Show Business (8 page)

Ashok resumes his chase. Godambo is running into his cavernous throne room. This time the pillars are unprotected, but the fountains still play and the pool gleams dully in the neon light. Godambo drags Abha toward his throne. Ashok enters the room and runs across the marbled floor. Pranay and the surviving commando are hot on his heels.

Godambo reaches his throne and stretches a hand toward the armrest.

Abha screams, “Ashok! The floor!”

Godambo jabs a finger on the button. Ashok is still running when the floor opens up beneath him.

He jumps.

In a glorious, fluid leap, immortalized by the camera in poetic slow motion — a leap that would comfortably have won India its first Olympic gold medal in athletics were it reproducible without special effects — Ashok flies over the yawning chasm under his feet, as his weapons fall discarded into the abyss. Ashok's pursuers are not so fortunate. Pranay and the Black Cheetah, with despairing yells, make their fatal splash. The shark fin dives, and as finale the subsidiary villain is accorded only a few glugs of farewell.

Ashok lands on his feet on the other side of the pool. Godambo presses another button, and a loud siren wails through the complex. Red lights flash and blink along the walls. Doors open, corridors fill with the scudding feet of Black Cheetahs.

“You're finished now, Inspector Ashok,” Godambo declares emphatically.

As soon as she hears the siren, Maya presses the switch on the control panel. The red indicator on the panel turns to green, and the door slides open. There is the clatter of booted feet from the outside.

“Shabash”
says a deep voice. Yes, it is the stern and slim Iftikhar, complete with pencil-line mustache! As a truckload of khaki-uniformed policemen trot into the cavern, assault rifles at the ready, he has a brief word of explanation for Maya. “Your Amma called me,” he says. “We followed Ashok's motorcycle tracks here, but were unable to get in.”

The policemen take positions and a shoot-out follows, five minutes of meticulously choreographed anarchy. Black Cheetahs emerge on high walkways, spray bullets from their submachine guns, and plunge gorily to their deaths. The celluloid policemen, using weaponry unknown in the armories of their real-life counterparts, shoot indiscriminately, shattering flashing red lights and blasting rock off the rough-hewn walls, but miraculously bring their enemies tumbling down. Grenades are thrown, and little bursts of flame add color to the occasion. The bloodthirsty rural cinemagoers get their twenty-five paise's worth.

Meanwhile, inside the throne room Godambo curses as his henchmen are clearly getting the worst of the raging battle. Ashok stands poised to attack, but he is weaponless now and Godambo holds Abha tightly.

“This is all your doing, Inspector Ashok,” he snarls.

“I thought you said you could crush me with one hand tied behind your back, Godambo,” Ashok retorts. “But I see you still prefer to shelter behind a woman.”

Godambo's pride is stung. Uttering an oath, he viciously flings Abha aside. She falls to the floor with a stifled cry. “Abha!” Ashok shouts.

“Don't worry about me,” the heroine breathes. “Get him.”

Ashok has no time to express concern as Godambo, eyes horribly wide and teeth horrifyingly bared, leaps on him with both hands. They fall to the floor. Godambo's powerful fingers are at Ashok's throat. Ashok brings his knee up and into Godambo's midriff: that relieves the pressure. Both men rise. Fists encounter flesh:
dishoom! dishoom!
Bodies crash into furniture. A right uppercut from Ashok sends Godambo smashing into the console. A left hook from Godambo puts Ashok head first through the screen. Miraculously unharmed by these calisthenics, the two men expand the locale for their fisticuffs. Godambo leaps over the throne, cape flying. Ashok follows. Godambo reaches a door, kicks Ashok, and opens it. Ashok recovers, follows. The two men are now on an outdoor ledge, overlooking the sea. (Why? Because it would make for a more spectacular climax, that's why. More demanding viewers may assume Godambo was hoping to escape that way.) More
dishoom! dishoom!
follows. Both men fall, pick themselves up, hit again.

A growl is heard. A grrrowl, in fact. Abha screams: “Ashok! The cheetah!” Ashok, his hands at Godambo's throat, looks back in horror. It is Godambo's pet, now grown almost to full size. The villain's wide eyes gleam. “Cheetah, come!” he commands. The animal takes in what is happening and growls menacingly. Then, with a single powerful bound, it leaps toward its master and his attacker.

Ashok steps aside.

