Posted 10:56 AM by Angie Schultz

Greetings from Exotic India!

[Note: I'm not really in India.]

So all the cool kids are talking about this YouTube item, in which an Indian music video is subtitled with English lyrics that sorta kinda sound like what the singer is singing, though she's not singing in English. (WARNING: The video is innocuous, but the subtitles are risque and not safe for work, small children, grannies, or dogs under 15 lbs.)

It's the kind of thing that's amusing for maybe ten or fifteen seconds, but then it gets boring, especially as the song is kind of repetitive.[1]

So anyway, in the beginning of the video they're writhing around on top of this beautiful skyscraper:



"Wow!" I think, "exotic India!" I want to go to India someday so I can see that beautiful building. Note (in some scenes) the thick sky, gray despite the sunny day. This is due to India's notorious jungle conditions. I'm also thinking that it would be impossible to film this in the United States, or any other country with a brisk lawsuit business. They're dancing on the very edge of the building!

So a little later on they're splashing around in a fountain:



and I think, "Wait a damn minute. That's here." Specifically, it's the Wortham Fountains in Tranquility Park. Those are clearly the same buildings in the background.

And the big wall o' water:



is the, um, Water Wall. I've never been there (or even heard of it) so I didn't recognize it. Here's a site with photos of Houston landmarks, including several nice ones of the Water Wall. Now I am keen to go.

Oh, and the beautiful Indian skyscraper? The Niels Esperson Building.

Well, Molly Ivins always did say that Houston was like Calcutta (specifically, that they had similar climates).


[1]Somewhat more diverting is speculating what the video's about, as it shows the efforts of a beautiful woman to get some pudgy stiff to notice her. She dances, she writhes, she strokes his face, she slaps him with her long, silken tresses -- all to no avail. I see it as a sort of intervention: his mother fears he's, you know, funny, and has hired the hot-eyed singer and her dozen dancing darlings to tempt him. Occasionally it looks like it just...might...work, but he's only trying to figure out a way to get that gold necklace off her. Finally he says to hell with it and stalks off, unmoved.