It had been my dream to visit a Bollywood film set ever since I first watched a Hindi film sometime in 2009. This dream finally came true when I worked a day as an extra on the sets of the film Raabta, during its shooting in Hungary in 2017. It was an utterly fascinating experience for me, and even though I am only visible for a fleeting moment in the film, I am sharing screen space with Deepika Padukone. (Deepika Padukone’s back, to be precise, but still!) A rare achievement amongst film scholars, I am sure, but far from a unique experience for many foreigners. Raabta was a bustling set with many cinema workers arriving from India to shoot in Hungary, but a significant number of locals, technicians and extras were also present.
It is safe to say that, apart from me, an avid fan and student of Bollywood cinema, not many people on the set understood the magnitude of Padukone’s stardom. The fact that Hungary and Europe as a whole are not prime markets for Bollywood films, except for diasporas in the UK and Germany, explains the relative ignorance of the local film crew and the extras. They viewed the shoot as an exotic spectacle, but most couldn’t quite remember the title of the film or know exactly what Bollywood was.