Show Business (32 page)

“And what about the heroine, do I hear you ask?” There is unctuous laughter, I am not sure why. “I shall tell you. Do you know why Brahma, the divine Creator in the Hindu trinity, is always depicted with four heads? There is a story that goes back to the time when he created woman — yes, the female human. He carved her out of his own body, not from a spare rib; you see, we are a vegetarian people.” (More appreciative laughter. The devotees obviously found this rib-tickling.) “Now in those days Brahma had only one head, that's all he had need of at the time. But he admired his own creation, this First Woman, so much, and looked at her so ardently, that she felt obliged to hide in embarrassment from his desire. This she tried to do by running away from his line of vision, but if Brahma could create a woman, he could certainly create an extra pair of eyes. So in order to be able to see her wherever she hid, he grew a head on each side, another one behind, and even one on top, to complement his original single head. Is this not like the ubiquitous camera of the Hindi film?

“But to return to Brahma. Inevitably the woman could not escape him, and she succumbed to his desire. Out of this consummation came the birth of our original ancestors, the founders of the human race. Wait a minute, I hear the accountants among you saying, That story gives Brahma five heads — why is he portrayed only with four? Well, there is a postscript to the story. The other members of the divine trinity did not entirely approve of Brahma being able to look up into the heavens as well as keeping an eye on earth. So Siva, a god of action if ever there was one, took his sword and cut off the top head, leaving Brahma with four. Like the Hindi filmmaker, Brahma can look around and beneath him, but not rest his gaze on higher things.”

The devotees nod, while I wonder what on earth any of this has to do with his main point. Or indeed whether he has a main point at all.

“But I digress. We have talked about the creation of woman, but not about her role as heroine. Here I must turn a little to Vedanta; I hope my foreign brothers and sisters will be patient with me. The universe is made from, and made up of, two simultaneous Causes, or principles — a spiritual Cause called purusha, the male principle, and a nonspiritual Cause called prakriti, nature, seen as female. I am sorry, dear ladies, that you are not seen as spiritual: perhaps too many of our ancient philosophers were men. But the mutual interdependence of these two principles is fundamental — the male principle cannot create anything without the female nor can prakriti produce the natural universe without purusha. Now what is this prakriti, this female principle? It is made up of three gunas, three basic qualities: the shining; the dark, or passive; and the dynamic. This is the tradition from which the Hindi film heroine is unconsciously drawn. She shines, she is resplendent, she is fair (and this is important, because it is said that the goddess Parvati, criticized by her husband, Siva, for her dark complexion, had to perform austerities and penances in the forest before Brahma granted her the fair skin for which she is now famed. No Indian actress can succeed without reminding audiences of the postpenance Parvati.) She is also passive, the object of the hero's adoration and the villain's lust. But these two gunas remain in uneasy equilibrium; it is the third, her dynamism, that unsettles this equilibrium and makes the Indian film heroine a heroine.”

This is going right over my head, a direction in which no real Hindi film heroine has yet traveled. I shift my weight uncomfortably from one thigh to the other and try to admire the curve of the Frenchwoman's unhaltered breast, which pushes against her saffron shift like prakriti looking for a purusha.

“You would be right, my dears, in tracing the modern Hindi film to the epics and myths of our ancient times,” the Guru goes on. “Each character fulfills the role assigned to him or her in the film as each of us fulfills the role assigned to us by our destiny on this earth, our dharma. The Hindi film hero's dharma is to be a hero, the villain's is to be a villain. It is the same, after all, in the
Mahabharata,
whose personages act out their roles without being able to deviate in the slightest from the script of destiny. Their dharma determines their character, and their character determines their destiny; yet even this dharma is the result of their actions in their past lives. There is nothing they can do about it: they do what they do because they are who they are, and they are who they are because they have done what they did. This is a concept you can apply in toto to the Hindi film hero.

