Show Business (28 page)

And what did you give me in exchange? Torment, neglect, humiliation. No, I'm not just being melodramatic, Mr. Ashok Banjara. Really, the things you made me put up with for you! I mean, how could you do to me what you did over
Dil Ek Qila? A
perfect script, tailor-made for me, a great Mehnaz Elahi part, and because I'm silly enough to be besotted with you, I ask them to cast you opposite me. Of course they were thrilled by the idea, everybody knew what was really going on between us, even if you pretended they didn't. Dream casting, they said, slobbering over the gossip columns. Dream casting.

So you get the script, and what do you do to it? You let that wife of yours take it over, change the story, destroy my part, control the film and drive it to ruin! Did you even try to protest, Ashokji? A perfectly good plot destroyed, all the thrill and suspense taken out, dollops of sacchariney sentimentality added that was bound to turn away the crowds. And I tried to tell you — but would you listen? No huzoor! Heaven forbid! I tell you, if it weren't for you and my contract, and not even in that order, I would have walked off that film on the first day. I could see what she was up to, the minx! But you, you were so blinded by your guilt, or whatever it was, you couldn't see anything but her tight little behind. Well, if she was such a loyal and noble little soul, Ashokji, what was Pranay doing in that film, once all the villainy had been cut out of the story? What was the need for him to be there at all? You tell me that, Mr. Devoted Husband. Go on. Tell me. Just try.

Not even that worked, hanh? Poor thing, you must be really bad. The doctor says he can't understand it. Did I tell you I telephoned the doctor? He was absolutely thrilled to be speaking with me, I tell you. “Miss Mehnaz Yelahi, yis it yactually?” He was practically gurgling with pleasure. But when I asked him what was the problem he sounded really troubled. “There yis no yapparent medical reason why He cannot talk,” the doctor said in that all-knowing Tamil way. They're all very concerned about you, Ashokji. Not just me. But look, isn't being India's Number One Superstar enough for you? Must you try to be India's Number One Medical Mystery as well?

I'm sorry if I'm sounding so flippant. It's not easy for me, really. When I first heard about the accident I thought I would kill myself. “Why Him, O Lord?” I asked the heavens. “Why not me?” I've been simply frantic with worry ever since, Ashokji, really I have. But my Guru tells me to be calm. He says there is no use worrying about what has happened and what might happen, because it is already willed. “Why shed tears about the workings of destiny?” he asked. “Does the river weep because it must flow to the sea?” I was really impressed by that. But I don't find it all that easy to be calm about destiny when there is a chance it might take you away from me. Even more completely than you've taken yourself away.

Stupid of me to say that, I'm sorry. You'll be all right, everyone says so. The whole country is praying for you, Ashokji. Really. There are open-air prayers in mosques and temples and
gurudwaras
and churches and fire temples and
jamaatkhanas
and wherever else it is that people get together to ask their Maker for favors. I even hear the Prime Minister is planning to break an official journey tomorrow to visit you in the hospital. I know your father is a politician and all, and you were even in Parliament for a while, but the Prime Minister just doesn't do that for everyone, you know. You're special. Not just to me — you're special to the whole country, to India. You'll be all right. Everyone wants you to be well.

Even my Guru. You must meet Guruji one day. I think you'll really like him, Ashokji. He's got this marvelous smile: suddenly his lips part wide, revealing two rows of brilliant white teeth lighting up a gap in his brilliant white beard. And his eyes, Ashokji — you ought to appreciate them. Where yours are so clear and transparent, his pupils are black and deep, so deep they contain the wisdom of the world and you feel you could drown in them. He speaks in a quiet voice, not a particularly remarkable one, but what he says, Ashokji, what he says! I'll try to bring him here sometime. Actually people go to him, you know, he doesn't come anywhere, but perhaps for you, in your condition — I'm sorry, I'm making you sound as if you were pregnant or something, isn't it? No, I think he'll come. If I can get Mr. Horatio Bannerji to let us in.

Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing with a Guru? Me, a good, convent-educated Muslim girl from a nawabi family? No, I don't suppose you are going to ask me anything today. Salma did. At her most pompous. “You're betraying both your religion and your class,” she said stuffily. “Not to mention your education. But then
that's
never mattered to you, has it?” And the truth is, it hasn't. Nothing has. The only thing that's mattered to me since I joined Hindi films is you.

My joining the movies was a betrayal too. My parents had forbidden me even to
see
Hindi films. They were only made, they said, for the servant class. So of course I had to go. And I loved them! The glamour, the clothes, the dazzle — I wanted so much to be a part of that world, to escape the boring old prison my parents kept me in. I didn't think of acting first. I mean, how could I, I hadn't even acted in kindergarten. And if I had even tried to get a role in a local play, my parents would have flipped. When I entered the Miss India contest, just to spite them, and I won, they practically disowned me. Their daughter, being stared at by strangers! But what really made them go bananas was when I stayed on in Bombay after the contest and accepted all those modeling offers. I mean, what else does a Miss India do, right? And I enjoyed it. I think I particularly enjoyed their hysterics about it. My father even came to Bombay to take me home. But I've told you about all that, I think. Anyway, when I did the soap ad, the one that showed me in the shower, they
really
disowned me. My father said, “I have no daughter,” and he went into mourning. Just like that! My uncle sent me a telegram telling me not to come back home, ever. Can you imagine?

I still remember my first day as an actress. My crash course at Roshan Taneja's acting school didn't count. I was the beauty queen who'd done the soap and towel ads; that's all the producer knew or cared about when he signed me. I had visions of stardom, fame, glamour. The movie was about, what else, a beauty queen who sold herself on the side. It was called
Call Girl.
Really subtle stuff, hanh? Lots of bikinis and leather microskirts that none of the established actresses would wear. Or
could
wear.

They sent a car for me, I remember, and that was my first disappointment. I'd expected a swank foreign car like the ones the stars drive around in Malabar Hill, but it wasn't even an Impala, let alone a Cadillac convertible. Just a scratched, black, rattling Ambassador with holes in the upholstery and rusty springs poking through. We drove into a ramshackle shed in some grimy suburb, which turned out to be the studio. I got out, still expecting air-conditioning and gloss. What I got was a bunch of stinky studio sidekicks pushing me this way and that, change this, wear that, wiping their brows and their noses and shouting at each other and at me, with an occasional “ji” thrown in as an afterthought. This went on for hours and hours and then I found myself stumbling into a dingy room. “Makeup, madam,” they said, and a thin, slimy man with the hands of a skeleton plastered all sorts of evil-smelling white and pink muck on my face, neck and, most enthusiastically, my cleavage. His nails were black and chipped; a cockroach ran out of his powder case. After all this they wanted me to stand before the shining spotlights and smile seductively.

“Ya Khuda,” I groaned to the director,
“this
is supposed to be glamorous?”

“No, madam,” he replied, pawing me with his eyes.
“You
are.”

And you know what? I was. Because none of that mattered.

What matters to you, Ashokji? Anything? Me? No, I'd only be fooling myself. Your wife? I don't think so. As a woman I can say that if she mattered to you, you couldn't treat her the way you do. Or treat
me
the way you did. Your children? You hardly talk about them. I think that what matters to you is your image. The way you see yourself is the way others see you. It doesn't matter what kind of husband or father you are, the important thing is that you're seen as a husband and father. You
are
all those roles you play on the screen, aren't you, Ashokji? Because there's nothing else, is there, nothing else underneath — no other character competing with the character of the role. Maybe that's what makes you so good: you
are
the role each time, or maybe the role is you. But what that “you” is nobody knows. I wonder sometimes about those scriptwriters who write roles “for” you — what “you” do they base it on? The screen “you,” or course; they write a part that is as much as possible like the other parts they've seen you play. And so you are what you've been on the screen, and the screen continues to let you be you, and no one knows the difference, if there is one.

