Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  And she succeeded. She got more ramp work than anyone else in town, and two glossy covers in a month. There was a buzz about her even before she won Miss India, and more afterwards. She won the contest easily, and without having to compromise in the usual ways. She stayed tantalizingly out of the reach of the photographers and the judges and the publishers, and collected her crown. She made the chief editor of the sponsoring newspaper believe that he would get between her legs if she won the crown, and slipped away from him altogether. She was able to do all this because of my support. Not that we applied pressure, or bribed anyone, or used any of our other techniques. No, I just provided the resources that let her become the unearthly Zoya, that let her say ‘No’. Cash creates beauty, cash gives freedom, cash makes morality possible. Cash makes films. So I started work on my movie with Manu Tewari.

  This Manu had already written three small films, the last of which had won the National Award for best picture. I’d seen it, and thought that for an art movie about hijras it wasn’t so boring, and that the writing was actually quite powerful. So we flew Manu Tewari out to Thailand. I was willing to let Dheeraj and his team make many other choices, but I wanted control over the story. I had an idea or two myself, and I had watched a lot of films recently, and followed the weekly collections in India and abroad. I knew what I wanted in my movie. But this Manu turned out to be a socialist, and full of rules besides. For the first three days he was with us, he was as quiet and still as a rabbit who looks up and finds himself in a den of tigers. Dheeraj Kapoor had told him only that he was flying out to Bangkok to meet the financier of the film, nothing else. And in Bangkok, Manu had been picked up, put on a flight to Phuket, and suddenly he found himself on a yacht with Ganesh Gaitonde and lots of mean-looking boys with big guns. Of course he was paralysed, he didn’t know where to sit, when he was allowed to stand, or whether he could piss without permission. The boys amused themselves the first couple of days by being especially bloodthirsty in front of him, by reloading their pistols and waving them about and generally terrifying the wits out of the poor writer.

  Finally I shooed them off, and sat Manu Tewari down with a glass of Scotch, and calmed him down. I praised all his movies, and told him that the last one had made me cry, and that too for hijras, which was a far greater compliment to him than any bhenchod National Award. He settled down a bit then, and took a sip of Scotch, and began to grin a little. Writers are pathetically susceptible to praise. I have worked with politicians, and gangsters, and holy men, and let me tell you, none of these can compete with a writer for mountainous inflations of ego and mouse-like insecurities of soul. I anointed Manu with large helpings of his own glory, and he relaxed. Of course, coming from Ganesh Gaitonde, the admiration was ten times as delicious. Manu Tewari slowly relaxed back into the sofa, and took another Scotch, and told me stories about the making of his hijra movie, how they had to persuade their hero that playing a laudaless, skirt-wearing, hand-clapping hijra was not going to cripple his career for ever. Manu Tewari was himself a medium-sized piece, medium in every way. You could have taken him as a blueprint for all that is average in the world, he was not short but not too tall, he had grown up in Bandra East as the son of a Class II employee in the state Ministry of Finance, and he had gone to college at Rizvi and had had a totally undistinguished academic career. I knew all this about him from Dheeraj’s background report, but no report could have contained the madness that he hid somewhere deep inside that unremarkable body, that he let out only when he talked about movies.

  ‘Naajayaz was good, bhai,’ he said. ‘The scenes between Naseer and Ajay Devgan were very good, but somewhere in the second half it began to drag a little. That’s Mahesh Bhatt’s problem in his later movies, he either moves everything too fast, or he drags it out. So the poor public is either confused or bored.’ I had quite liked Naajayaz, but I let it pass and listened to him. Manu Tewari certainly knew his movies, he even knew details about some obscure underworld movie which had been under production from 1987 to the summer of 1990 and had come and disappeared in 1991, without anyone noticing. Except Manu Tewari. He knew who the music director was, and what ad films the cinematographer had done after that movie, and who the director had been chodoing during the song schedule in Australia, and how the film had done average business in Bombay and Hyderabad, but had been totally rejected in the Punjab circuit. He went on, ‘But the best crime-and-gangster movie of the early nineties was Parinda. It moved our films in a new direction, in terms of texture and realistic atmosphere. Clearly, Jackie Shroff found himself as an actor in that film, and he was a different Jackie afterwards. And it introduced Nana Patekar to a national audience. And Binod Pradhan’s cinematography set a new standard altogether.’

  He spoke of Naajayaz and Parinda with the seriousness of a man talking about the nature of God, or the history of the world. Actually, movies were his entire world. He had grown up in his quiet little flat, with his one sister and one brother, and he had led a colourless and blameless life. But through it all he had grown this thing inside himself, this worm, this python that ate films to survive, that swallowed them whole and kept them for ever. You had to give him the merest excuse to talk about Mughal-e-Azam, and he would go on for an hour. But to get him to talk about his own mother took some severe nudging from me. And even then he only said, ‘What to say about her, bhai? She’s a housewife. She looked after us.’

  For all his bright-eyed curiosity about the details of other people’s adventures and agonies, that was all he could find to say about his mother. But I had only been trying to make family chat, a management technique I had learnt from Guru-ji. This Manu Tewari was comfortable enough now. It was time to get down to business. ‘All right. So,’ I said, ‘let’s talk about the story.’

