be good food it is very good food now in your column
19:52do you review fine dining restaurants as well as do you do a lot on street food you'll be surprised at
19:58the number of people who earn pots of money in big offices and corporate houses who will go down onto
20:05the street and for 20 rupees we'll have lunch which is 40 cents so this is pretty much the same kind of
20:14concoction but different garnish and there's no puffed rice involved in this right i like this better
20:22i'm more of a spicy savory guy than a sweet guy yeah same here actually it's perfect for a cricket game i
20:27mean you know we eat nachos at baseball games we finish up and nandan testifies for the local street foods
20:33all metros except maybe chennai have their version of it right we in bengal believe that calcutta has
20:40the best of course right and i notice there's a calcutta mumbai kind of rivalry going on music as well
20:47we were into the dead and allman brothers and they were into uh jim morrison wow gee i'm kind of a jim
20:56morrison guy but that was a topic we left for another time
21:05calcutta has been great but before i hit mumbai i'll need a change of pace and there's nothing
21:10less frantic than the peaceful world of the sunderbunk
21:22no reservation
21:27locata represents the frantic indian city of today but a mere 50 miles away is a world from another time
21:34and i've come here to clear my head
21:41this is the sundarbans the 10 000 square kilometer delta of the ganges and brahmaputra rivers
21:47that straddles india and bangladesh
21:51guide abra and field biologist tan moy are taking us deep into the largest mangrove forest in the world
21:57everywhere there are islands made up of the rich silt that pours into the delta and there are all
22:04kinds of fish and birds but the swift tides and frequent cyclones regularly swamp these fertile
22:11islands with salt water that destroys years of back-breaking labor the waters contain 27-foot
22:18crocodiles and a species of freshwater shark but it's the royal bengal tigers that rule this jungle
22:24they say you never see the tigers but that they're always watching you i can vouch for the first part
22:31of that statement so statistically the chances of of seeing a tiger while i'm here are like a fraction
22:39of one percent the grim fact is that while tigers elsewhere seldom attack humans all the tigers in the
22:45sundarbans are potential man-eaters food for thought as our lunch of fish and curry is being prepared
22:54welcome to the kitchen and yes i was a bit concerned i felt some relief when i saw that
22:59our chef was not actually working on the engine or emptying a crankcase still i was impressed the
23:04prawns and becky fish sauteed in extra virgin diesel oil could be so tasty what do we have here we have
23:10uh dal right this is the eggplant fry right and for the starter some kind of vegetable scallions yes this
23:18is vetki that's the fish yeah right well let's dig in guys yeah really prawns best part i like in the
23:27bengali food is that there's so much variety of food so crabs prawns shrimp ducks wild boar wild boar
23:35are restricted restricted we have to leave something for the tigers to have right well tourists
23:51the tides going out when we arrive in the island called bali this bali is a mixed paradise the location
23:59is beautiful the people are beautiful but the life is one of constant struggle and hard labor for
24:06everyone this is a low tide otherwise the water comes still here all the way up here yeah
24:14the sound of the conch shell is a traditional greeting to newcomers in this part of the world
24:21it turned out that a major festival coinciding with the end of the harvest was starting tonight
24:26with that in mind i went to see the agricultural basis of life here in the sundermans as in all of
24:33asia the foundation is the cultivation of rice i've always loved rice producing communities everything
24:40from the shifting colors of the developing rice fields to the hard-working people who farm it wet patty
24:46rice cultivation is a complex series of steps combining precise timing of irrigation levels
24:52seeding weeding and replanting of stocks with a multi-step harvesting procedure all of this is
24:58going to have to be pulled up bunch by bunch because it's going to need more room yeah more room once
25:02it's it requires long-range planning and social cooperation to achieve done correctly it provides
25:10high yields of nutritious rice screw up a single stepper procedure the whole crop fails and the entire village
25:16potentially goes hungry it is said by some that the harsh reality of wet patty rice production
25:22is the most significant factor in the social development of asia and it all runs on water lots
25:29of it you have to drill down a thousand feet for a freshwater well around here so they harvest the rain
25:36in ponds like these that are built like this so hate your job really want to trade didn't think so
25:51there's no practical way to get heavy machinery on these islands so every ditch dike road wall well or pond
