Show Business (40 page)

“Is Choubey-sahib in?” I ask the manservant.

“Yes, sahib, he is in,” the man confirms. “Sahib,
chai,
sahib?”

“Coffee, I think,” I demur, just to assert myself. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I am here?”

The man shifts uneasily from foot to foot, his eyes evading mine. “Sahib, I'll go get the tea,” he says in Hindi, backing away toward the kitchen.

“Not so fast,” I say. “You haven't answered my question.”

He stands on one leg and cocks his head, as if trying to recall it. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I'm here?” I repeat.

“Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping,” the man informs me sheepishly.

“Well, go and wake him up then,” I demand. “He said eleven o'clock, it's almost quarter past already.”

“I'll go get the tea, sahib,” says the servant and disappears before I can catch him again.

I resume, in silence but not tranquillity, my inspection of the Choubey living room. There are three
Filmfare
statuettes on a sideboard, Best Picture Awards for God knows what, perhaps even something starring me. A brass hookah stands on a corner table, an outsize Nataraj on another. Choubey clearly hasn't left his interior decor to the kind of people who do the sets of his films. There are wooden elephants, a clay Bankura horse, a bejeweled Rajasthani camel. Glossy coffee table books of photographs by Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh jostle for space with well-thumbed issues of
Showbiz, Stardust,
and
TV and Video World.
Choubey has certainly acquired culture with a vengeance.

The tea arrives, accompanied by thick milky
pedas
on a plate. “Have you told Choubey-sahib?” I ask ungratefully as the servant sets the tray down.

“Sahib, I — sahib, Choubey-sahib is just coming, sahib.”

I am not mollified. “Did he say that himself?”

“Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping. He has given me strict instructions not to disturb him. But he will wake up soon, I am sure. I am sorry, sahib. I am sure it will not be long, sahib.”

“Well, what time does Choubey-sahib normally wake up?”

The servant shifts uneasily again. “Sir, about this time.”

“About? What time exactly? When did he wake up yesterday?”

“Sahib, yesterday he woke up at noon.”

“And the day before?”

“At noon.”

“So have you ever seen him wake up at eleven and keep an appointment?”

“Yes, sahib, many times.”

“And when was the last time?”

“Sahib, I — I don't remember.”

So Choubey had called me for an appointment in the morning with every intention of keeping me waiting till he had woken up. That's the way you treat aspiring actresses and perspiring journalists, not superstars. I feel a deep surge of anger and humiliation well up within me.

I rise.

“Sahib, you haven't had your tea.”

“Give it to Choubey-sahib,” I say brutally, “with my compliments.”

And I walk out, with as much dignity as I can muster. It is not a lot. After all, I had asked for coffee.

“So what do I do, Tool?”

I am sitting with my erstwhile classmate and current Guru at his new ashram in Worli. I know the compound well: it used to be the old Himalaya Studios. The video revolution, spiraling studio costs, and skyrocketing property prices have changed the economics of the film studios: the owners of the Himalaya got far more from the Guru's expatriate backers than they could have hoped to earn in decades of rentals to film production units. Where once the studio was the fantasyland in which any world could be conjured up with canvas, paint, and a box of nails for next to nothing, filmmakers are finding it cheaper today to hire actual locales. When I began my movie career there must have been thirty film studios in Bombay, and nine-tenths of each film was shot entirely in a studio. Today there are hardly seven or eight, and some of them — like S. T. Studios, in which I shot my first film — are said to be on their last legs. If they could sell, Cyrus tells me, they would; but not all are as lucky, or adept, at getting the necessary bureaucratic permissions as Himalaya. Because of the land-use laws not every studio can sell its property to the highest bidder, so large studio lots, for which a developer would cheerfully pay a fortune, rot underused in prime locations. Rather like me. “You're sure no one saw you come in?”

“Yes, Tool, I told you. Blinds down in the car, side gate, back way into the building. As we'd agreed. Come on, Tool, give me a break, will you?”

“And don't call me Tool. It's undignified.”

“It's your name, for Chrissake. I didn't invent it.”

“Guruji sounds better.”

