*
THE NEXT DAY, BACK to my normal life, where I am having to earn money. I am going to the number one tourist spot in the whole city, the white marble British palace Victoria Memorial. It is a place where donkey villagers are coming, especially on cool, cloudy days like these. Their mouths are always open when they are touring the city. They are looking at everything like it was made personally by god. Malls, zebra crossings, women who are wearing pants.
They are also wanting as many blessings as possible, so they are always wearing five holy threads on their wrist and seven holy threads on their upper arm and who knows what else. These poor people are afraid of many things, and top of the list is bad luck from god. This I can understand, however, because me, I am the most cursed person.
Anyhow, I am entering the Victoria gardens and seeing the crowd. There is a straight white path going to the big palace, and on both sides green lawns and trees. In the cool weather, the lawns are full of children who are playing badminton with their parents, and some lovers who are sitting too close together under trees and eating ice-cream cones. They are all taking off their shoes, and I am seeing a parade of cracked soles when I am walking down the center. I am clapping my hands, saying, “Mother goddess sent me to bless you all today.”
I am blessing one young girl. Then I am blessing a baby. Then a guard is tapping me with a stick.
“What?” I am saying to the guard. “I am having a ticket, look!”
And the guard is not knowing what to say to that, because that is true. So he is saying, “No walking on the grass!”
Then he is taking a close look at my face. “Aren’t you—didn’t you testify at the big trial? Sorry, sorry,” he is saying to me, I am not understanding why.
When a man is bringing his baby to me, I am dipping an old flower into my small jar of holy water—water from the municipal pump—and I am circling the baby’s head with the flower, dropping dew on the baby, until the baby is looking like he is about to start wailing.
Suddenly a person is saying from behind me, “Lovely, is it you?”
Turning around, I am seeing Mr. Jhunjhunwala. He is wearing jeans and sunglasses which he is pushing on top of his head.
“It is you! Ha-ha!” he is saying, like it is such a surprise that I can be roaming in a tourist spot.
I am saying hello, how is your family, and such things.
“Are you free for one minute?” he is saying after a while. “I wanted to—”
I am giving the baby back to the villager, but not wanting to take money for my non-acting trade in front of the casting director. I am saying, “Free blessing for your golden baby!”
Mr. Jhunjhunwala is now face-to-face with me. He is saying, “Look, Lovely, I finally heard about your testimony at the big trial. So I looked at your reel. Your reel is—!” And he is bringing all his fingers together and kissing them.
“My what?” I am saying.
He is continuing, “Then I saw your WhatsApp video. One hundred percent authentic!”
“WhatsApp—”
“The video from your acting classes—”
“My practice videos? From Mr. Debnath’s class? How you are seeing it?” I am demanding. “Only my sisters are seeing it.” For one moment the mad thought is running in my head—is he coming to laugh in my face? Is he coming to personally tell me that my acting is B-class?
“Are you joking, Lovely?” he is saying. “I think your sisters must be sharing it, because it is all over WhatsApp. My friends forwarded it to me. So many of them forwarded it to me that in the end I was replying to them, ‘Okay, okay, I saw it already!’ Anyway, now directors are calling me up and saying, ‘Is it the same person who gave the most passionate testimony at that trial? Can you book her?’ So I think you can be perfect for this music video. Are you available tomorrow?”
* * *
*
THE STUDIO IS FULL of stadium-strength lights and silver sheets that people are holding for bouncing the light correctly. I am watching from the side while the two main actors are embracing in front of a green screen.
“Turn, turn, turn,” the director is calling. The couple is turning round and round. “Now kiss him on the cheek!”
The actress is looking like she will prefer to kiss an elephant’s behind. But she is doing it.
“Cut it,” the director is saying.
Then, after some minutes of setup, where they are moving the lights and marking my place on the ground with chalk, it is time for my scene.
My scene is only one. But it is repeating and repeating.
Now the couple is getting married, and I am looking up from blessing the bride and winking at the camera.
I am looking up from blessing the bride and winking at the camera.
I am looking up from blessing the bride and winking at the camera.
I am looking up from blessing the bride and, again, winking at the camera. My eye is twitching. The director is coming up to me in the end, and saying, “Lovely, it is not mattering to me whether your words at that trial are true, false, or in between! All I care about is you have that star material. The nation wants to watch you. You will make this song a hit, I am feeling it!”
* * *
*
WHEN A BREAK IS CALLED, I am going searching for some food, and seeing a table full of sponge cakes and fruits. In the heap, I am looking for a picture of a brown cake. I am wanting chocolate flavor. Why not fully enjoy? Finally I am spotting one, at the bottom of the heap, when an assistant is appearing. He is tapping my shoulder with his notepad and saying, “Your break area is over there, outside! This is A-category actors only.”
I am still not really understanding this A-category B-category business.
“Okay,” I am saying, and turning away.
But the assistant is saying, “Please! You cannot be taking cake from here.”