25:58is dug like this there's an interesting tradition throughout much of the sundermans of equality
26:03in the face of adversity politics and religion caste and class just don't mean as much when a
26:09cataclysmic cyclone or a breach levy can ruin everyone on our way to the festival we talked about
26:15the importance of the levee system which surrounds this and any inhabited island on the sundermans so
26:20this dike is enormously important this berm of earth here is all that protects the the fresh water right
26:26the rice everything exactly from the salt water over here yes once it enters the water here right
26:33it ruins the crop for two years now the harvest is over the monsoon will come so time to start
26:42getting ready yeah all the kids see dress up in their best clothes yeah they have very few options for
26:49recreation festivals means much to them and suddenly we're in it it would seem that everyone on the
26:58island is here equal parts hindu ritual and county fair it's both ancient and magical to the outsider
27:06the central ritual involves three gods on a journey the chariots they ride in are pulled along
27:11by the villagers who acquire blessings and good luck for their efforts but the foods icons dances plays
27:19and music for such a dense cultural mix of sacred and profane local and national significance i can't
27:26keep up this is one of those nights where i really am a stranger in a strange land all of us our technology
27:37and cultural references our in jokes and cell phone ringtones don't really work here in a world of lethal
27:44predators and back-breaking labor my little scene looks like a last-minute addition to the show i'd like
27:50to think we were entertaining the festival however went on long after we were gone
27:57i'm ready to take on the biggest city in india welcome to mumbai formerly bombay it's a place where the
28:26super rich live in close proximity to the destitute poor but life here is more complex than that
28:33everyone knows about bollywood the center of the indian film industry located here but the shipping
28:38financial and information technology sectors have done a lot more to create and sustain this economy
28:44i kept waiting for speeds full of network administrators and accountants to start singing and dancing but
28:49it never happened another part of the old bombay legend was the idea of unspeakable crimes awaiting the
28:56unwary traveler who strayed from the beaten path the modern visitors should take comfort in a 2004
29:02ranking where mumbai had 177 crimes per hundred thousand people america's safest major city new york
29:10had 2800 crimes per hundred thousand that year so relax and enjoy yourself
29:18mumbai is a city rich in culture and history and i know a lot of people would devote their first trip
29:23here visiting museums viewing the architecture and sucking up local color i have my own agenda my only
29:30regret about kolkata was not getting enough great street food and i'm not going to let that happen here
29:35so tonight we're on a mission to the muslim section called bendi bazaar specifically kaugali which
29:41translates as eating street or food street so this is a wild neighborhood our guide tonight lavanya is a long
29:48time fan of kaugali and she knows where to go and what to get i'm looking across the street there and
29:54it looks like there's unidentifiable meat being grilled you must try some especially the kidney meat
30:01i like kidneys muslims eat only halal meats to be halal which means permissible animals must be
30:07slaughtered in a prescribed manner to minimize suffering and ensure purity this all looks amazing but
30:13i see the kidneys that's them right yeah if you could ask him please we want some of those please
30:22you're just putting them on the screws now they marinate them first yeah you marinate them
30:26in like dry powder chili turmeric indian spices and you put them on the coal fire and they use real
30:33coal here and so this is like a mince lamb kebab that's chicken tandoori yeah and that's what a
30:39goat meat or this is again kaliji okay this is lungs lungs oh i think we have to try the lungs still
30:54you eat all of this stuff all of it okay you know i think i'll have one of uh one of these also this
30:59place really lights up during the holy month of ramzan right after fast during ramadan you don't eat you
31:05don't drink now that is a feast it's like a marriage really it is superb this is just mince
31:11meat okay great and i like to eat with my hands the true engineer me too i'm i'm learning amazing
31:19this is the lungs what a little lime
31:28nice that's delicious that's very nice grilled kidneys and lungs if they serve this stuff at sporting
31:34events i am so moving here please thank them this was absolutely spectacular let's go to the
31:40stall where they specialize in the drinks let's do it i don't know if it's because of the prohibition on
31:46alcohol or what but muslim cooks have some serious desserts and dessert drinks to offer