  He sat up straight then. When it came to work, he was instantly focused, that first time and always afterwards. ‘Yes, bhai,’ he said. ‘Please tell me.’

  We were sailing from Kata beach to Patong. In the late afternoon grey, the glassy sea slid beneath us. A towering cloud-bank hung over us to the east, still and perfect and unreal. I took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking of a thriller,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, bhai,’ Manu said. ‘Excellent. A thriller.’

  ‘I like those films where there is some danger, and the hero has to avert the threat.’

  ‘A suspense story. I like it, bhai.’

  ‘The girl helps the hero, and they fall in love.’

  ‘Of course. And we’ll do an international thriller, so that the songs can be shot abroad with justification.’

  ‘International thriller, yes.’ I was starting to like the boy.

  ‘Did you have any ideas about the hero, bhai? Who is he? An ordinary man? A policeman? A secret agent?’

  ‘No. He’s one of us.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘It’s a crime thriller.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I see the story. The hero is on the wrong side of the law, but he was driven into the underworld by circumstances.’

  ‘Yes. I want to start with him coming to Bombay.’

  ‘Right, right,’ Manu said.

  But he was looking doubtful. ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘In a thriller, bhai, there may not be enough time to develop his entire history.’

  ‘Why? You have three maderchod hours.’

  ‘True, true, bhai. But you’ll be surprised how quickly three hours fill up. You have five, six songs, that itself is close to forty minutes. Then, you have space for maybe forty scenes before the interval, thirty, thirty-five afterwards. And a thriller has to start with the danger, tell the audience what they’re supposed to be scared of, what is at stake, and then it should race to the finish. And also…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The boy coming to Bombay, becoming a criminal. It’s been done, in Satya. And Vaastav, that also had the introduction-to-the-underworld theme.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s been done. It’s still true. Look at all these boys who are w
ith me.’

  ‘Of course, bhai. They have been telling me their stories. But, you see, the audience gets used to things. First time, they love it. Second time, they love it less. Third time, they say, “It’s too filmi, yaar,” and they reject the truth altogether. You see?’

  I saw. I had done the same myself. ‘The audience is a bastard,’ I said.

  At this he jumped up and clasped my hand. ‘Yes, bhai, yes, the audience is a gaandu, it is a madman, it is a monster of a baby that must be fed.’ He realized then that he was perhaps being a bit too familiar, so he let go of my hand and backed away. But his eyes were brilliant with sudden sympathy, and he couldn’t stop himself from going on. ‘Nobody knows what this maderchod audience wants, bhai. Everyone pretends, but nobody really knows. You can make a big film, spend and spend on publicity, and in the cinemas you won’t even hear crows calling. Meanwhile, some B-grade, shoddily made film with no story to speak of will make a hundred crores.’

  ‘But you still try to predict what they want. And you have all these rules. Why only forty scenes before the interval? Why not sixty?’

  ‘Can’t be done, bhai. The audience is unpredictable, but it is also very rigid. It wants only what it wants, in the way it is used to getting it. Even if you have a really dhansu story, if you change the shape of the story the audience will throw things at the screen, and tear up the seats, and riot. That’s the thing, bhai. You have to do new things in old ways. Or old things fitted out in new clothes. Your film has to be hatke, but not too hatke. The art-film types keep saying they’re doing new-new things, but they also have to obey the rules. It’s just a different set of rules, and a different audience. You can’t get away from the rules.’

  ‘We’re not going to make a maderchod art film,’ I growled. I was going to spend thirty crores on this film. We had two big heroes signed up already, and Dheeraj had an appointment with Amitabh Bachchan’s secretary the coming Tuesday. I had told Dheeraj also that I wanted fultu special effects, and first-class costumes and locations. I wanted the film to look glossy and big, it was going to be huge. And huge costs money, lots of it. I was doing this for Zoya, but I wanted my money back, at least that. ‘You forget art,’ I told Manu. ‘You write one fast-moving thriller. Put something in every scene that makes this public feel like it has an electric wire connected to its golis. Keep them awake and excited. Give it to them, hard and fast.’

  He nodded, up and down, fast. ‘Yes, yes, bhai. I understand. Action and spectacle and big-big glamour.’ He held his arms out wide. ‘The emotion of Mother India, the scale of Sholay, the speed of Amar Akbar Anthony. That’s what we want.’

  That’s what we wanted all right. So we got to work.

  I continued my work for Mr Kumar’s people. Mr Kumar had retired the year before, despite my protests. ‘Saab, why do you have to go?’ I’d said. ‘In our business, there is no retirement except going upstairs.’

  ‘Ganesh, my business is not your business.’

  He was always like that, short and blunt. But he was not unkind, this wily old bowler who had played the game for so long. We were not friends, but over the years we had come to understand each other, and our mutual need. He needed me to extract threads of information from Kathmandu, and Karachi, and Dubai, and sometimes make certain people disappear, and I needed him to put pressure on policemen in Delhi and Mumbai, and supply me with information in turn, and help occasionally with logistics and resources. We had no illusions about each other, but we were comfortable, like neighbours who had grown older together. And I tried to tell him he was not old enough yet to take sanyas. ‘Saab, if the government makes you retire just when you are at the top of your form, a fabulous khiladi like you, then the government is mad.’

