Show Business (21 page)

What does one do? At first I made some discreet inquiries of my more successful peers, but I found my colleagues disappointingly closemouthed, perhaps because of my paternal antecedents. The best I could elicit was from Radha Sabnis. “Why, false ceilings, darling, but of course,” she said, as if every actor's home came equipped with them. I debated whether to install such a ceiling in my house, despite its actual low ceilings, with the attendant possibility that if Amitabh Bachhan came to visit in the summer he might be decapitated by the ceiling fan. However, even the prospect of eliminating my principal rival in the box office stakes lost its attraction when the next tax raid reported in newspapers involved the unearthing of currency notes and gold bars from an actress's false ceiling.

But I digress. It's true, of course, that there is no shortage of enterprising fellows on the fringes of the film industry anxious to persuade me of ingenious ways to spend my money and enrich themselves in the process. They offer gold mines in Karnataka and liquor distilleries in Kashmir, or quite possibly the other way around. After my first couple of encounters with their ilk, I have given Subramanyam strict instructions that they are not to cast their shady shadows anywhere near me.

It's not that I have just sat on the stuff. I've done the obvious and bought the inevitable bungalow for some outrageous sum, most of which does not figure on the deed of sale. (This is when I discovered that the world of real estate has found innovative use for the language of kindergarten. “How much number two you giving?” asked the unctuous seller when we met to clinch the deal. I was so taken aback I nearly told him my bowel movements were none of his business, but Subramanyam hastily intervened to explain that the term referred to “black” money. Only 35 percent of the already inflated price of the house would be paid in number one, the money you could, so to speak, afford to piss away by check.)

But now that I have my bungalow, and now that Maya has spent several fortunes renovating, equipping, painting, decorating, and furnishing it, what do I do next? I am not attracted by more property I'll never have time to visit. So I turn away offers of farms outside Delhi, cottages in hill stations, my own patch of Himalayan snow in disputed border territory. At least one filmi wife runs a boutique and I ask Maya whether I should buy her one, but she's not overwhelmed by the idea, and then the triplets overwhelm her. In any case it's not so much a new investment I'm after as a safe place to keep the unaccountable surplus cash for the proverbial rainy day. Abha's has come, it's practically a monsoon, but she seems to have weathered it reasonably well. I too must plan for a life after Golden Jubilees.

I cast about for advice hopefully, but in a world where people's most intimate relations are publicized under twenty-four-point headlines in the filmi magazines, the only secrets the denizens of Bollywood are allowed to keep are their financial ones. Money is to be spent as visibly as possible, but never talked about.

So — what to do? It is a measure of my desperation that I actually decide to ask my father. I mean, we haven't exchanged a confidence since the time I told him with boyhood pride that I'd managed to throw a stone through a neighbor's third-story window, which happened, unfortunately, to be closed at the time, and was beaten black-and-blue for my achievement. But who else do I have, right? He is at my home on one of his rare visits to Bombay, clad in his khadi politician's costume and uncomfortably sipping my Scotch in guilty violation of his party's prohibitionist principles. I gulp down my own Macallan and, looking around as much for something to talk about as for his counsel, I broach the subject.

“You know, Dad, you're in politics and all that stuff, so you must know what people do with their money,” I suggest obscurely.

“Why, put it in the bank, or spend it, or invest in the stock exchange,” says my father, who has a staggering facility for the obvious. “Are you asking, Ashok, for an introduction to a broker?”

“Not really,” I admit. “No, I'm sort of asking — generally. You know, there are lots of things people can do with their, uh, white money, but how do your political friends handle the black?”

My father draws himself up to his fullest possible height while still remaining seated and adopts a stern manner. “No political friend of mine
has
what you call black money” — he says the words with distaste— “and if he did, he would cease to be a friend of mine.” My father adopts what I have come to recognize as his Cambridge manner: he went to Cambridge as a young man, largely because the only alternative was jail, and he never misses an opportunity to remind me of it. “Ashok, my boy, undeclared revenue is the curse of our country. If the money that is lost every year to the parallel economy could be plowed back into the official one, half our problems of underdevelopment could be solved.”

My mind is already beginning to back away from yet another Kulbhushan Banjara lecture, of which I have had many over the years. I knew from the start that it was a mistake to ask him. “If you know anyone who has such unaccounted funds, Ashok, you should urge him to declare it immediately,” my father goes on. “The tax authorities are extremely strict about these matters. You know that.”

“Yes, you're right, Dad, absolutely.” I drain my glass. “Forget I ever asked you.”

He sighs, as at some private regret, though I doubt he was regretting his own scrupulous honesty, which had resulted in a considerable slide in the family's standard of living during my own childhood. He was the member of a government that had invented so many taxes that at some levels they actually totaled 101 percent. Obviously no one whose taxes were not deducted at source paid them honestly. Before lecturing me Dad would do well not to support the passage of laws that all reasonable people feel obliged to break. But that's not the kind of thinking my father is capable of, I don't imagine.

We are saved by Maya's entry into the conversation. “Papa,” she says brightly — she calls him “Papa” because she finds my use of “Dad” insufficiently Indian — “I've been thinking, and I need your advice.”

“Of course, my dear.” My father swells with paternal importance. In his view the best thing I ever did, possibly the only good thing I ever did, was to marry Maya. He has been known to say to friends that he couldn't have arranged a more suitable daughter-in-law himself

“I'm thinking of making a comeback.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A comeback. Returning to films.”

I splutter into my Macallan, but my father is even more taken aback. “But why on earth should you want to?” he demands. “You've got the children, a house….”

“The house runs itself, Papa,” Maya interrupts. “And now that Leela-Neela-Sheela are on the bottle, they don't even really
need
me all the time. Ashok is away with his shooting and his, his film world social commitments” — I try not to read too much into the phrase — “so much that I hardly ever see him. I thought this would be good for us too, you know, to work together.”

