Sacred Games (103 page)

She was as respectful as always, as careful of my time and feelings. Me, I was nervous. I had on a new black Armani suit, and a tailored gold shirt. My shoes were polished, and my fingernails were shiningly manicured. I sat in an easy chair facing the door, not at all easy. I drank from a glass of Evian, and I was ridiculous, and I knew it. I heard her coming up the stairs. I stood up. The door flung open, she came in, flinging off her hooded coat, shaking back a tidal ripple of hair. I had a bare glimpse of fawn-coloured pants and a little top, and then she
ran
to me. In the squeeze of her embrace, in the balm of her breasts, all my doubt vanished. ‘I missed you,' she said. ‘I missed you so much.'

And this was the girl Jojo called the Egotistical Giraffe. She was kissing my neck, coming back up to my lips and then going down to my chest again. With a drawn-out sigh she went to her knees, and nuzzled at my zipper, her arms still reaching up to my shoulders. I put a hand on her forehead and tipped her face up to me. ‘No, wait.' She was worried, she looked up at me like a reprimanded child. This was our usual ritual when we first met, this frantic first sucking. I loved to see her mouth opening to
me. But today I held her chin delicately. ‘We will, we will,' I said. ‘In two minutes. But first I want to hear about what's been happening.'

Up she jumped, laughing and happy. We sat on the easy chair, her back and legs sprawled over the arms and on my lap, and she put her arms around me and told me everything. Instead of two minutes it took two hours. She told me about the problems of shooting, the artificial lake that was supposed to be Switzerland, that began to stink because the bastard light-boys kept pissing into it. Then there was the beautiful white horse that gave eight shots in complete calm, it was a long-time filmi horse. Then, in the lighting break before the ninth shot, an electrician was dragging a power cable through the grass, and this white horse panicked, and bucked, and backed itself off a cliff and dropped thirty feet. They had to shoot it. With a real revolver.

‘It's a dangerous business, this shooting,' I said.

‘And tiring. And so slow, so very long, bhai,' Zoya said. ‘I feel like I've been doing this film for ever. But it's been a lot of fun. There are such specimens on that set.'

Then she got up and imitated Dheeraj Kapur exhorting the cinematographer to go faster with his lighting, ‘Please, sir, already we are thirty-four per cent over budget, and thirty days over.' She had him exactly, his paunchy walk and his Punjabi heartiness, his delicate way of holding a cigarette with his middle finger and thumb, and even the shortness of his upper lip, which gave him the look of a mildly ferocious dog. She came alive when she was acting, my Zoya. When she was Dheeraj Kapur, there was none of that distance that usually separated Zoya Mirza from the outside world and those of us who lived in it. She was not deep behind the black shine of her eyes, unreachable. She was there, in the downy surfaces of her forearms, in the large, ambling gait of the producer. Her life sparkled and sparked, here, here, for me. I laughed and pulled her down into my lap, until she got up to do someone else. She could do a perfect Manu Tewari. She made me see his square, communistic beard, the way he fingered it when he was trying to appear impressively thoughtful. I don't know quite how, but she made me feel his labouring seriousness, his hair-dissecting scalpel of a mind, his eager belief in fairy tales about the future. I suppose that is what a great actress should do. She made you want to believe, and so you did.

When I finally took her to bed, I had no doubt. I was whole. In our talking, and the laughter that had passed between us, I found my strength again. I went into her four times that day, and she came into me. I did not
distrust her pleasure, or mine. It was all one. And my penis was heroic. I did not point out my growth to her, there was no need. Her moans as she took her satisfaction were all the proof I needed.

 

International Dhamaka
flopped. After all that publicity, after all the money pumped into MTV song clips and gigantic six-sheeter hoardings and
Dhamaka
lunch boxes in bright red plastic, nobody came to see it. On the first day itself, collections were sixty per cent in Bombay, and lower outside. The critics were cruel to the film, but we had half-expected that, and nobody in the film industry really cared what the critics had to say, if the people came. If the public paid for tickets. But, by the middle of the second week, ticket sales were lower than forty per cent nationwide. The foreign markets, where we had expected the film to be a full-speed hit, treated us only slightly better. The maderchod NRIs didn't come either. I was on the phone to Dheeraj Kapoor day and night, we put up new hoardings in the metros, we increased the frequency of the TV spots, with added titles that invited the public to see ‘Superhit
International Dhamaka
'. We told them to be part of the magic. We tempted them to see the world.