Have I ever told you how alike you are to everyone? Because you are, you know. With everyone you behave in the same sort of way, the relaxed, confident pose, the smooth voice, the effortless charm. It always works best the first time, or when the other person is alone with you. But when they meet you again, and they see you're exactly like that once more, or worse still, when they meet you in a larger group or with other people, and they see you treat all the others the same way, they feel terribly distanced from you, Ashokji. The same people whom you've won over the first time feel cheated, because they feel they are no different to you from anyone you might meet the next day or the next year. And indeed they aren't, are they, Ashokji? No one makes the slightest difference to you — all that matters is how you relate to them. In the process you offer them this perfect exterior, but people are terribly inconvenient, Ashokji, they don't stick to the script, they don't confine themselves to their quota of dialogue, their interactions don't cease when the hero has no further use for them in the plot, their feelings aren't switched off when the director says “Cut!” And so they walk away from you, and they find other friends, and you're left without friends in the world. Even those who'd normally be happy to be a supporting actor to a hero, because this hero makes it plain, without ever saying a word, that he doesn't need their support and won't notice it when it is taken away.

OK, OK, I know what you're going to say, or what you would say if you could. You'd say, “Don't be silly,
paglee,
am I the same with you as I am with Cyrus Sponerwalla? You see a different me than other people see, or most other people, anyway.” I suppose that's true, you
are
different, but only just. With women you're different not because you want to reveal any more of yourself to them but because you want them to reveal themselves to you. Physically, of course. I don't think you've ever cared very much what goes on inside our heads. So with women you switch on an extra bulb in those eyes of yours, Ashokji, but it doesn't cast any light on you. And if you do treat a woman who attracts you differently from the way in which you treat a man, you treat most women alike as well, whether they're sleeping with you, costarring with you, or merely writing gossip columns about you. Except when we're actually in bed together, for instance, is there much difference between the way you behave toward me and the way you behave toward Radha Sabnis? The casual observer would find it difficult to tell from your conduct which woman is actually your lover and which is the bitchy columnist you're trying desperately to avoid, without showing it, of course. Though actually, the thought of anyone being Radha Sabnis's lover is hysterical — I bet you'd never do it for all the black money in Bombay.

Hai, what a fate, to be able to talk like this to you at last, for the first time sitting down and fully dressed, and not even to know whether you've heard a word I said! Whenever I tried to talk to you before, you know, after we — don't make me shy — afterward, I knew you weren't listening. Don't try and protest your innocence, I knew. All along I knew. Well, almost. I became suspicious at first because you would seem so attentive as I talked, lying there with my head on your shoulder, and you'd grunt every time I paused, which would only encourage me to go on. But whenever I asked a question you answered with a kiss, and the kiss led on to other things, and then my questions never got answered. This was fun for a while until I began to think it odd that your affection for me always rose whenever I wanted an answer from you. So I started putting in odd things, outrageous things, into the middle of what I was saying but without any change of tone at all, and you never reacted to any of them. I'd talk about a sari I'd seen, or about this aunt of mine whose husband used to beat her, or about the latest things Salma said, and I'd casually add a phrase like “this was the time I was selling myself for a hundred rupees an hour” or “you know the aunt I mean, the one who was sleeping with your father,” and you wouldn't bat one of your droopy eyelids, you'd just continue grunting at all the right places.

So then I realized that your mind was somewhere else entirely, once your body had spent itself in me, and that you weren't listening to a word I was saying. All those precious, intimate little secrets and thoughts and anxieties and family events that mattered so intensely to me and that I wanted to pour out of myself to share with you, the things that I wanted to give you to make myself truly and completely yours, the private doors I was opening to let you into my world and not just into my body, none of these things had made the slightest dent in your consciousness. And you know something, Ashokji? It didn't matter. I was so happy lying there with the hairs on your chest tickling my cheek and your arms around me caressing the hollow of my hip, that I chattered cheerfully on, knowing you weren't listening and yet feeling the joy of saying all these things to you that were a more precious gift from me than the ones you valued. I thought, it doesn't matter that he isn't listening, maybe he too is enveloped by the soft intimacy of my voice, maybe the actual words don't matter as much as the fact of my saying them, maybe the sound of my words is enough to tie me to him more securely than the fleeting union of our pelvises. Maybe — and maybe he just can't be bothered. But I don't want to know. I love him.