So I am putting it back. I am wishing to ask the assistant if he is not knowing who I am! Is he not seeing my video? But everywhere people are expecting that a person like me will make a scene, so it is my dear wish that I am not making any scene in this professional environment. I am going to join my B-category people, no problem.
Outside the studio, in the field, the light is bright in my eyes. My head is feeling woozy. So long I have been in that studio, where everything outside the circle of lights is black.
There is a crowd of extras around something on a table. A water filter.
A woman is shouting, “How can the water finish? Bring more water!”
I am walking closer and another man is saying, “Let someone faint, then they will learn the lesson.”
Other than an empty water filter, there are some blackened bananas on the table. From looking at the bananas I am feeling them in my mouth—squishing on my tongue, smelling a bit fermented, rotting in the heat. So I am swallowing my saliva and waiting for the new water jar to come.
There is another dressed-up woman next to me, so I am tapping her arm and saying, “Sister, which way for toilet?”
The woman is looking me up and down. “What kind of queen are you? Look around, it’s all fields and bushes. Go there.”
From the woman’s voice I am knowing that she is working in the film line for a long time. Her voice is heavy with experience. But how to go to toilet like this, in the bushes, with everybody around? What if the director is coming and I am missing my chance to impress? Worse, what if he is seeing me standing in the field and pissing like a man from under my dress?
I am sighing in frustration and opening WhatsApp to tell my sisters what a mess this shoot is. As soon as I am opening WhatsApp, I am seeing there are forty messages. My phone was on silent all this time.
You superstar! one sister is saying to me.
Good job! World is your stage, another sister is saying.
They are
all seeing how my video is spreading!
Good theater Lovely. What is this? Even Arjuni Ma has written me a WhatsApp message! Must be she has forgiven me for testifying.
Now I am seeing WhatsApps from people I am not knowing only.
Great acting! they are saying. Where is this class? So cool!
* * *
*
BACK HOME, I AM slapping the TV to come on, and there I am, on a local news channel, my video with Brijesh playing on a big screen while some men are sitting in front of it and discussing.
“What is so refreshing about this, Aditya, is seeing these dreamers from all walks of life, gathering to pursue their dream in this authentic way.”
I am changing the channel. And there I am again!
“This amateur video of an acting class,” one bearded man is saying, “has become a viral sensation in the city. Given the brutal news of the recent days, is it any surprise that the public is hungry for a feel-good take, for a reminder that dreams and dreamers do exist in this city?”
I am pressing the button, and—
“While some people are calling the star of the show, Lovely, a ‘terrorist sympathizer,’ there are many who insist she is simply standing up for a person she sees as her good-hearted neighbor.”
“No doubt,” another man is saying, “many are questioning the fairness of Jivan’s trial, and Lovely’s courtroom performance has a lot to do with it. She is not a legal expert, or an investigator, of course, so it is her passion which is getting attention. Stay with us as we will be joined by—”
“What avenues does the ordinary person have to chase their dreams? Tell me, if you don’t go to an elite filmmaking academy and hobnob with—”
All these men are lecturing on me! They are having different opinions on whether I am right or foolish, whether Jivan is innocent or evil, but at least they are all discussing me on what they are calling prime-time news!
While I am looking at the screen, somebody is knocking on my door, then peeking in the window and saying, “It’s me.”
“Arjuni Ma?” I am saying. Immediately I am opening the door, clearing my clothes from the bed, slapping my palms around some over-smart mosquitoes. Inside, she is not sitting. Instead, she is putting her two hands on my cheeks, as if I am a child, and looking at the TV which is still on.
“I am older than you,” she is saying to the TV, “isn’t it true, Lovely?”
I am looking at her.
“In life,” she is saying, “I have learned that we cannot be having everything. For example. To be putting fish on the plate, we are having to sacrifice dignity on the streets. We are having to beg. Why? Because we would be liking to eat. To be left alone by the police, we are having to—well, I don’t have to tell you. So this is a moment of sacrifice for you, Lovely. You are on TV. Your video is popular. Don’t let that criminal, that terrorist—”
I am opening my mouth to protest, but Arjuni Ma is raising a hand.
“Let her go from your life. You may be fond of that girl, but you must choose: Are you wanting to rise in the film world? Or are you wanting the public to see you as a person who is defending a terrorist? Don’t let that case drag you down, Lovely. That is my only advice for you.”
“But some people are saying,” I am telling Arjuni Ma, “that her trial is not fair—”
“Is that your fight to fight?” Arjuni Ma is saying. “The trial brought you closer to your dream, so aren’t you going to reach for what you really want? You want to be a star, or you want to be that girl’s defender forever?”
Then she is going, and leaving me alone with the TV. I am muting the volume, which is seeming too high for this small room. On the screen is my practice video. I am watching it silently, feeling something heavy in my stomach which is keeping me sitting on the mattress, keeping my feet stuck to the floor, even though I am wanting to look away. I was never thinking of the question like how Arjuni Ma was putting it, but now I am finding that I am not being able to think of it any other way.
