Thumbs Up for Thums Up

When I travel, I love to try local snacks and beverages, not only from my deeply-rooted love for junk food, but also because I feel like you get a good sense of a place by eating and drinking what regular people have when they're not trying to impress anyone.

My cousin's husband introduced us to kvas, an eastern European drink traditionally made from fermented rye bread. It was like a combination of beer and hard cider: a little sweet and fizzy, but with a yeasty taste. Definitely unlike anything I've ever had before, but in a good way. It's on my list of things to buy from a street vendor if I'm ever lucky enough to visit Ukraine.

Of course, I also love regional variations of store brand soft drinks in the U.S. While visiting friends in Atlanta, we made a point of visiting the local QT (QuikTrip) gas station/convenience store, which has the largest selection of fountain beverages I have ever seen. I recommend the Rooster Booster energy drink.

In Italy, it was the tiny black cans of Oran Soda from the vending machine at American University of Rome. It was a cross between regular orange soda and pulpy orange juice, made by the Campari company. On Mondays, I had six straight hours of class (Masterpieces of Italian Opera to Roman History to an accelerated Italian language course) and I usually managed to scrounge 40 Euro cents so I could slurp down a can of it, usually with a baggie of cookies or a granola bar, to get me through the rest of the day.

While in London, I marveled at the different flavors of Pringles chips at the grocery store, which included Curry and Paprika. Yorkie bars were also fun, if a bit misogynistic ("It's Not for Girls!).

Yes. Not for handbags. But delicious!

 And everywhere in Europe, I bought Kinder eggs. They're just thin hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in foil, and the chocolate isn't anything special. But inside the chocolate egg is a plastic egg holding a toy surprise--things like puzzles, character figures, or vehicles. Once, I even got a green Dumpster like the one in front of our Rome apartment, complete with moving arms controlled by a rubber band. I bought a Kinder egg nearly every time I went to the grocery store in Rome, and I still have the toys. I saw a gigantic Kinder display in the Amsterdam airport, and I promised myself I would buy a few on the way home.

India gave us a few opportunities to try local snacks, since there were street vendors and small stores everywhere, and our hotel room included a "mini bar." This meant that every night when we came back to the room, we could pop the top off a slightly chilled bottle of either Sprite or an Indian cola called Thums Up. I had seen the billboards and bus signs for Thums Up: the slogan was "Taste the Thunder!" and the ads exclusively featured men. A visit to the company website (it's a Coca-Cola product) shows that this is intentional, as the company claims "Thums Up is known for its strong, fizzy taste and its confident, mature and uniquely masculine attitude. This brand clearly seeks to separate the men from the boys."

It's burning his esophagus with its awesomeness!

I don't care that I'm not the target demographic for Thums Up. I was eager to try it. On a first sip, it tastes like a normal cola: sweet, syrupy, fizzy. It's not quite the same flavor as Coke or Pepsi, but it's close. The aftertaste is where I concede that there is definitely something masculine about Thums Up, because it tastes like chemicals. Specifically, it tastes a little like licking aluminum siding (that must be the "thunder" the ads mentioned). It made me think of the smell of ozone, and testing batteries on my tongue, things that were routinely part of my childhood because my older brother liked to take mechanical things apart and build new contraptions out of them, often harassing me along the way. Thums Up seems like the kind of thing Tim would drink. It wasn't exactly a Tesla coil in the mouth, but I can see where they were going with it.

And you know what? I grew to like it. I actually looked forward to getting back to the room at night, because the housekeeping staff would have restocked the mini bar. There's just something about cracking open a cool glass bottle of lightning-flavored soda after a long day of shooting video and taking photos.

Production: Day 2

Our first day in Hyderabad was guaranteed to be a long one, because we had to do 95% of our remaining India preproduction by the time we went to sleep that night.

Since the Green Park is a hotel meant primarily for businessmen, a breakfast buffet was included. I know a buffet isn't the best way to taste local cuisine, but I saw it as a great compromise between blindly ordering from a menu (not knowing what to expect when the server brought the food) and chickening out with Western food. Plus, buffets allow for sampling, which greatly decreases the risk and embarrassment of Unpleasant First Bite Face (and since we were eating with Rob, I was a little more aware of this). I scooped small, neat piles of rice and vegetable dishes, like upma and bisi bele bath onto my plate, along with corn and mutton idly.

