Death in Mumbai (16 page)

‘When you are wearing itsy-bitsy clothing and gyrating to provocative songs, dancing solo on stage makes you look cheap, whereas with some girls in the background the same thing looks like an item song, just like in the movies. You may not be a celebrity,' she told me, ‘but you have to behave like one.'

‘Do you know how expensive it is to look like one? One good lipstick costs a thousand rupees, then there is perfume, expensive shades—that's very, very important if you have to pass off as a star, good shoes are a must, you should carry Samsonite luggage, an expensive handbag like the Esbeda Swarovski bag or something similar. Also I make sure that I never pick up my bags, and even though I am happy drinking tap water, I'll always insist on mineral water. Sometimes on these long shows, I get really hungry but I will not sit with everyone and eat. I'd rather go hungry. This business is all about projection.'

Typically, this was the list of conditions that was sent to the organizer before a show:

1.  The artist will charge Rs X (the fee can vary from Rs 35,000 to Rs 70,000 per show).

2.  Fifty percent of the agreed amount will be paid upfront and the rest after the show.

3.  The artist will not make more than four entries.

4.  The windows of the artist's green room should be covered with thick dark curtains or black paper (‘to keep out the peeping toms').

5.  There will be at least six background dancers.

6.  Return air ticket, but not on budget airlines, only Jet or Kingfisher.

7.  The vehicle at the airport should be worth at least Rs ten lakh. (‘That's just to say I don't want to get out of the airport and get into a Maruti 800, you know.')

8.  Five-star accommodation (‘if it's a small town like Ranchi, Bilaspur, a three-star hotel').

9.  Hotel stay to be fully paid for by the organizer.

10.  Transport available at all times.

11.  Two security guards to accompany the artist.

Moon would not do private shows—the kind wealthy businessmen organized at farmhouses—those were best left to out-of-work bar girls. Moon explained that she was popular at weddings because she was always good to the women of the house. ‘People notice me, I know how to carry myself. I have a sparkle and that becomes dangerous for me [vis-à-vis the men], so I always make it a point to put the women at ease. For instance, if we are posing for a picture I'll always get the women of the family in the centre saying it's their day and not mine. This floors them, and I get a good reputation.

‘We may have become jaded about celebrities in the big cities, but the small towns are where the action is. They still have to experience a lot of the world and wahan logon ke paas kuan bhar paisa hai [People in small towns have a hoard of wealth]. I recently travelled to Kishangarh where the host has a haveli worth Rs 35 crore.' And she was recently back from performing at a Shivratri mela at Pratapgarh, which is flush with NRI funds. But this dancing at shaadi, mela, mundan was becoming a bit tiresome.

‘I wish I could do some serious arty film, you know play a Naxalwadi.'

‘Why specifically a Naxalite?' I asked.

‘Why not? I am Bengali and with a shaari and dark make-up I could pass for a decent Naxalwadi.'

She did get a few offers to feature in music videos. ‘I was asked to be one of the models dancing with Abhishek Bachchan in ‘
Dus bahane kar ke le gaye dil'
; there was another offer to be one of the sidekicks in a Deepal Shaw video. I turned them all down. There is no point in being one of the anonymous faces behind these guys. Likewise, I don't want to work in any Punjabi or Bhojpuri film. I am very careful about my family's izzat. I would never want my dad to go to the market and there see a poster of some sleazy Adults-only Bhojpuri film with my face and cleavage plastered on it.'

As I got to know Moon better, I realized that despite the grind that show business demands of ambitious women, there was something of the vestal virgin about her. So she would wear minuscule clothing, slap on cosmetics that made her look older, and dance with heavy thrusting
movements, but all of it was pantomime. Away from the stage, her quotidian relationship with men was friendly but determinedly asexual.

When her manager tried to get into her bed, she sacked him. ‘We were in Aurangabad for a show and he told me that he would be sharing the room with me. I told him, “Saada,” she lisped, “you are my manager, don't cross your limit,” and I sacked him.'

