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I was barely scraping by in Bombay. During the day I was conducting anthropological fieldwork on an exceedingly modest grant, at night I was wondering why. On one such evening I found myself sitting in a bar drinking a bottle of Kingfisher beer I couldn't afford, when she got up from her table and sat down at mine.

"Excuse me," she said, "have you ever thought of acting in movies?"

She was Gujarati with a strong Cockney accent, acquired during a childhood of emigré life in London. And just to dispel any confusion about whether this piece is a misdirected letter to Penthouse, I'll state at the outset that she did NOT invite me back to her apartment to watch her and her girlfriend model slinky lingerie.

"I'm the casting scout for a film set during the Raj," she said, "and there's a segment for which we still need a male lead. Are you interested?"

I was interested, or at least bored enough with my other options to accompany her back to her hotel to meet the director. There they described the film and plied me with Scotch. Real Scottish Scotch, mind you -- not the Indian-made rotgut masquerading as whiskey that's sold under such labels as "Two Dogs," "Mughal Monarch" and, curiously, "Doctor's Choice." This was the good stuff, and each glass, according to the minibar price list, cost as much as my rent for three days.

"What we are needing," the director said, "is somebody to play a dashing British officer, in love with a beautiful Indian woman." He gave me a once-over. "We're looking for someone sort of, as one might say, in the manner of Indiana Jones."

Well, I hadn't shaved in several days. But what he really meant what that they were looking for somebody, as one might say, in the manner of white.

So, of course, I agreed. The pay -- $50 for one day's shooting -- was several times my daily expenses. And it would keep me, at least for a while, from having to think about anthropology.

There was another reason for my acquiescence, of course. Conducting fieldwork in a community of sober, straight-laced Shiite Muslims, I rarely found myself frolicking with Bollywood beauties. The mullahs would have frowned at my new day job, but I doubted they would ever make it to a theater to find out.

I showed up the next morning at a location an hour from town. We were technically in Andheri, a middle-class suburb of Bombay, but the strip of oceanfront was an authentic fishing village of migrants from south India. It looked like a Keralan seashore at low tide, and smelled that way too. The script was simple: some romantic shots on the beach and a happy couple reveling in young love, with voice-overs and screechy music to be dubbed in afterwards. But when my costar emerged from her chauffeured car and came to meet me, I knew my $50 wasn't coming easy.

Orson Welles famously said that every screen romance continues off the screen. Well, I am living proof that the big man was wrong. My costar (I'll call her "Sonali") gave every appearance of wishing that she were anywhere but here with me. I tried to strike up a conversation before the shooting and was rebuked with icy monosyllables. I tried to gaze passionately into her eyes and found her focusing on a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. We had a long day ahead of us.

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