A van was sent to pick us up at the hotel and take the three of us to the Andhra Pradesh Productivity Council's Hyderabad headquarters, which also house the CMU Information Centre and some computer companies. We had to take all of our equipment with us, but by this time we were reasonably comfortable lugging everything around. Of course, as soon as we approached the van, the driver wordlessly took everything out of our hands to load it into the back. He didn't make eye contact, and didn't even look up when I thanked him. It's unnerving to be served like that, and I don't think I can fully explain how every new instance of it made me so uncomfortable.

Each time we sat down in a vehicle, we had a new experience of what it was like to get around India. The drivers that had been arranged for us seemed to fit into a hierarchy based on the level of terror induced by the ride. Our driver this morning was the same we had the previous night on the trip from the airport, so the ride was relatively smooth and stops were gentle. At the time, of course, it felt like he was weaving crazily and stopping just short of ramming us into idling cars. The traffic in Hyderabad was jam-packed, and we saw how motorcycles and scooters were preferable to larger vehicles. On some roads, they made up 2/3 of the traffic, and even when the lights were red, motorcycles jockeyed for a slightly closer position. They were like buzzing insects, constantly moving. Some intersections had traffic police stationed in kiosks to monitor violations, but we had to wonder how they would be able to catch someone in that kind of traffic (as it turns out, cameras and e-tickets). Pursuit would be nearly impossible.

Upon arriving at the APPC building, we were greeted and given bouquets of roses again. Then we were given a tour of the place, which served as our first round of location scouting so we could get all of the shots we needed (especially the India shots that were supposed to look like somewhere other than the CMUIC). The building was five or six stories tall (the top two floors were unfinished) with one or two companies on each floor. The main floor, where the APPC is located, has one large office with a few smaller offices and alcoves with desks in them for some of the staff. The rest of the employees worked at rows of desks with computers on them. We were introduced to every single person working there--about 25-30 in all.

Have you ever been introduced to thirty people, one at a time? It's an odd experience. There was little hope that we'd remember even a fraction of the names we were told, but it was helpful for them to see us so they wouldn't wonder what we were doing in their building for the rest of the week. They were gracious and welcoming, even though Aaron and I were just two white people with some camera equipment, suddenly standing in an office building in India.

Next we sat down with two of the APPC's administrators to talk about the Council's mission and goals, which was one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had because we learned so much about India in general and the state of Andhra Pradesh in particular. Much of what the APPC does is linked to economic and entrepreneurial development, but there's a huge focus on the development of human resources, especially in terms of education. Call me a nerd, but I can listen to people discuss education all day long, especially over cookies and Fanta orange.

In our discussions of Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad, we were told that the region has excellent (and very spicy) food. We had lunch at a restaurant called Southern Spice, and the name alone had me panicking a little. Here we go, I thought. A spicy meal in India is going to make me cry, and that's going to be really embarrassing. Even though the menus are printed in English, our companions spoke English, and the waitstaff seemed to have a good command of English, ordering was tricky because most items were labeled with a name and a very simple explanation that didn't reveal much about what was actually in the food. Spice was never mentioned. Ingredients remained a mystery.

For the picky and non-adventurous, it was a gamble. Rob asked about some fish on the menu. "What's the sauce like?" he asked. "Is it spicy?"

"Not too spicy," our waiter said. Unfortunately, that was his default answer. Rob asked them to make the fish without any sauce on it. The waiter nodded.

Aaron and I were a little more conflicted in our ordering, as Aaron is both slightly picky and not-too-adventurous. He was also still quite concerned about getting sick. I had stupidly adopted a "NOTHING CAN HURT ME!" attitude, but that didn't help me understand what any of the menu items were. We asked the waiters a lot of questions. We struggled with the unclear answers. In the end, we settled on Chinese food, which seems to be quite popular in India.

