Show Business (41 page)

The ragpicker utters a disbelieving sound, half moan, half laugh. “How, Ma? Who will do it?”

“Don't worry,” she replies in the same tone. “He will come.”

“Who, Ma?”

She does not need to answer, for the sound track thunders and flaming titles fill the screen like flashes of lightning:

ASHOK BANJARA

as

K  A  L  K  I

 

As the credits continue, the theme song is heard, sung by a chorus of voices
bhajan-style
to the accompaniment of a wheezing harmonium and clashing castanets:

In the darkness of the world

dharma's banner is unfurled

as the evil and the sickness must be fought;

when all good is crushed and curled

and insults to God are hurled,

it's time for action to take the place of thought.

 

Kalki! Kalki!

arise, o lord, your noble time has come; Kalki! Kalki!

descend to earth and strike
adharma
dumb.

The poor can eat no rice,

the rich indulge in every vice,

the awful time of Kaliyug is here;

men are trampled just like mice

as oppression claims its price,

but now the time for deliverance is near.

 

Kalki! Kalki!

Hope dawns at last upon your glorious birth! Kalki! Kalki!

Our salvation comes when you destroy the earth.

[“Now wait a minute/” the superstar said to the producer. “I thought Kaliyug was
now. J
thought Kalki was yet to come, that Kalki would come at the end of our modern era to destroy the present-day world, which has lapsed into immorality, et cetera, et cetera. Why then have you conceived this as a costume drama, set in the age of chariots and palanquins?”

[And the producer replied, “Mythologicals in modern dress? What you are saying? You are wanting me to lose all my money or what? No, my dear Thiru Banjara, when the Indian public is coming to see mythological, it is coming to see chariot, and palanquin, and costumes with much gold. How it matters what time story is being set? When our noble ancestors were thinking of Kaliyug, were they imagining motorcars and suit-pant, if you please? And kindly be thinking also of something else. If this filmistory taking place today, without palanquins and all, in independent India, and Kalki is to come down to destroy
that,
how will be reacting our friends the censors? You think they will be liking? You think they will be saying, 'Please show wickedness of our politicians, and police, and corruption and all, we will give U certificate and recommend entertainment-tax exemption'? No, my friend, they will be going cut-cut with scissors, they will be banning on grounds of likely to incite disaffection and public disturbance. And then where I will be? And not to forget: where you will be?”

[
“You're right, Murthy-ji,” said the superstar. “Forget I ever asked.”]
Vignettes of Kaliyug, when the moral order of the world is turned upside down: in a luxurious palace rules an evil queen, with a hooked nose and white-streaked hair, seated on a throne of burnished gold. She is surrounded by courtiers with ingratiating smiles who bend deeply from their copious waists. A young man is dragged into her audience hall and flung at her feet. “He is from the stables,” says an oily courtier. “He wants more. He has been saying that the horses eat better than the stablehands.”

“Take him away and flog him,” says the queen. “Then send him away. We can hire two new stablehands on the wages this ungrateful men is being paid.” The man shouts his defiance as he is led out, but his eyes bear the haunted look of one who acknowledges his own defeat.

Next comes a young woman clad in a coarse black-and-white print. She has been going from pipal tree to pipal tree, telling stories about evil and injustice across the land. “Have her tongue torn out,” says the queen. The woman is too numbed with shock to protest as courtiers leap gleefully to execute the command.

An old Brahmin sage is then brought in, a former counselor to the late king. At first the queen is respectful; the old Brahmin has helped the throne in the past, he has persuaded bandits to lay down their weapons and embrace dharma, he is a man of learning and wisdom. But his message now is unwelcome: he wants the queen to retire, clad only in bark, to the forest to commune with the trees and the animals and to contemplate the Absolute.

“But I am not ready for such an exile,” says the queen.

“The people want it,” replies the Brahmin, “and I demand it of you. Otherwise I fear Nature herself will revolt against your rule, rivers will flow backward toward their source, clouds will drop blood rather than rain, the very earth will crack and blacken in its shame.” The queen trembles in rage. “Lock him up and starve him,” she screams as her courtiers scurry to obey. “I do not want to hear his voice again.” The Brahmin is led unprotestingly away, his face serene in its knowledge of the inevitable.