“A prime example of this species is now sitting among us. He has come to seek the benefits of my wisdom, and this pleases me. So for his sake, I shall conclude this discourse with a story from the
Mahabharata
— not, alas, a story like the delectable episode of Brahma and his lady — but the story of an argument, a debate, shall we say, among the five Pandava brothers, the 'heroes,' if you must, of the great epic. The topic they were debating was a typically Hindu question of hierarchies. Which, they argued, was the highest of human pursuits —
kama,
pleasure;
artha,
wealth; or
dharma,
righteousness? Their uncle and counselor, Vidura, thought the matter was self-evident: the answer was obviously dharma. Arjuna, the most intelligent of the Pandavas, was not so sure: he put artha first, regarding pleasure and righteousness as merely two adjuncts of wealth. (He would obviously have made a very successful merchant-banker today.) Bhima, the glutton and strong man, disagreed. In his view, the satisfaction of desire, in other words kama, was obviously man's first duty, since without the desire to achieve, any achievement would be impossible. The twin brothers, Nakula and Sahadeva, wanted it both ways: man, they declared, should go for all three — first pursue righteousness, then wealth, and lastly, pleasure. (I am beginning to think they had a point there, but not necessarily in that order.) Finally, the oldest brother, Yudhisthira, paragon of virtue, surveyed the options and sadly rejected all of them. The only thing for a man to do, he concluded, was to sidestep the debate altogether and submit himself to Fate.

“I will not draw the lessons from this argument for you. It is yours to interpret as you see fit. But today we have with us a man who has sampled kama, accumulated artha, and seeks to fulfill a dharma of service to the people. He has my benediction.”

And with that the Guru closes his eyes and resumes his posture of meditation. The devotees rise silently and begin to shuffle out soundlessly on bare feet.

I stand up, delighted by the unexpectedly positive conclusion to the Guru's rambling discourse, but uncertain what happens next. Ashwin, satisfied, is already heading for the door. I stop the Frenchwoman as she walks toward it.

“Don't I get to see him now?” I ask. “Privately?”

“Can't you see? Ze Guru his meditating,” she replies.

“But I've come all this way just to talk to him,” I say.

“What you 'ave to say, ze Guru already knows,” she declares sententiously. “Ze Guru alone decides hif'e needs to talk to you.”

Ashwin beckons. He doesn't want me to make a fuss.

“Wait.” The Frenchwoman looks at her master. The Guru has opened one eye owlishly and is raising a hand. Slowly, he points at me and beckons. When Ashwin and the devotee try to follow me, he stops them with upraised palm. A long finger opens out and points exclusively to me. It folds back, a peremptory summons. I ought to feel insulted, but I find myself enjoying the privilege. “Private audience,” I say, shrugging at the Frenchwoman. She folds her hands to the Guru and walks out with Ashwin, shutting the door. I am alone with the man of God.

As I walk toward him, I see that he is laughing. Great waves of silent mirth convulse him in his cross-legged pose, so that his be-robed body literally quakes on the mattress. Strands of gray beard disappear into his closed mouth, his sparkling eyes dance with merriment, his hands helplessly hold his sides. I don't see what is so funny, unless, while he was meditating, some higher consciousness cracked a joke on the astral plane.

“AB!” the Guru says at last. “So you really didn't recognize me!”

Incredulous, I advance closer to the august presence, trying to visualize a face behind the beard. “Tool!” I exclaim. “What on earth are you doing behind all that shrubbery?”

“Shh,” Atul (“Tool”) Dwivedi, fellow Fransiscan and Coffee House habitue of collegiate notoriety, raises a long-nailed finger to his lips. “Not so loud, or you'll have the entire ashram down on us.” He pats a place next to him on the mattress. “Try and look reverential, in case anyone looks in,” he says. “God, it's good to see you.”

“It's good to see you, god,” I respond irreverently. “How did all this happen? Didn't you go off to BHU to study philosophy or something? No one's heard a thing out of you since.”

“I did go to the Benares Hindu University,” Tool confirms, his eyes now droll rather than divine. “To study philosophy. And — other things.”

“And what happened to your hair? And this beard — almost white already?”

“Don't you remember my father? Premature baldness runs in the family. And the things I have thought about over the years,” Tool says, “have grayed me. But we're not young anymore, Ashok, you and I. You must be over forty.”