“No-o-o-o!” cries Godambo, but it is too late. The animal lands squarely on his chest. Godambo reaches out to try to save himself, then with a last gravelly cry of despair, topples in slow motion into the sea. His confused pet follows him.

The camera lingers lovingly on Godambo's falling torso, the cape swirling around him like a defective parachute. At last he hits the water, with a satisfying splash. The camera stays long enough on the spot to convince the viewer that he does not come up again. Only then does Ashok turn to Abha, a new light in his eyes.

She runs into his arms. He clasps her in their seventh tight embrace.

They are outside now, where a few lugubrious Black Cheetahs are being energetically herded into police vans.

”Shabash,
Ashok,” says Iftikhar. Ashok smiles, hugs Abha, and reaches out an arm to Maya. The sound track swells with the theme song, this time sung by the two women:

You are the long arm of the law,
You always show villains the door.
By day or by night
You handle any fight
And put all the bad men on the floor!

They look like one small happy family, smiling for the camera until the words
THE END
fill up the screen.

[Note: this is an abbreviated version of the story. For reasons of space and stamina, we have omitted one
puja,
two tearful scenes before Ashok's father's photograph, an entire comic subplot featuring a domestic servant in a Gandhi cap and a fat woman in a nightdress, and four songs.]

 

Monologue: Night

PRANAY

Your first hit.
Godambo.
Your first big hit, in only your second film. You always had it easy, Ashok. Just had to open your mouth sufficiently to move the silver spoon to one side, and producers scrambled to say yes. Actresses too.

Who'd have believed it? None of us took your chances very seriously, not even when Jagannath Choubey cast you in that first film,
Musafir
with Abha. OK, Abha's was still a name to be reckoned with in the industry, but mainly for those with good memories. She wasn't the hottest property around by any means, no longer ranking beside the likes of Sharmila Tagore and Raakhee as a crowd-puller, but you could have done worse. I mean, you could have ended up with a fresh graduate from the Film Institute, or one of those desperate starlets who've done the unimaginable to get a lead role but who'll never convince anyone, least of all the audience, that she is heroine material. That would have condemned her and you to permanent eclipse. Which, frankly, was what everyone expected. Especially me.

But it worked, or worked well enough to keep you in business. There was that “I shall always chase you” song, which became a hit even before the movie was released, with every street corner
mastaan
and Eve-teaser in India singing it to accompany and justify their unwelcome pursuits. The film itself didn't do as badly as the industry thought it would, so by default it was seen as something of a success. Some of us thought you were pretty wooden, frankly, and your dancing was embarrassing. But it was obvious that the experts had got it wrong. None more so than that harridan Radha Sabnis, the dreaded Cheetah of
Showbiz:

    Darlings, does the name Ashok Banjara ring a bell with you pussycats? [How would it? She'd called you Anil the last time.] That's right, he's the long-legged type with the political connections who came with the tablecloth at Bollywood parties. Can you believe it, darlings, this would-be
abhineta
with the looks of a second-rate garage mechanic actually made it into the passenger seat! Yes, he has a starring role in Jagannath Choubey's latest
masala
movie,
Musafir,
opposite Daddy's old favorite, Abha Patel. Rumor has it that the evergreen heroine has had more face-lifts than her hero's had dance lessons. Not very promising, pussycats! Choubey seems to have a
maha
flop on his hands. And where will that leave his poor twinkling little stars? Banjara, of course, can always go back to light up the corners of the party circuit, but what will poor dear Abha do? Nothing military about the lady, but she should know that dimming stars are like old soldiers — they just fade away. Grrrowl!

Well, it didn't work out quite like that, did it? Cheetah didn't chatter too much about you after that.
Musafir
didn't lose money; in fact, I believe it made some. And then Choubey went and cast you with Abha again in
Godambo,
and the rest, as they say, is history.
His
story. Your story.

Lucky bastard. Never again will you need to play the hero in a movie named after the villain.