During one of our meetings, she used the phrase ‘sex symbol' to describe herself. When I asked her to explain, she paused. ‘On the New Year's Eve of 2006 I was invited for a show at Hotel Mayfair in Rourkela. When I reached there I saw my pictures had been plastered all over town, announcing my show. There was a mini-riot for passes in Rourkela that day. I was told paanch logon ka sar phoot gaya [five people had their heads smashed in]. It wouldn't be so for a plain girl, would it?'

At this show, Moon was introduced to Avinash Patnaik. He was a friend of the organizer. ‘The show was a big hit. I wore my item girl clothes and danced to songs like ‘
Kajra re
', ‘
Saaki saaki re
'… In all I did four entries, and the entire performance lasted twenty-five minutes.' After the resounding whistles, she returned to her room for a solitary TV dinner when the organizer came knocking. He was accompanied by Avinash, and they said they would like to show her around Rourkela. ‘They drove me around and took me for coffee to the local college canteen. It was a nice friendly interaction. I thought to myself, “They are village boys and I should be good to them.” I barely noticed Avinash as he hardly spoke, but when they dropped me
back to my room, I told them, half in jest, “If you come to Mumbai, get in touch with me, and I too will show you around my city.” I think for Avinash it was a big deal that a woman like me was talking to him.'

Emboldened, he began to call her frequently once she returned to Mumbai. ‘I was always polite, friendly.' One day, not long after her show, he landed in Mumbai. ‘He said he was going to take me up on my offer to show him around. Then the next day he asked me if I could help get him a makeover. Now, I have a big thing for clothes and when I am with people I always want them to dress up well. He was not very good-looking; he used to wear tight jeans and shoes with elevator heels so I thought I could help him. Over two days, I took him shopping, got his hair coloured, facial done, and also took him to a party at Rock Bottom.'

Was that just philanthropic instinct, or something more, I asked.

‘I had been in Mumbai for two years, managing everything on my own. I had a busy life, but I was also quite lonely. I wanted to settle down but I was clear that it could not be with anyone from the entertainment industry or the corporate sector. I had seen how promiscuous they are. Do drink ke baad they have no idea, tie kahaan aur shirt kahaan.'

‘Avinash was persistent, he seemed sweet. He had a rice mill, was well settled, and I thought he would respect me because for him I was a big cheez.'

Moon could not have been more wrong.

The boy from Rourkela wooed the sex symbol from Mumbai with grand gestures. On Valentine's Day, he
deposited Rs five lakh in her account, saying she should use the money to make a music video. It was only later she found out that the money was not his to give away. They swiftly fell into a relationship. When they met, it was with the intensity of long-distance lovers. ‘Avinash was my first boyfriend. Before that, when I was about sixteen, I had been infatuated with a Punjabi boy back home in Calcutta—he looked like Sunny Deol, he was well built and six foot two but he strung me along and nothing ever came of it, I was very hurt by that.'

But as the first flush of the new relationship faded, Moon realized her boyfriend was not the wealthy man he had made himself out to be. His father had taken a Rs two crore loan to set up a rice mill for him, which Avinash was squandering away. ‘When I realized that he was under tremendous financial pressure I decided to spend the money he had given me back on him.' Moon was desperate to clear the charge that she used Avinash for money, showing me signed blank cheques he had given her and which she never deposited.

Like Emile Jerome had with Maria, Avinash began to get cloyingly possessive, wanting to know where she was going, who she was meeting, and to what end. He would often fly into a jealous rage. To avoid that, she would call him before going in for meetings and keep her phone on throughout, so he could listen in on what was going on.

‘Basically,' she said with a moue, ‘he started showing boyfriendgiri.' The relationship, barely a few months old, disintegrated rapidly even though she insisted she was in love with him. ‘He was insanely jealous.' They would have
the most corrosive fights on the phone. ‘What do you want with my body?' I'd ask him. ‘Kaat kaat ke namak bharoge kya?' Ultimately I told him that these fights were not acceptable, and if he had such a problem with my work, he should set up a boutique for me in Orissa and we should get married.'

Avinash was introduced to her parents; her father took an instant dislike to him but once again, against her father's wishes, Moon followed him to Rourkela. ‘One evening he told me to wear skimpy clothes and go with him to a discotheque.' He was hoping to get a loan from the owner of the discotheque and Moon was to be future collateral. ‘I was aghast that this man who wanted to marry me wanted to display me in such a manner, and we had a fight right there.'