“Forty-one next week.” I had not really imagined that that disqualified me from thinking of myself as young. Tool has sobered me.

“How do you stay like this? You must have a picture in the attic.” We had both seen
The Picture of Dorian Gray
in preference to reading the book.

“Fifty pictures,” I joke. “Almost all of them hits.”

“Yes, I've been reading about you.” Tool adopts the distant gaze of his scriptural discourse and quotes from memory. “Darlings, national politics will never be the same again, at least not for our ruling party. Cheetah has learned that a funny thing happened on the way to the quorum: the Prime Minister has decided to offer a party ticket to Bollywood's reigning box office monarch, your very own Ashok Banjara. Of course, it can only be the kind of coincidence so beloved of our scriptwriters that the constituency from which the PM wants to make this MCP an MP has belonged for goodness knows how many years to the Banjara Daddy! Who would ever suggest that our hero hasn't got everything on his own merit? Not Cheetah, my little cubs. After all, with so much talk these days of more women candidates being nominated, our Hungry Not-So-Young Man could make an excellent Minister for Parliamentary
Affairs,
eh? Grrrowl!” The Guru's eyes twinkle at my evident astonishment. “So you see, I've been expecting your visit.”

“I can't believe you read that stuff, let alone know it by heart,” I say.

“But I used to be a filmi fanatic in college! How quickly you forget,” Tool reproaches me. “Besides, theology can be trying. A Guru must have his little pleasures.”

“Time for kama, hanh?” I joke. “By the way, thanks for the endorsement.”

“My pleasure,” he responds, and I imagine the weak pun is intended. That's how we all were at St. Francis'. “But it wasn't entirely unmotivated. I need your help.”

“You? Mine? I thought you had it made here. Women, prestige, adulation — what more could any Franciscan want?”

The Guru scratches his bottom through the robe. “I'll answer that philosophically some other time,” he replies. “But the short answer is, I'm getting rather tired of the rural life. Too many mosquitoes and not enough electricity. I'm thinking of making a move.”

“And what can I do to help?”

“Well, I need your advice, and some contacts,” the spiritual guide says matter-of-factly. “What would you say to my trying to set myself up in Bombay, as a sort of resident Guru to the stars?”

“Why not? I admired your patter this morning.”

“That's nothing.” The Guru waved a dismissive hand, as if swatting one of his troublesome mosquitoes. “Bollywood doesn't want abstruse comparisons between cinema and advaita. What it wants is a philosophy to justify itself by.”

“Go on.” I am intrigued.

“Your cinema world is full of mendacity, imitation, corruption, exploitation, and adultery,” he says in the briskly bored tone of a schoolteacher taking a roll call. “It's endemic, it's ingrained, it's part of reality. In fact, all these things are part of the daily assumptions of the Hindi film industry and of those involved with it.”

“And you think you can change that,” I suggest helpfully. “Reform it. Reintroduce spiritual values.”

“On the contrary,” Tool retorts. “It can't be changed. No one wants to change it, and the system wouldn't work any other way. After all, despite these things, or more probably because of them, India now has the world's largest film industry. And it's one that flourishes with great efficiency and financial viability in the face of some appalling infrastructural, logistical, and technical drawbacks. It's little short of a miracle that it works as well as it does. Not even a godman wants to mess with a miracle.”

“So what
do
you want to do there?” I ask, puzzled.

The Guru sighs. “I've done my stint of dharma,” he says. “I've spent the best years of my life learning, meditating, and now running an ashram. I've begun to enjoy a bit of kama at last, especially now that these foreign women have discovered me. The time has come, I think, for artha. I want to live well.”

“Whatever happened to nonattachment?” I ask jocularly.

“Oh, it's very important,” Tool says. “I want my followers to be completely unattached to their material possessions. The best way of achieving this is, of course, to give it all to the ashram. As for myself, I will own nothing: everything will be in the name of the ashram, for the greater good of its members. But I will have the use of such things as the ashram sees fit to give me, and I intend to have so many that I can afford to be nonattached to any of them.”