But the gaandus wouldn't come. We cut seven scenes, edited down fourteen others and shot a new song, with not one or two but three top models wearing hardly more than fluorescent bikinis and some gauze. We had this item song in the cinemas in Bombay and Delhi in a record thirteen days, but still the bastard public wouldn't come. By the end of the third week, the trade papers fearlessly and unanimously listed
International Dhamaka
as a flop. I couldn't deny this. It was a flop.

Until now Dheeraj Kapoor had counselled patience, faith, stamina. He had told me stories of how G.P. Sippy had kept
Sholay
in the cinemas for a month, while the industry mocked him, while he lost money. Finally, word of mouth about Gabbar Singh had made the difference, and the audience had packed into the cinemas, and kept
Sholay
showing for five continuous and enormously profitable years. But now, even Dheeraj Kapoor admitted that
International Dhamaka
was a flop. It was his film as much as mine, but in that fourth week he let it go. ‘No more, bhai,' he said to me on the phone late one night. ‘You've spent too much already. We have to accept. We have to adjust.'

So I let it pass out of the cinemas. I had to confront the truth:
International Dhamaka
was a flop. I couldn't put a pistol to the audience's head and make them sit in the cinemas, so
International
Dhamaka
was a flop. But it was a good film. I had seen it so often that I think I could hardly see what was on the screen any more, I was so sunk in the details of framing and sound and pacing. Now I watched it again. Yes, it was a good film. You couldn't doubt that. It had action, love, patriotism and unforgettable songs. It was beautiful and perfect. So why had it been rejected? Why was the public flocking in to see
Tera Mera Pyaar
, which was a nonsensical, badly shot little piece of romantic boy-loses-girl-and-cries-and-cries rubbish, made with three crores and unknown actors? ‘We can't know,' Dheeraj Kapoor said. ‘You can't ever know, bhai. The audience is a bastard. Every chutiya in the industry will now give you thirty-six reasons our film didn't work, but during the preview shows they all loved it. All the analyses after a film is released are useless. You can't tell the future. And you can't really tell the past. We can't know.'

I wanted to know, I had to know. I asked Guru-ji. He was in South Africa at the time, giving a series of lectures, but he made time to call me. He knew I was in trouble, he knew how sad and helpless I was. He understood that I had never been this helpless, so he took care of me. He was more than a father, he was motherly. I knew he had been unable to see into the future of this film, but I asked him to look into its past. ‘It had everything, Guru-ji,' I said to him. ‘It had every element that a viewer looks for. So why didn't it work?'

‘You want a reason?'

‘Yes, I want a reason, Guru-ji.'

‘That is the trouble, that you want one reason.'

‘But, Guru-ji, you are the one who keeps telling me that the world is not chaos. You gave a lecture yesterday to seven thousand people about the cycles of time, and how we are moving steadily towards a new age.'

‘I said that?'

He had that roomy grin on, I could tell, that flash in his eye that just ate up your confusion. ‘Yes, you said that. I read your lecture on the website. You said that what we do has a purpose.'

‘I did say that, beta. The fault is in your question. When you ask for a reason.'

I stopped, I thought. I still couldn't grasp what he was moving me towards. ‘I don't understand, Guru-ji. Please tell me.'

‘You ask for a reason, for one reason. But there are hundreds of reasons, thousands of them. There is not only one immediate cause. There are many. All these reasons meet each other and cross each other, and
flow forward in the service of the grand purpose. And you stand at the place of the crossing of these thousands of reasons, and ask for one.'

‘So maybe the reason was not in the film at all.'

‘Yes. Maybe the time needed something else. Maybe the flow was moving in a certain direction when your film released.'

‘Was it? Was it?' My mind was too small to see this intermingling of velocities, to encompass all of it without rupturing like a bulging paper bag. But he was Guru-ji, and I needed this from him. He could see all of it, and I wanted him to give me some faith in this flow I was being tossed by. ‘Please, Guru-ji. Tell me.'