More vignettes: the poor and the wretched huddle in the streets, unshaded from the blistering sun, their pitiful bodies covered in soot-blackened rags, while the debauched rich cavort in sumptuous homes, partying at perpetually groaning tables on mounds of grain and flesh borne by flocks of occasionally groaning servants. As liquor flows from stone jars and animal bones are flung to the floor, skimpily clad women dance for the amusement of the revelers, shaking their pelvises to suggestive lyrics in a rhythm unlikely to have been heard in India much before A.D. i960. When the song ends, they fall into the arms and laps of their laughing patrons from whose embraces the camera cuts to shots of temple sculpture that render explicit in stone what the lyrics have already hinted at in words.

Yet more vignettes: Brahmins are abused and beaten by muscular men in chariots, their womenfolk used without fear of consequence. In one scene a laughing officer of the court rips the clothes off a protesting woman and takes her by force.
[“Wonly mythological story with rape scene,” said the happy producer to the superstar. “But yit is all in the
Puranas.
Guruji was confirming.”]
Moral collapse falls both ways. Slatterns seduce strangers in temples before the shocked but unblinking gaze of the deities. Servants become masters and claim their former mistresses; men of nobility and breeding are forced into the streets. The social order has broken down; the world is in chaos.

The land is scorched dry in dismay. Cracks and fissures open up in the earth; not a blade of grass grows. Plants and flowers wither into ashes, leafless trees raise skeletal branches in surrender. In the barren fields men and women begin to drop dead, their knees buckling in exhaustion. Seven suns appear in the scorching sky, each burning with the fury of heavenly rage. Their rays shoot down to earth like lasers, sucking the world drier still: wells crumble into dust, rivers are drunk up by the insatiable rays, the seas churn skyward and evaporate. Into this desolate land, in a little hut in the midst of a dying forest, a little boy is born to a Brahmin hermit and his dutiful wife. A boy who emerges in the shape of a well-known child artiste, with a halo shining round his head.

“The Lord has blessed your womb,” the saffron-clad hermit says to his wife, as he prostrates himself before his own son. “Vishnu has come to us.” And as she does likewise, throwing herself at the child's pudgy feet, the boy is transformed by a cinematographic miracle into Ashok Banjara, clad in resplendent white, a bow in his hand and a quiver of divine arrows on his bare shoulder.

“Rise, Mother,” he says. “You have given me birth; you shall not bow before me.” He lifts her to her feet and turns to offer a respectful
namaskar
to the hermit, who takes the dust of the superstar's feet onto his forehead before rising, his long white locks now lustrous with divine benediction.

“The world is no longer a fit place for the likes of you,” Ashok says sadly. “The natural order of the universe has been turned on its head; injustice and depravity reign; dharma is in disarray. The time has come to end it all.”

The hermit nods. “Kaliyug has reached its nadir.”

“See,” says his wife, “I do not even have water with which to wash our Lord's feet.”

“There is no need,” Ashok says, compassion battling smugness on his visage. “Your tears of joy as you bent to receive me have already bathed my feet.” His surrogate mother looks suitably gratified at this hyperbole.

“What will you do, my Lord?” the hermit asks.

“What is necessary.” Ashok looks around him. “For everywhere I see that dharma has been violated and mocked. Betake yourselves to pray for the next world, because this one is coming to an end.” And even as he speaks the skies appear aflame. Gigantic clouds, garlanded with fire, appear between the suns; thunder roars. “A mighty conflagration is building up,” Ashok says, “which shall reach from the bowels of hell to the thrones of the gods. And then the rains shall come, a mighty crushing flow that will dissolve what the fire has burned, till the dry riverbeds become surging torrents, and the seas swell up to invade the sandy coasts; then mountains shall tremble and crumble into the dust, and the earth sink under the cleansing flood. For twelve years this rain shall last, and through it all, I shall dance the dance of destruction, till no one of this cursed earth remains upon it. When it is all over, the fire spent, the waters calmed, then, once again, will peace and dharma return to the world. But for now, my blessed parents, you who have been chosen to bring me, as a son of Brahmins, upon this earth to fulfill my divine mission — I must bid you farewell.”