What do you know, Ashok Banjara, of what it's really like to try and make it as an actor in Hindi films? I'll tell you, I should know. I grew up in the bloody industry. My father was an assistant to a big-name director, but he never graduated beyond being an assistant director. He had work, but never much money. In school I tried to drop names about the stars we knew, but that never impressed the kids for long when it became obvious that there wasn't any money to go with the glamour. I was always the kid who didn't throw a birthday party, because quite simply my parents couldn't afford to pay for one. Ma made rice
kheer
for dessert, sometimes Papa bought a cheap toy in the bazaar or took me for a pony ride at the Bandstand, and that was the extent of the celebration. In my entire childhood I never had a birthday cake. But I was growing up in a world where every other kid I came in contact with got to choose the flavor of the cake and had his name written on it with icing. That became my great aspiration: to have a birthday cake one day, with my name on it. It took me a while to fulfill that ambition. The moment I could afford it, on my twenty-fourth birthday, I ordered the hugest, most expensive chocolate cake I could find and had “Happy Birthday Pranay” inscribed on it in letters an inch high. There were glazed-icing flowers and marzipan rosebuds and little silver balls you could bite into. I had everything put on it, everything. And then I took it home and ate it all by myself. I hated it. I was sick for days afterward. But I really felt I had achieved something, that I had arrived.

I grew up in a two-room flat in Matunga, you know, in the unfashionable suburbs. Slept on the floor. That wasn't so bad; the real problem was the bathroom. We shared one filthy bathroom with eight other families on the same floor. Everyone wanted it first thing in the morning, so you had to keep getting up earlier and earlier in order to beat your neighbors to it; otherwise you were bound to be late for school or work. By the time I did my matric I was getting up at 4:30 just to be able to use the bathroom. I'll never forget what it was like to grope my way in the dark, stand on that slimy floor, and feel some nameless creature slither across my feet just before I switched on the light. To do that every day, day after day, week after week, with no prospect of anything ever changing. What did you know of that, hanh, Ashok Banjara?

Sometimes, thanks to my father's work, we would be invited to some star's house for a special occasion — Diwali, or a wedding or something. That was the biggest event in our lives. I would spend every day looking forward to the visit. It didn't matter if nobody even noticed my existence there, just stepping into a house like Raj Kapoor's or Sunil Dutt's made life worth living. At the first opportunity I would go into the bathroom — one of the bathrooms, because they all had so many in their homes — and just stand there, on the marble or mosaic-tile floor, just breathing in the reality of being in a bathroom like that. I would run my stubby hands along the chrome towel racks, caress the porcelain sinks, open the shower just to imagine what it might be like not to have to dip stagnant water out of a plastic bucket each time you had a bath. I would sit on the commode even when I didn't need to go, unravel the toilet paper — who in Matunga had even heard of toilet paper? — and roll it back again.

And I would wash my ugly and callused hands. Incessantly, obsessively, wash them. I would make repeated visits to every bathroom in the rich guy's house and wash my hands, running creamy soap over the rough skin, over fingernails I had nervously bitten down to the very edges. I can't remember very much else of what I did at those places, but I would always come home with the cleanest hands in Bombay, the skin of my palms white-dry and wrinkled with all the water I'd poured on them, fragrant with the delicious, unattainable, unplaceable smell of imported soap.

I hate my hands, Ashok. I hate their shortness, their stubbiness, their roughness, their virtual lack of nails. That's probably a genetic trait: I come from a long line of insecure, nail-biting failures. Your long fingers, your hard and gleaming nails — what a thing to envy you for, Ashok Banjara. But I do.

None of this means anything to you, does it, Ashok? Hell, why blame you. You've never stumbled into a big star's closet and found the most incredible collection of ties in the world, a real parade of ties, red and black and blue ties, ties with stripes of every known width and color, plain ties and polka-dotted ties, ties with the badge or shield of an exclusive club on them, ties in silk and rayon and polyester and cotton, broad ties and narrow ties, ties with discreet little designs and ties with psychedelic patterns. The most pointless article of clothing in the world, devoid of purpose, an anachronism even in the climates where it's wearable, a flagrant luxury in our country: what an advertisement for this star's success, that he could afford to throw away so much money on so many useless foreign ties! You wouldn't understand what I felt, Ashok Banjara. You've never reached up, awestruck, to touch these ties and brought the entire rack down on your head so that you sat swathed in a riot of colors, held down by a dharna of textures, trapped in a
gherao
of ties. You've never bent down to pick them up, one by incredible one, and rearranged them lovingly in that remote stranger's closet, knowing the distance that stretches between that stranger's world and your own, even as you touch and feel the dimensions of that distance. You've never vowed, Ashok Banjara, that one day you, too, will possess a collection of ties like that, more ties than you will ever find occasion to wear.