‘Yes, Ganesh,' he said. ‘There were many reasons which had nothing to do with the film itself. You told the truth, but right now the public is comforting itself with young love. They will wake up to your truth, but not now. And, Ganesh, why do you worry only about reasons? There are many purposes. Attracting an audience into the cinemas and making money exist as purposes only in the immediate sense. Your film will find its dharma in the long future, in the net of consequences that grow from its release. You have succeeded, you just don't know it yet.'

I could see the web of action and purpose and effect that he was talking about, or at least a pale ghost of it. He was Guru-ji, he could see this vast story that was so much larger than my story, he had gone beyond the limitations that I had, that Manu Tewari wrote within. We believed that a hero saw his goal in the first act, and his enemies, and so his quest went in a lovely arcing line towards the climax, and towards his victory. We believed that because this hero was fearless and strong, he would gain his prize in the eighteenth reel. But I saw now that we were not to know our causes, or our effects. Only the enlightened ones knew what that story was. Only Guru-ji could shatter the prison of time, and look directly into the blazing confusion of creation. ‘Guru-ji, it is good of you to tell me that,' I said. ‘I thought I had been defeated.'

‘You are not defeated,' he said. ‘Have faith, and do your work.'

I tried. I kept up with my meditation, and my exercises, and I buried myself in work, of which there was plenty. I ran three operations for Kulkarni, and of course found ways to sweep up a few of my own personal enemies in the minor bloodletting these entailed. That was pleasing. But I was distracted. I had discipline enough to keep to my routine, but I found no joy in it. Zoya, on the other hand, called me every other day with exuberant tales of her acting triumphs on various sets. She had signed six films with top banners, three of them after
International
Dhamaka
had been released and declared a flop. Of all of us, she was the only one who emerged from this disaster unscathed. In fact, she was stronger, she was more beautiful than ever, and she was on television every half-hour. The industry and the public had somehow decided that she wasn't responsible for the soggy
Dhamaka
of our film, and so she thrived. Meanwhile, my half-inch gain had withered down to a quarter, and even that slight advantage depended on how I held the ruler against my lauda. Sometimes, very late at night, I caught myself thinking that I had somehow deceived myself earlier into believing that I had grown, that Dr Reinnes had helped me with his science. And then the white chasm of despair beckoned temptingly. But no, I persevered. I remembered Guru-ji and I went on. And yet, I was despondent. Sometimes I woke up early in the morning and opened a certain black file and went through our reviews. The Hindi and Gujarati papers had been the most enthusiastic about
International Dhamaka
, and the Punjabi magazines only slightly less so. The
Dainik Samachar
had loved the music, and said that ‘Zoya's debut is the most promising in years'. But without a single exception, the English newspapers and magazines had been unkind to us.
Times of India
,
Indian Express
,
Outlook
, bastards all. I had kept the bad reviews as well, and was sometimes compelled to read them, even the snobbish English ones. ‘
International Dhamaka
is too loud, too long and too witless to make much of a dhamaka,' said the critic for
India Today
. Kutiya, randi. ‘All the international stunts and empty patriotism add up to boredom.' That was
Outlook
. Bastards.

There was one who worried me like a burrowing insect under my skin, like a speck of coal in my blood-ridden eye. His name was Ranjan Chatterjee, and he wrote for
The National Observer
, had written weekly film reviews for thirty-two years. He was always described in the magazines as ‘veteran movie critic Ranjan Chatterjee', and he poured out his accumulated frustration and rage on us. ‘One falters in the face of such arrogant carelessness,' he wrote. ‘One quails.' I had to get Manu Tewari to explain who this ‘one' was, and why Ranjan Chatterjee was writing about this disembodied number. ‘Forget that maderchod, bhai,' Manu Tewari told me. ‘He's a bitter old budhau, nobody reads him any more.'

I did, though. I read him through to the end, and then read him again, months later. And then again. ‘
International Dhamaka
strains one's credulity even more than the usual Bollywood film,' he wrote. ‘It is a string of tired film clichés strung together. These bhais live in unreal gilded luxury and fly around the world as if they are catching the morn
ing train to Nashik. They are more slick than James Bond, and more suave than Casanova. One has long since given up hope that the commercial cinema would be concerned with realism. But the superficially glossy
International Dhamaka
makes one wonder if the filmmakers have ever met a real gangster.'