When I am lying down in bed and closing my eyes, I am feeling my heart teaching me its own lesson. My heart is saying: This is who you are, Lovely. You are growing from a family which was betraying you, so this is nothing new. Jivan can be going forward without you also. In fact, this heart is reminding in my chest, you are not even her family. Leave her, this cold box is saying. Weren’t you dreaming of being a movie star? Weren’t you dreaming of being so close to fame?
This night, I am sleeping in shame, and I am waking in shame, and still shame is weaker than the other thing.
* * *
*
SUNDAY MORNING! Time to go to acting class. Fast fast, I am walking down the lane with my hips going like this and like that, past the small bank where the manager was demanding my birth certificate for opening an account. “I was telling him, ‘Keep your account,’ ” I am saying to the camera which is following me. “I was telling him, ‘Birth certificate! Am I a princess?’ ”
The interviewer who is walking beside me is laughing. She is brushing her glossy hair out of her eyes, and saying, “Tell me, how did you start going to this acting class?”
“Well,” I am starting. “It was happening like this—”
This time we are together walking past the guava seller in his corner. Usually he is acting like I am invisible, but today he is looking at me with big eyes.
“Here, TV!” he is calling, flapping his hand. “Come take a guava. For free!”
“Brother,” I am saying to him, “please to have some dignity. Every other day you are ignoring me, and today you are my best friend?”
The interviewer is laughing again. Many things I am doing are making her laugh. That is fine. Why not to laugh? This TV channel is paying me eighty thousand rupees just for letting them follow me to the acting class. Other TV channels were calling me and offering me money also, but I was choosing this channel because this channel is the most popular. My turn to laugh.
On the train, I am presenting my good profile to the camera.
“A train,” I am saying thoughtfully, like a university professor, “is like a film. You see, on the train we can be observing behaviors, arguments, voices. How people are looking happy or upset. How they are speaking with their mother, and with their fellow passengers, and with a pen seller.”
The interviewer is looking at me like I am a National Film Award winner. What wisdom is coming out of my mouth! She is nodding and nodding, her eyes shining with the thought of the hundred thousand viewers who will be watching this tonight.
* * *
*
IN ACTING CLASS, Mr. Debnath is feeling flustered. Now he is looking like somebody who is never even seeing a camera.
“What is that red light?” he is asking, pointing with a shaking finger at the main camera. “You want me to be looking there?”
“Please just relax, Mr. Debnath,” the interviewer is telling him. “You have been teaching this class for years and years. You are the expert. Pretend that we are not even here!”
But that is impossible. Outside the windows of the living room, a crowd is gathering to watch what is going on. “That acting class is taking place here!” someone on the street is shouting. One smart fellow is even putting his hand in and moving the curtains so they can all be seeing better.
Inside, the maid is looking suspiciously dressed up, in a shiny sari, with a hibiscus flower in her hair. To the interviewer, she is saying, “Madam, I am watching your show always! And I have been the local cleaner for this class for, oh don’t ask me, years. I have seen some things. I am available for any show.”
While the interviewer is managing her, smiling politely and saying, okay, thank you, Brijesh is coming up to me and mumbling, “Lovely, I am getting”—here he is giggling, hee-hee—“I am getting an offer to do an ad! Detergent ad. They saw me in your video!”<
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* * *
*
THE TV PEOPLE ARE bringing their own overhead lights, making this small living room a land of a thousand suns. Every pimple and scar on my face, you can see, except a professional makeup man put high-quality foundation and concealer. Mr. Debnath’s deceased mother and father on the wall, please to pray for them, are looking like their eyes are popping out. Never were they seeing this much glamour in their living days.
For so long I am dreaming of delivering dialogue in front of a real camera, and now I am in front of three! For hours the TV crew are filming us doing practice scenes. In front of them, we are turning up the drama. We are dying patients, supermodels on a runway, mothers cooking food for our husbands. In different scenes, we are having everything from indigestion to love affairs.
In the end, the interviewer is asking me some of my thoughts.
“Society is telling me that I cannot be dreaming this dream,” I am telling her. “Society is having no room for people like me”—and inside I am thinking, forgive me, Jivan, I must be leaving you out of this—“because we are poor, and we may not be speaking perfect English. But is that meaning we are not having dreams?”
Now I am confessing, on this show, that many times I was walking in front of the Film and Television Institute, just to see how it was. Just to be a little close to the success of the rich acting students. They were getting casting directors, not just casting agents and coordinators, coming to their classes. They were getting special classes from directors, actors, stuntmen, producers, choreographers.
One crazy day I was even thinking, what if I am giving up this rented room? What if I am just sleeping in the train station and spending my rent money on the big acting school?
I am laughing after I am saying that.
“Ha-ha-ha!” I am laughing. “Can you believe?”
But the interviewer, she is having tears in her eyes. She is putting a hand on my cold hand, like we are newly discovering that we are sisters.
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