  ‘It’s not just the government, Ganesh, I also want to sit and rest.’

  ‘All right, saab, then sit in one place, and talk to me on the phone. Like a consultant, you know.’

  He said, ‘Work for you?’ I could tell he was amused.

  ‘Work with me.’

  ‘No, Ganesh. I have done enough, and I am feeling tired.’

  He was not being rude, and I did not feel insulted. ‘But what will you do?’

  ‘Read. Think. As I said, sit in one place.’

  I knew from long experience that he would not be persuaded by arguments or temptations, and so the discussion was closed. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘It has been good to work with you, Mr K.D. Yadav.’ I wanted to let him know that I knew his real name, but I had respected him enough to call him Mr Kumar, as he wanted, for all the time we had co-operated.

  ‘Very good, Ganesh. I had no doubt you would investigate me, and find out.’

  ‘I learnt from you, saab.’

  And so he passed from my life, this faraway teacher of mine. He introduced me to his successor, a Mr Joshi, and for about a month he stayed in touch, to help with the transition. I soon knew this Mr Joshi’s real name – Dinesh Kulkarni – and I told Mr Kumar exactly what I thought of him. ‘This man’s a fool, saab. He sits in Delhi and wants to tell me where to send money, and how much, and how many men to send on an operation. He doubts me and my sources, and speaks to me as if I’m his servant.’

  ‘Be patient, Ganesh,’ Mr Kumar said. ‘You will take time to adjust to each other.’

  So I was patient, but that bastard Kulkarni did not adjust to me or to anything else. It was amazing to me that the country’s security was being handled by such a gaandu, but then I had seen gaandus rise to the top in every profession. I had to deal with this particular gaandu. Meanwhile, Mr Kumar finally slipped away into his retirement. I worked on.

  We wrote the screenplay for my film between Ko Samui and Patong. I preferred the long quiet of Samui, but the boys wanted the jostling chaos of Patong. I let them have one week out of every three in the bars and on the beaches, and then turned our bows again towards peace. With Manu Tewari on board, they had something else besides endless card-playing to occupy their hours, even on the sea runs. It was exciting for them to see a story form, to feel it take on contours and characters. They discussed the narrative endlessly, badgered Manu for new scenes, and offered opinions and suggestions, and told him their own adventures. They were passionately involved with the hero of the film, and each sulked in turn when Manu refused to incorporate some turn or twist which he had thought up for this hero. A few times I had to intervene and put down a final veto on a suggestion before Manu got beaten up, or thrown off the boat. Of course our normal work and play went on as usual: I talked to Kulkarni every week, and ran his intelligence operations, found information and killed a bastard here and there for my country; I consulted Guru-ji and moved his shipments; I spoke to Jojo and laughed with her; I met Zoya and took her. But in those six months, no matter what else we did, that story threaded through our brains and bodies and obsessed each one of us. We talked about it morning and evening and night, and discussed the casting, and listened avidly to the songs as they came in from the recording studios. And we hovered over Manu Tewari.

  He was middling in size, and not hard at all, but that Manu was stubborn. He would eat whatever you put on his plate, and not complain at all if you changed television channels while he was watching the news, but if you tried to interfere with his scenes, he was fierce as a yellow-toothed sow with her threatened piglets. I was his financier, and his paymaster, and after all I was Ganesh Gaitonde, but even with me he argued back and defended his decisions and debated. Sometimes the boys winced when our story sessions heated up, and our voices rose, and Manu Tewari risked rudeness. But I tolerated him, because he was a good writer. He was writing me a strong story. And besides, I was learning from him. As the weeks passed, as I argued with Manu Tewari, I began to see what he was talking about. He taught me about cinema, how a simple cut from a blown-out matchstick to a blazing desert could explode in your chest and rock you back in your seat. We watched DVDs with him, and learnt the language of extreme close-up and long shot, the release of space and the compression of time, ho
w the simple movement of a camera down a pair of fixed tracks could say more than a thousand books. I learnt these tools, and I watched Mughal-e-Azam, and Kagaz ke Phool, and I watched them dozens of times, and I learnt how a small group of master craftsmen, a gang of purposeful madmen, could wield light and sound and space to make shimmering monuments that materialized on cloth screens, on dirty village walls, on a yacht in the southern seas. I could start to see how a good story had a certain geometry, a succession of curves, a billowing rise of crests and plateaux that led to the final explosion, and satisfaction. If you made a story that was lopsided, that was blemished, this ugliness would bring only boredom and emptiness. In beauty there was bliss.

  ‘Exactly,’ Guru-ji said to me one afternoon. ‘But not only bliss. Also terror.’ He had taken an unexpected delight in the slow birth of our story. I had expected he would think the whole project too cheap and childish, but yet again he surprised me. He listened to our ideas and innovations attentively, and gave advice without being domineering. And here he was, finding not only beauty but also terror in our half-finished script.