Fastraxx Invades India

We were both curious and apprehensive as we journeyed to India to attend the screening of our film “Fastpitch Fever” at the Sports Movie & TV India FICTS Festival. FICTS stands for Federation International Cinema Television Sportifs, an association with 100 member countries and recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Its mission is to promote sport movies and videos that contribute to artistic and cultural development worldwide.

Popular American sports such as baseball, softball and football are virtually unknown in India. (This meant that, unfortunately, it was impossible for us to follow the progress of our beloved Chicago Bears on their road to the Superbowl). As ambassadors for the game of softball, we tried to communicate in terms of cricket, its closest Indian counterpart. This sport enjoys enormous popularity in India, tracing its roots back to previous British rule. During our stay we saw countless billboards advertising an important upcoming match with the West Indies.

Similar to softball and baseball, cricket is played by pitching a ball at a batter on a grass field. Players stationed around the field attempt to bring to an end the batting team’s innings, and the team that scores the most runs wins the game. That is where the similarities end, however; game play and the rules are very different, and we found the matches difficult to follow (I’m sure the Indians found softball equally bewildering).

The Sports Movie & TV India FICTS Festival was held in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. With its 17 million inhabitants, Mumbai is the fourth largest city in the world, and it shows! The traffic is something that has to be experienced first-hand to be believed. We had been advised not to try driving ourselves, and that was good advice. Fortunately hiring a professional driver, even for an entire day, is relatively cheap by Western standards. The roads are absolutely jam-packed with taxis and small three-wheeled motorized “rickshaws.” The rickshaws look like tall go-carts with canvas tops, not the two-wheeled human-powered vehicles pulled by runners or bicycles that most Americans think of.

Between the vehicles are hordes of pedestrians, vendors pushing fruit and vegetable carts, bicycles, horses, donkeys and oxen, all seemingly headed in random directions and oblivious to the danger. Cows also park themselves in the median strips or by the side of the road, or wander here and there singly and in small groups (cows are sacred in India, and have free run of the place). Lane markings and traffic lights are treated like suggestions, not rules of the road. Cars dart about, missing each other by a fraction of an inch at the last possible moment. The right-of-way goes to the horn that can honk the loudest in this giant game of “chicken.”

Before the film festival we did some sight-seeing. We followed the advice of our Indian friends and undertook the long and arduous journey from Mumbai to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. The journey from New Delhi to Agra was especially difficult, taking six hours to traverse 120 miles. We experienced a flat tire in the middle of the trip, and our driver (who spoke very little English) seemed confused by the workings of the jack and abandoned us in the dead of night. It turns out that the jack was too short for the vehicle, and he had gone to seek help. Miraculously he found two strangers with another jack, and although this was also too short, they used both of them (together with the rock and brick I had found) to raise the car just enough to change the tire. Although they had risked their lives crawling underneath the car to position one of the jacks on the leaf spring, both refused to accept money for their help (although they eventually gave in).

Despite this and other set-backs, the trip was well worth it--seeing the Taj Mahal in person was a life-altering event. Photographs cannot do justice to this magnificent gleaming, semi-translucent white marble edifice, aesthetically proportioned and perfectly symmetrical, rising out of the early morning mist. Your first sight of this national treasure peaking through a surrounding arched red sandstone gateway takes your breath away. Often described as one of the seven wonders of the modern world, the Taj was constructed in the 17th century by Mughal Emperor Shāh Jahān as a mausoleum for his beloved queen, Mumtaz Mahal (“exalted of the palace”). He began construction a year after her death in 1631 and it took twenty-two years to complete. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials during the construction. It is generally considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements of Persian, Indian and Islamic architecture.

We then headed back to Mumbai for the film festival, which was held in the Bollywood section of the city. Bollywood is the undisputed movie capital of India. Unknown to most Westerners, Bollywood turns out more movies each year than Hollywood. The spoken dialogue is Hindi, a direct descendent of Sanskrit, that more than 180 million Indians regard as their mother tongue. Fortunately for Americans, many include English subtitles.

Indians love their movies and movie stars! The talk of the town for the entire week was the engagement of Aishwarya Rai, the reigning queen of Indian cinema and the most beautiful woman in the world according to thousands of web sites and internet polls, to Abhishek Bachchan, her co-star in the movie “Guru.” These two stars are treated like royalty and, just like Americans who idolize Hollywood stars, Indians cannot get enough news about the couple.


The sports movies we saw at the festival were top rate. Our favorite was a Finnish short film entitled “Krooli” (“The Crawl”), the story of a young highly focused woman who works in a theme park by day, and competes against the world’s fastest woman swimmer in her dreams. The film is a poetic work of art with magnificent cinematography and music that imparts an ethereal quality to the relationship between a swimmer and water. It is a testament to how beautiful, powerful and emotional sports movies can be when projected onto “the big screen.” The film won first prize in the Short Documentary category.