31:50at the taj mahal cold drink house they call this the faluda so how long have you been here 115
31:57years 115 years in this spot i'm betting that by now you make it very well
32:01the ingredients i was told are fresh coriander seeds rose water faluda in this case arrowroot
32:08to add a texture somewhat like vermicelli homemade ice cream in one version and milk in all versions
32:15oh that's delicious see when you bite into the seeds it's jelly-like plus it's crunchy that's great i could
32:27easily become addicted to this i'm trying to get to those goat grains but my senses are being ambushed at
32:32every food stand what's this it looks good this is uh beta roti is kind of like an egg mcmuffet only good
32:42minced meat and eggs fried up in chapata bread this is a good street for food isn't it then there's
32:49some variations this is again the same kind of roll with mutton inside this has pieces of mutton
32:56minced meat and it has potato i had to save room for brains you know they all have very different flavor
33:02in fact everything i've had on this street very distinct you can eat so much here and it's just
33:08never ending it just goes on and on but i love it well next stop brains brains this is it huh okay uh
33:15i'd like some brains please these are your brains these are your brains on food street it may seem to
33:21some people that i spend an inordinate amount of time eating guts and brains and lungs things a lot of
33:26people might call gross i won't deny taking a savage pleasure in shaking people's assumptions about
33:32food but these neglected parts of the animals we eat are more than just nutritious they're really good
33:40the recipes for cooking them are ancient and require real skill and attention
33:46the point is i really like this stuff do you think if i eat enough brains i'll get any smarter
33:50as smart as a boat if you're lucky enough to travel to places like india or for that matter france
33:58get out of the hotel and try a few local specialties there's the masala right yeah they call it garam
34:03masala red chili powder you're supposed to have this with parathas actually so he's going to make you
34:11one typical indian paratha to have your brain curry with he just kind of punches the tomato out of the skin
34:19finding a new food you like is one of the best things about traveling and grossing out your
34:24friends when you get home priceless ah some hot chilies gotta have that it's a pretty involved
34:32process it takes a long time to make this dish mix in the peppers and reduce some more fry and fluff
34:38up the paratha bread yeah he's crushing the gloves softening it the chefs here put a lot of work into one
34:44order of food wow that's sensational yeah it's very very creamy yeah that's best frames i ever had
34:54no really the french cook it and i'm just not crazy about them these are really something special
35:00that's worth waiting for
35:03is everything okay it's better than okay it's fantastic
35:06more spicy spicy you're right kind of creamy and a really really good flavor like i said best brains
35:14i ever had i really enjoy this thank you for taking me around uh food street most anytime
35:26does bollywood need another movie mogul oh yeah and how do they do lunch here
35:36bollywood personally i find bollywood films to be strange fabulous and utterly alien to my experience
35:49none of my favorite films involve dancing around trees and singing but the raw energy and pure
35:54weirdness of the genre is undeniable i think it has a lot to do with the spirit of bombay now called
36:00lumbai containing both bollywood and the financial centers of india makes bombay a kind of new york
36:06la hybrid and that's given me an idea jerry a big idea we're moving ahead with this project bigger
36:12than hollywood yeah bigger than bollywood oh my god i'm talking the ultimate in global mass media
36:18synergy i got two words for you my friend ladies and gentlemen i give you holly bolly oh yeah the best
36:24and worst of hollywood and bollywood all at once featuring all singing all dancing remakes of
36:30classic american cinema starting with the very best die hard but with dancing phone calls casting
36:36calls senseless acts of rudeness hang on a second i gotta take another call i've gotten in touch with
36:41my inner movie mogul stop bitching about schneider of course he can act i gotta go i got another call and
36:46i'm auditioning schneider's love interest all right back to you sure come on in have a seat okay i
36:55don't know what your agent told you but uh we're casting for a major action film we'd like you to
37:01audition for the romantic interest for the second lead a very talented kid named rob schneider he's
37:05going to be huge uh okay this first one the love of your life he's laying there he's bleeding i don't
37:13it's a neck wound a sucking chest wound you're right by his side and you're saying hang in there
37:19bink don't die you know even though it's rob schneider you you want him to live don't die bink hang
37:25in there ah see that's good okay we got another line for you you've just discovered a bomb it's