“Not to me. What's all this, Tool? Are you going to abandon me, too?”

“Only if you persist in calling me by that abominable college nickname.”

I've never seen him so tetchy before. “OK, OK, Guruji it is,” I say. “Now act like one and give me some advice. I need it badly.”

“I know.” Tool scratches himself in an intimate place and scowls into his beard. Thejolly bright-eyed sage of our last encounter seems a world away from the irritable figure picking his toenails in front of me. Actually, he should have much more to bejolly about: thanks at least initially to my advice and guidance, he has become the rage of Bollywood, whereas his blessings have only brought me back where I started — in fact,
behind
where I started.

“As I see it,” he says, “your situation is this. By going away to Parliament you lost momentum; the pictures you canceled were given to other actors, some of whom did rather well. Your last hit was more than two years ago. The
Mechanic
flop still lingers in producers' minds, and since then your public image has taken a beating thanks to your Swiss shenanigans. Whatever political popularity you had has been dissipated by your resignation. You are not returning to films triumphant on another field of battle, but vanquished or, at least, disillusioned. So it's no surprise you're no longer the obvious choice for the role of antiestablishment hero, gloriously conquering injustice and tyranny. If anything you're seen as somehow part of the corrupt system you used to beat as a hero. In the circumstances, producers are no longer clamoring for your signature at extortionate rates; they've found other actors who'd do just as well for less. Right so far?”

“Thanks for cheering me up, Guruji,” I confirm bitterly.

Tool goes on, oblivious, his fingers caressing between his toes.

“Dilemma: if you say yes to one of these producers, you go down in their eyes, you become one of many, affordable, dispensable. If you keep saying no, you starve.” He smiles for the first time. “In a manner of speaking. That
is
how you see your choice, isn't it?”

“You could say that,” I concede reluctantly. “So what do I do?”

“There is a third way.” Some of thejolliness returns to Tool's face, like lights slowly coming on before a take. “A man came to see me yesterday, a fat fellow called Murthy. You don't know him, but he's a producer. In the South. And he's very, very, wealthy.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He makes movies that don't feature in the
Filmfare
awards and whose stars don't get space in
Showbiz,
but that do extremely well with the masses. His last film grossed over a crore.”

“I can't believe I've never heard of this chap. Murthy? Are you sure you've got the name right?”

“I've got the name right.” Tool tucks a foot under his thigh and blinks at me. “He makes mythologicals.”

I look at him like a tea-drinker waiting for the infusion to brew. “And?”

“That's why you haven't heard of him. He makes movies that people go to see as if they were going to a temple. When you go to see a reincarnation of God you don't care who's acting the part. So Murthy hasn't had to look for big names in Bombay. He's got his own regulars, and he does well with unknowns.”

“So now he wants to break in to normal Hindi films and is looking for a superstar? Me.”

“No.” Tool looks too self-satisfied as he registers my disappointment. “No, he believes in sticking to what he's already doing well. He'll continue doing mythologicals.”

“So why did he come to see you?”

The Guru looks at me disapprovingly beneath bushy eyebrows. “The relations between a guru and a client are always confidential,” he intones with a solemnity that, in happier times, would have made me laugh. Instead, I nod in contrite acknowledgment.

“All right,” I mumble, chastened, “but where do I come in?”

Tool raises one hand, with forefinger upright. “That's the interesting part. Murthy is planning a new film — the mythological to end all mythologicals. A film about the end of the world.
Kalki.”

I look at him, still unsure. “And?”

“You'd be perfect for the part!” the Guru beams. “The last avatar — a divine figure of grace and strength who comes into the world riding a white stallion, with a naming sword in his hand. He sees that dharma has been violated and mocked, and he launches on his divine dance of death because he must destroy a corrupt world. What a role! What a part!”

“You've got to be joking, Tool. Me? Do a mythological? I'd be a laughingstock.”

“N. T. Rama Rao isn't. That's about all he's done, and he's a Chief Minister. Think about it, AB. I have some influence with Murthy. I can convince him to offer you the part.”