When our food came, Rob let us try his fish, which was in a mildly spicy sauce. We shared our chicken, which was in a red, burn-your-lips-off spicy sauce that made Rob cry a little. I thought he must be exaggerating, but the initial bite coated my tongue in a blanket of hot. Unlike other spicy food I've suffered through, however, this wasn't about pain--it was just heat, and it faded rather quickly. In fact, the sauce would have been delicious, had it not also been chock-full of cilantro leaves. Oh, the soap-tasting humanity. I filled up on vegetarian soup and chicken fried rice instead.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the CMUIC for preproduction. We rearranged the furniture and displayed the CMU paraphernalia Rob had brought with him, including some banners, pennants, and a new clock. A light kit had been rented for us, so we blocked out our shots and figured out how to make the best use of the room's two windows, the fluorescent fixtures and the diffused incandescents in the kit lights. Since Rob had to meet with some students regarding CMU's graduate programs, we were shuffled over to Dr. Reddi's office to finalize our shot list and make a list of the props we'd need to buy that night so we could shoot the next day.

And then Aaron had an unfortunate post-meal incident I cannot discuss. I will only say that we were prepared.

As the afternoon wore on into the evening, Rob and Vinay (the CMUIC advisor) were ready to take us shopping for props. Our task was to transform the slightly bland and mildly industrial CMUIC into a prospective student's living room, where she would discuss her education options with her parents. We had a couch, two chairs, and a glass coffee table to work with, so we set out to the mall with a list that included curtains, a rug, a vase, a lamp, and some throw pillows.

The mall was like a very large department store, spanning several floors of the building and divided into merchandise categories. We had to go through security scanners to enter the building (with, once again, a separate curtained-off area for women). In a country that constantly challenges the senses, the mall was another form of sensory overload: the displays were bright and crammed with merchandise; the music was loud, pulsating; salespeople wove their way into the crowds; and the colors were exaggeratedly bright. It was like the vision of consumerism I'd first noticed growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s had been reanimated, but with a foreign flavor. There was so much there, screaming to be purchased, and crowds of people with that adrenaline-infused, slightly glassy stare of want glinting in their eyes.

We were here on business, though, so I couldn't let myself get distracted by every fascinating detail. I couldn't buy anything for myself (or for others--I so badly wanted to find the perfect turquoise sari for Allison Joseph). And even though we had a list, a set of directives guiding us through the towering displays and labyrinthine halls of stuff, it took us forever to find the right items. We had to try to make an office look like a home, but we also had to think about the way these props would photograph. We had to think about matching color and pattern but also textures, reflectivity, saturation, the scale of the pattern in relation to other elements. It's definitely not how we normally think about furnishings.

Somewhere between one store and the next, I had developed a strange rash on my arm. It was a little red, a little bumpy, and a little itchy--and unlike any contact dermatitis I had ever had. It was only on one arm, so I went to the restroom to wash it and (maybe) prevent it from spreading. All I needed was to wake up in the morning with my left arm red, swollen to twice its normal size, and completely unusable. We finished up at the mall and had the driver take us to a pharmacy, since I had somehow neglected to pack any kind of Benadryl in my gigantic toiletry/first-aid kit.

The pharmacy was marked with a green plus sign, like the ones I had grown accustomed to (but had never visited) in Rome. It was tiny, with most merchandise behind the counter and two pharmacy clerks there to help. I was very grateful to have Vinay with us, since the pharmacist spoke Telugu and I didn't recognize the brands on the shelves. I held up my arm to show the pharmacist, and he gave me a tube of something called Fourderm. It was a white cream and smelled vaguely medicinal (I still can't figure out what it reminds me of), but it didn't contain hydrocortisone. I paid my rupees and fervently hoped I wouldn't have a bad reaction to the cream, since my skin does not act like other people's skin. In fact, my skin sometimes decides to react to things that were once safe, like laundry detergent and certain fabrics. I can only imagine what my immune system was going through.

By this time, it had been dark for hours and I was ready to be in a quiet place, alone. But first we had to go back to the CMUIC to set up the props for the living room scene, and we managed to do that in about 20 minutes. I think we were all ready to go back to the hotel, to come up for air. None of us had even eaten dinner, because we had all been so busy working on the video project (and Rob and Vinay had meetings with students).

At least the work was getting done.