Ashok raises folded palms to them, the halo shining ever brighter around his head. He raises one hand, and instantly a white stallion appears by his side; his robes are transformed into the short battle dress of a warrior horseman; and in his right hand has sprung a brilliant sword, its sharp edges aflame with sulfur and righteousness.

“Kalki,” his parents breathe.

And then he is off, fiery weapon in hand, to show the forces of evil that he has come to put out their faithlessness with a great conflagration.

[This is how it happened.

[The crowds outside the studio were enormous; inside, the massed ranks of actors, extras, technicians, production executives, delivery boys, hangers-on pressed around the equipment for the shooting of the great horseback sequence. People were milling about; somebody shouted “close the doors,” and somebody did
.

[Proud of his record of not having employed a double for most of his stunts (“They'd never find one who could really look like me,” he used to say), Ashok, flaming sword in hand, began his canter on the white stallion. For a moment it was as glorious as it was meant to be, the resplendent figure of righteousness charging onward to bring retribution to a faithless world. Then a flame seemed to spurt from the sword, singeing the horse, which bolted out of its rider's control. The rest was a blur. The stallion ran wild, through the studio set, into the technicians and their equipment. Amid the screams Ashok Banjara fell, thrown by his mount; his sword fell with him, plunging into some carelessly strewn cloth, which promptly ignited; and with a whoosh the flames leaped to the ceiling
.

[
Tongues of flame licked scripts, sets, and sidekicks. Accompanying the screams of panic, cast and crew and hangers-on ran everywhere they could; someone got to the door but found it shut, the tumblers of the lock having fused in the heat. The blaze voraciously devoured wood, canvas, drapes, metal, and human flesh. Smoke choked the lungs of those who were screaming for help, acridly scarring the throats of dialogists, sapping the sinews of stuntmen, obscuring the eyes of actresses.

[
When it was all over, the destruction was complete. The smoldering remnants of the set turned up twenty-seven bodies, including that of the producer, Murthy. Another twenty-three were admitted to the hospital, where four died in intensive care and one, an actress who had been burned beyond recognition, committed suicide with her mother's help
.

[
Ashok Banjara had contusions, concussions, broken bones, and burns. But he survived.
]

 

MonoiogLies: Night / Bay

PRANAY

So they tell me it doesn't look too good. Vital signs in decline, the doctor said. I can't say I'll grieve for you, Ashok Banjara. In fact, your departure should make a lot of things easier. But still, I don't really want you to go.

Now that's a lot, coming from me. You've never liked me, but I've hated you. Right from the moment you took Maya away—but much more in the years since, for all you've done to her. When I came to the hospital first, befriended your parents, talked to your brother, it was all for Maya's sake. To establish myself here where I could do her some good. But after all these weeks, Ashok, and I admit this grudgingly, I've developed a bit of an interest in you and your welfare. Especially after the doctor initiated these talking sessions, and I found myself the only one who was willing to volunteer for the first one. There's a strange sort of bond that's sprung up in the process. I don't suppose you feel it. I don't suppose you feel anything, for that matter. Not that feelings were exactly your strongest suit before the accident either, hanh?

Enough of that. I haven't come here to be nasty to you. What I've had to do I've done already. Something tells me you even know it. And it's really begun to take effect on you.

Poor Ashok Banjara. You'd have really enjoyed the adulation you're getting at this time. This accident has really been the remaking of you. The crowds, the banners, the prayer meetings! OK, so the Prime Minister's visit couldn't take place as scheduled, but they say it's only a postponement, pressing business of state or something. In any case, it's not the bigwigs who matter. Take it from me. It's the little guys, the ones who've had to give up something to hold this vigil for you outside the hospital, their love is the love that counts. I should know: I was one of them. Before I acquired my silk shirts and four hundred ties, I was like those chaps out there, the petty clerks and the youths without jobs. I was one of them, in spirit and in class origin.