I was staying at the landmark Oberoi, on the waterfront of Marine Drive in Mumbai's southern sector. Head still reeling the next morning, I set off on a city tour.

Jet Airways is marking the centenary with an extra-special host of Bollywood offerings among its inflight entertainment options – and I arrived in Mumbai bug-eyed.

I'd enjoyed something of a Bollywood fest on the nine-hour flight from Heathrow. Quite some world apart from the riotously glitzy, singing-and-dancing blockbusters of today – such as Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (This Youth is Crazy) which is nearly three hours long, includes nine swirling song scenes and is currently the highest-grossing Bollywood production of 2013. That first film was silent, 40 minutes long, and had just a few women's parts, all played by men. In May 1913 Raja Harishchandra, a flickering black-and-white film about a mythical Hindu king, opened at the Coronation Theatre in Mumbai (then Bombay) – and Bollywood was effectively born. This year India's largest city has been celebrating 100 years of movie making. Fortunately our recording was a play session: we were on a guided tour around Mumbai and were taking a behind-the-scenes look at the city's multi-billion dollar film industry. I began to appreciate how exacting the art of dubbing and synching is. A damaru, I realised, is a two-headed drum, ubiquitous in the subcontinent. A few minutes later I watched as it was matched to action already filmed. I delivered my one line with, as I perceived it, panache. Five of us were in a Mumbai sound studio recording the dialogue of an ad for an Indian internet site. 'It's a damaru.' That was my line and I was sticking to it – never mind that I didn't know what a damaru was.

Dialogues from hum ne li hai shapath