37:31gonna blow up the building it's gonna kill everybody you're a bomb expert among other things so it's a
37:36uranium enriched high explosive and we've got four minutes to defuse it it's a high explosive bomb
37:43and you've got four minutes to defuse it that's great that's that's that's gold damn i'm good at
37:48this the only skill i've yet to master is the bombay version of doing lunch
37:57for some perverse reason people here are so resistant to american fast food that every day
38:02an army of 5 000 logistics professionals deliver home-cooked meals to 200 000 office workers throughout
38:08the city as usual in this country you can blame the british 120 years ago most british colonials
38:17hated indian food and so a system was set up to bring them a light lunch from home called a tiffin
38:21in the sealed lunch pail called a double by a man called a walla with its large mix of cultures and
38:29religions each with their own separate dietary needs bombay natives found this to be a blanket solution
38:34to a lot of people's lunch time problems the brits are gone but the tiffin wallas or double wallas
38:40have evolved the system for on-time delivery that is i kid you not the envy of the modern business world
38:50every morning your double walla picks up the lunch from your home and about 30 other homes
38:54and brings them to the railroad station
38:56and a dress code on the containers lets them sort out which dubba goes where
39:04by the way those pallets you see the double wallows running through the station with weigh about 100
39:08pounds did i mention that these guys are descended from a particularly fierce line of warriors
39:15let's just say nobody takes their lunch all morning the sorting and routing continues on special rail cars
39:21as more dubbas are picked up at each suburban station and reassembled for drop-offs at inner
39:26city stations in the business district meanwhile i'm working up quite an appetite building my transnational
39:32media empire i don't know what you smell but i smell big box office and oscar i also smell my lunch okay
39:39so uh yeah later double wallas are not employees they're shareholders with equal status and equal
39:49compensation a rare thing in indian business arrangements even more rare for any business
39:54is their cost performance ratio for less than seven us dollars a month they deliver every workday
40:00rain or shine with an error rate of one in six million that means that about every two months somebody
40:07gets the wrong lunch the double wallas do this with a semi-literate workforce no computers and an upper
40:14management structure of only 13 people take this to the bank nobody messes with my man that's pretty
40:21good let's do it again oh lunch yeah yeah you can bring that right over while it's usually dropped
40:28off at the office i've paid a substantial bribe to get my double walla to unpack my meal in front of
40:33everyone it seemed like the mogul thing to do oh what do we got today all right nice thank you you're
40:42beautiful okay go right ahead really don't pause for me so with the same uh here's the situation you're
40:49on top of a burning building the bad guy's choppers there nobody knows what to do fortunately you know
40:54how to fly a helicopter i found that multitasking is key to being a successful executive not to worry
41:01steve i learned how to fly a chopper in engineering school whose mom made this it's good and if too
41:06much work piles up and threatens your golf game just brush through everything i call it an executive time
41:12management we're closing in on a co-star for schneider local girl she's going to be great welcome
41:18come on in have a seat i think this is self-explanatory kooky crazy sidekicks action-packed all singing
41:25all dancing if the love of your life bleeding maybe he'll live and you're saying don't die bank
41:31hang in there i believe that we're on the rooftop all the bad guys are dead however he's got a gun
41:37watch out bink he's got a gun we think the movie's over watch out bink he's got a gun watch out bink
41:42he's got a gun finally anytime you find yourself faced with a difficult decision put it off and tell
41:49everybody exactly what they want to hear it's a bomb and we've got four minutes to defuse it you've got the
41:55part it's a bomb and we've got four minutes to defuse it you are my monica it's a bomb and we've got four
42:03minutes to defuse it don't change a thing you young lady you've got the part well i don't like to mess
42:10around you've got the part thank you all i ask for myself is a pile of money a couple of awards and for
42:18bollywood to say of me it's not the television was too small for tony bourdain tony bourdain just got
42:24too big for television india i can see why some people just throw up their hands in frustration
42:34the problems and issues of my own new york city pale in comparison to the cultural and economic
42:39challenges i've seen in calcutta and mumbai the rational west likes problems it can simplify
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