“Convince
him?
Since when have I been reduced to this, Tool? In the old days a maker of mythologicals wouldn't get in to see me. Convince
him?”

“If you can do better yourself,” says Tool, affronted, into his beard, “you needn't ask my advice.”

“I'm sorry. Go on. Let me hear the rest of it.”

“Murthy gets a big name, the biggest name he's ever used. In turn, he delivers a massive publicity blitz, making
Kalki
your vehicle. You use it to restore your image — to identify yourself forever as the destroyer of corruption, not the begetter of it.”

I'm beginning to get the point. “I'm intrigued, Tool,” I admit. “I mean Guruji.”

“This,” he says with the sudden enthusiasm of a Sponerwalla, “could mark the beginning of your renaissance. A brave step to redefine yourself in the eyes of the masses. An opportunity to play the religious chord in the hearts of the Indian public. The formula wallahs don't want you? To
naraka
with them! You will turn to God.”

I am swept up by his fervor, by the messianic light in his eyes. “I'll do it, Guruji,” I breathe.

I don't even ask him what he's getting out of it. Or how much.

 

Exterior: Night

KALKI

The camera pans over a vast, arid plain, taking in an opulent city-dotted with poor people. Down its narrow streets, thin dark men in loincloths carry heavy gold-handled palanquins under whose lace canopies recline sleek women adorned with glittering jewelry. They pass a sad-eyed child wailing in the gutter, an old man lying sick and helpless on the side of the road, a cow dead or dying, flies swarming around its lank head. A beggar woman, infant at her hip, hand outstretched, asks piteously for alms. The women in the palanquins avert their imperious gazes, and the beggar stares after them as their bearers trot past, her hand still reaching out in futile hope.

Ahead, a sumptuous chariot, its gleaming carriage pulled by a healthy, impeccably white horse, comes to a halt. Its way is blocked by the broken-down cart of a ragpicker. As the mournful buffalo yoked to the cart chews ruminatively on a dry stalk, the ragpicker, his torn and dirty bundles slipping off the cart's open back, examines his wooden wheel, which has come off entirely and tilted the cart to an acute angle.

“Out of my way!” snarls the mustachioed man in the chariot. He wears a silk tunic with a gold breastplate; bands of gold encircle his fingers, wrists, triceps and hang from his ears. He cracks his whip to lend emphasis to his command.

The ragpicker cowers and points helplessly to the broken wheel.

“Sahib,” he says anachronistically, for the usage was to be a legacy of colonialism, “my wheel is broken.”

“That's not my problem,” the man in the chariot snaps. “Get your cart off the road.”

“Sahib, I ca- … cannot. The wheel will have to be repaired first.”

“Do you expect me to wait, imbecile? Push it out of my way.” This time the whip comes down on the ragpicker's shoulders.

“Ye-e-s, sahib.” The ragpicker tries to lift the collapsed end of his cart, but it is too much for hirn. Sweat breaks out in beads on his face, he grunts with the strain, but the cart will not budge. He goes to the front and tries to coax his buffalo to move. It does not. He prods the animal with a stick. The buffalo starts up, but the cart only creaks and collapses further, one corner now touching the dusty ground.

“Sahib … you see—”

The man in the chariot leaps down, red eyes blazing, and hits the ragpicker with his whip. His victim raises his arms across his face in a gesture of self-protection and abasement, but still the blows rain down. Hearing the disturbance, four men, clad in simpler versions of the whip-wielder's costume, and with copper bracelets rather than gold, run in. A command is barked: the four push aside the ragpicker, seize his cart and bodily turn it over, and send the cart and its contents crashing and splintering against the wall. The buffalo, lowing, falls; the ragpicker's worldly goods lie shattered and scattered at his feet; one of the four men cuffs him soundly for good measure as he sprawls on the ground. But the way is now free for the chariot.

An old blind woman with flowing white hair bends down to take the ragpicker's head in her hands. “What have they done to you, my son?” she asks, sightless eyes staring into the camera.

He says nothing. She looks into a distance beyond the vision of the seeing and says in a terrible voice, “It will all be over soon, my son. Justice will come to this world. This evil will be destroyed.”