My father seems to understand more than I would give him credit for. “I see your point, my dear,” he harrumphs, “but really, for you to be running around trees and all that, at this stage …”

“Oh, I wouldn't do that, Papa, you're quite right,” says Maya. “A more serious sort of film.”

“Your husband,” my father says pointedly, “doesn't act in serious sorts of films.”

Maya laughs, and her laughter is sharp-edged, like the tinkle of broken glass. “Well, this wouldn't be a Satyajit Ray film or even something by one of the New Wave directors, but a slightly more serious commercial film. Songs and maybe a fight or two, but not too much running around the trees for me.”

I find my voice at last. “And where do you think you're going to find such a script?” I ask. “People don't write scripts like that, and more to the point they don't film them.”

“Oh, I already have the script,” Maya says casually. “Subramanyam gave it to me.”

I hadn't realized Maya and Subramanyam were such good friends. My secretary, of course, works out of an office in my house, but I had always supposed their contact did not go much beyond Maya sending a servant to ask what he wanted for lunch.

“And why,” I ask, my teeth increasingly on edge, “would Subramanyam do that?”

“Because I asked him to,” Maya replies matter-of-factly. “We've been talking about things, and I've told him to pass on scripts I might find of interest. So anyway, Papa, what do you think?”

My father begins to realize he is being set up. “Well,” he says, looking more uncomfortable than ever, “what does Ashok think about all this?”

“I don't know,” replies Maya, untroubled. “We haven't discussed it yet.”

“Well, then, my dear, I think you ought to discuss it with each other,” says my father. Good for him! But then he spoils it all by adding, “You know that whatever you do, Maya, you will have my blessing.”

“Thank you, Papa,” coos my scheming wife. “I knew you'd say that.”

My father looks at me looking daggers at her, and diplomatically remembers a prior commitment he has not yet mentioned. I escort him to the waiting official car, which is also to take him to the airport.

“Try and be kind to your wife, Ashok,” he says gratuitously.

“I don't need you to tell me that, Dad,” I reply.

He looks at me sadly. He is always looking at me sadly. He shakes his head, opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it. I am about to honk for the driver, who was not expecting to leave quite so soon and is not in the car, when my father opens his mouth again. This time he speaks, but on a different subject.

“Ashok,” he says, his expression inscrutably heavy-lidded, “do you know Gangoolie? Our party treasurer?”

I don't really know him, but I know who he is. I nod.

“Well, in his line of work, he knows a fair bit about black money,” my father says unexpectedly. “I am not a fool, Ashok, I know there is black money in politics. I have never touched any of it myself, but ever since we idealistically abolished company contributions to political parties, businessmen have found this other way of financing their preferred candidates.” Spare me the lecture, Dad, I think. Get to the point. “Anyway, I asked Gangoolie once where people kept their undeclared assets. The small-timers, as he put it, kept their currency in their homes, in safes, in false ceilings, under beds. When necessary, our tax people know where to look. The
big
-timers, however, use Swiss banks.”

“Swiss banks,” I repeat.

“It seems,” my father sighs, “that they find people abroad who need rupees in India, at a favorable rate of exchange of course. The rupees are handed over here, and the equivalent deposited, in Swiss francs, in Geneva or Zurich.”

“Isn't that — illegal?” I ask, as the driver, his keys jingling in the pocket of his uniform, runs up to the car.

“Of course it is,” my father says. “But because of Swiss banking secrecy, it is difficult for our authorities to do anything about it.”

He embraces me in farewell and gets into the back of the car.

“And these people? The ones abroad, who need the rupees? Where do the big-timers find them?”

“The big-timers,” my father says, “don't need to look very far.” Then he waves sadly and rolls up the window. His car drives away, leaving me more to think about than I had expected.

Strange man, my father. Sometimes I wonder if I have fully figured him out.

* * *

Inside the house, I erupt at Maya.

“What was the big idea of bringing this comeback nonsense up with Dad?” I demand.

She is unfazed. “It's not nonsense, Ashok. I'm perfectly serious. And it's not my fault if the only time you are around to be spoken to is when your father has come to visit.”

“Maya, we had agreed.”

“We had agreed I wouldn't make a comeback if I turned out to be pregnant. I was. Well, now I've had the babies. They're fine, and they're in good hands, which don't necessarily always have to be mine. The agreement is over.”

“But there's still a basic agreement. When we got married.”

“You're a fine one, Ashok Banjara, to be citing marital commitments to me.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You know perfectly well what that is supposed to mean.” Her voice is cold. “Don't make me say it, Ashok.”

Guilt rises in me. I try a different tack. “Look, Maya, I understand your need to do something. I really do. But you don't want to rush into a thing like this. Let me look at the script, talk to the producer. Then we can see. What script is this anyway?”

“You mean you really don't know what script I'm talking about? Ashok, you surprise me.”

Realization dawns, like the baby spots at the studio. “Not
Dil Ek Qila,
for God's sake?” I ask in horror.

“Why not?” Her voice is calm.

“But… but that film is already cast! Subramanyam had no business giving it to you. The only reason the script is here is because the actress who has the principal part specifically wanted me to be offered the male lead. It's not the kind of film I'd usually do….”

“But you're planning to say yes.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe, yes.”

“You've been talking to Subramanyam.”

“Leave him out of this, Ashok. I'm your
wife,
for God's sake. Don't I count for anything in this? Can't you tell me the truth for once, without beating around the bramble bush?”

Once in a while, Maya's English slips, and I am reminded of how far she has come since her diffident days as a provincial newcomer. But where did she find this rage, this strength?

“OK, I think I'll do it. Choubey, the producer, says it'll enhance my image. Broaden my appeal.”