That night was the first time Avinash slapped Moon. ‘Thwack! It was a full-blooded slap right across my face. All my life I'd been a girl without fear, but that moment changed it forever.' Desperately afraid, but with no way of leaving Rourkela at that hour she went back to Avinash's home where he did something she understood all too well: he took a handful of sleeping pills. She waited out the night, knowing it wouldn't kill him. The next morning brought remorse, recrimination, and decision. Avinash took Moon to a temple and there the two exchanged garlands and got married, Hindi film style. The more she regretted her relationship, the more impelled she felt to submit to his wishes. He told her to return to Mumbai and promised to come and get her as soon as his finances improved.

‘But within four days of my getting back to Mumbai he landed at my house, which I was then sharing with my
maternal uncle, who knew nothing of my relationship with Avinash, it was all quite awkward.'

On his second day in Mumbai, Avinash borrowed Rs 4,000 from Moon to buy cocaine. All vestiges of the loving, reverential man were gone. ‘When I returned home from a meeting he was like a crazed animal, sniffing me up and down; he thought I had gone out and slept with someone else.'

‘The day after that we went to a mall, where we had another argument and he pulled my hair and hit me so hard my lip split open and my face went numb.' She fished out her cellphone and showed me a picture that she took of herself: her face was bruised and tumescent, like a piece of rotten fruit. ‘When my uncle saw me he threw a fit—he called my mother and asked her to come over from Calcutta immediately, after which he and I together forced Avinash to leave.' Over the next several days, Avinash called, pleaded, wept, threatened, cajoled, raved, ranted, and then fell ominously silent.

Happy to have her mother in Mumbai, and free of the bitter fights with Avinash, Moon immersed herself in work and friends. On November 22, 2007, as she was driving to the airport for a meeting with LG Electronics, her friend got a call on his cell. It was Avinash, saying he had landed in Mumbai. Determined to keep misgivings at bay, Moon went on to her meeting and after that for dinner at the Garden Court restaurant in Andheri. ‘I rang my mother, as I always did every few hours. The phone kept ringing but no one picked up. I called my mama, his phone too went unanswered. I kept trying but there were just long rings
and no answer. The food turned to ashes in my mouth. My friend Ramesh and I rushed home.'

When she reached her home at Parasrampuria Towers, she saw the watchman ambling in the compound, children playing, and Avinash's black Honda City snaked between the parked cars, its windows hooded. Like Emile's sudden journey from Kochi to Mumbai, Avinash had driven all the way from Orissa, but the 1,200 kilometre journey had done nothing to extinguish his rage. ‘The car was locked, he wasn't in. We raced up the stairs and rang the bell. After a few seconds the door opened partially—it never opened fully because there was a shoe rack kept behind it—and Avinash looked out. I could see no one behind him. He stared at me, then at Ramesh, and then just as I made to enter he grabbed my hand and tried to yank me in.' That gesture and the fact that the door did not open fully probably saved her life. ‘I screamed and Ramesh pulled me back. We slammed the door shut, and latching it from outside, ran all the way to the Oshiwara police station.

Moon came back accompanied by the police to find blood all over her tiny flat. Avinash lay in the living room, the blood seeping out of his forehead where he had shot himself with the gun—a desi revolver—still warm next to him. On the kitchen floor lay the colder bodies of her uncle and beloved mother. She has tried to imagine what could have transpired in that one-bedroom flat a million times since. Did he kill them right away; did he torture and kill them; were they alive when she had first reached home?

For now there is immense anger in her over what followed. Like Neeraj Grover's and Emile Jerome's fathers did with Maria, Avinash's father blamed Moon for his son's downfall; he called her a good-time girl on the make and accused her of siphoning off funds from his son. ‘Avinash was a weak man, he was a coward with grand ambitions. He wanted to become an Ambani overnight, but was not willing to work for it. He was a failure and he took out his frustrations on me. But the media reserved all its sympathy for him, he was treated like some jilted lover. But don't you see, I am the one who lost everything that day.'