Bollywood Confidential

by Sonia Singh

  Okay, Raveena was seriously doubting her choice of restaurant. What on Earth had made her think her parents would like Mantra?

  The fact that there were more Indian artifacts lining the restaurant walls than in the entire state of Punjab? Or perhaps it was how the number of gauzy glittery scarves draped around the tables could easily outfit several dozen harems?

  And did they really need to be situated so close to the sitar player?

  Speaking of the musician, he had a mane of curly brown hair and began strumming the sitar version of a Jessica Simpson song. Bob indiscreetly covered his ears.

  The waiter appeared and Raveena decided it was time to take advantage of Mantra’s fully stocked bar.

  “Double vodka martini,” she said.

  Her mother stared until Raveena felt tiny pinpricks of maternal disapproval penetrate the top layer of her skin. “You drink too much,” Leela scolded.

  “No I don’t.”

  That was pretty much the end of their discussion.

  For the next few moments, her father quietly sipped his merlot, her mother quietly fumed, and Raveena quietly decided the evening was going far better than planned.

  The silence was short-lived as Leela set down the menu and frowned. “Why did we have to come all the way to LA? I could have cooked dinner for us.”

  “Because it’s your birthday, Mom,” Raveena said. The idea is for you to get out and have some fun. This place is happening. We’ll probably see some celebrities.”

  Leela’s interest perked. “Like Paul Newman?”

  “Ah, I don’t really think it’s his scene, but Leonardo DiCaprio has been spotted regularly.”

  She snorted. “That little boy from Titanic? He looks like a woman.”

  Leela didn’t have a hankering for actors, unless they were of the Bollywood variety. Bollywood—for those not in the know—is the popular term used to describe the Indian film industry. Bombay plus Hollywood equals Bollywood.

  Then again, she supposed the word was debatable considering the name of the city had officially been changed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1997.

  Mumbollywood didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

  Not that it mattered. Most of the world continued to refer to the city as Bombay.

  The waiter was hovering near the table, so Raveena cracked open the menu with determination. “I’m having the prawn curry. Mom?”

  Frowning, Leela peered at the menu. “These dishes are weird. Tandoori pizza? Tofu curry? This isn’t Indian food.” As if to illustrate her point, she began examining the plates of poppadum and bowls of chutney on the table with suspicion.

  Trying to ignore her mother’s scowling face, Raveena turned to her father. “What do you feel like, Dad? The lamb here is really good.”

  Bob smoothed the ends of his mustache and cleared his throat. “Are we talking New Zealand lamb? That’s the best. If the lamb here came from China, I’m not touching it. I’d rather eat shit.”

  Raveena was spared from asking her father if he’d like a salad with that when her cell phone began to ring. She dug it out of her purse. “Hello?”

  “Raveena, doll, it’s Griffin.”

  “Who’s calling?” Leela demanded.

  “My agent,” Raveena whispered.

  “I want to talk to him. Why isn’t he setting you up with Spielberg and that nice Indian boy who made the movie about ghosts?”

  She meant M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense.

  Call her crazy, but Raveena didn’t think putting her mother on the phone with her agent was a good idea.

  Griffin persisted. “Raveena? Hello? Are you listening?”

  She looked over at her parents who, instead of looking at each other, were watching the diners at the next table.

  Maybe it was a good time for her mother to begin opening presents.

  “Look, Griffin,” she said quickly. “I’ll call you back. I’m in the middle of—”

  His voice rose in volume. “We can’t talk later. We’re talking leading role here! We’re talking major film! You’re up for it! In fact, you’re perfect for it!”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Close your mouth, Raveena,” her mother scolded. “Otherwise, you look slow.”

  Raveena turned away and pressed the cell phone close to her ear. Excitement began to thud inside her. “A leading role?” It couldn’t be. After all these years…“Who’s the director? The producer?”

  “Randy Kapoor is producing and directing,” Griffin said.

  She was puzzled. “Randy? I’ve never heard of him.” Raveena thought she knew all the Hollywood players of Indian descent. She belonged to a group called the South Asian Representation Society or SARS.

  Sidenote: They existed before the global disease.

  She jogged her memory. “Oh wait. Is this the guy with Buddha Tree Productions? The one making the Tibetan film with Richard Gere?”

  Visions of co-starring with the gorgeous Gere swirled through her head, and she nearly floated out of her chair with giddiness.

  Griffin cleared his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. This isn’t a Hollywood film.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s Bollywood.”

  She promptly fell back to Earth. “Bollywood?” she shrieked.

  “Bollywood?” Her father echoed.

  Leela’s eyes lit up and she smiled for the first time all night. “Bollywood?”

  Maybe Raveena had just given her mother the birthday present of a lifetime.

  Chapter 3

  After dinner Raveena returned in a daze to her small Santa Monica condo.

  She parked her Toyota Prius—the hybrid of choice for all Hollywood types—and let herself in.

  Pouring a vodka and Red Bull, she retreated to the living room—a mere three steps—and curled up in her favorite purple velvet chair.

  Staring at the praline-colored walls, decorated with framed posters of her favorite movies like Roman Holiday, The Godfather and Raiders of the Lost Ark, she thought about the Bollywood offer.

  Bollywood.

  Even as a kid she hadn’t been able to stand watching Indian movies.

  The bloodstains on the heroes’ clothes always looked like ketchup. The heroines wore too much makeup. And just when you thought you’d finally figured out how the hero could possibly leap across an entire row of supply trucks in his white loafers with three-inch heels, the entire cast would abruptly break into a song-and-dance sequence.

  Leela—an avowed Bollywood fanatic—didn’t appreciate her daughter’s continuous critical commentary and pointed out that some of Raveena’s favorite movies were musicals like Grease, The Sound of Music and Moulin Rouge.

  Raveena’s response was to thrust out her pelvis and begin shaking her hips in imitation of the Bollywood babes on screen.

  Before tonight, Raveena would have thought Bollywood had as much relevance to her world as the Kabbalah did to a devout Muslim.

  Downing her drink, she rinsed the glass and placed it in the dishwasher. Then it was time to begin her nightly ministrations.

  Securing her hair with a headband, she sat down in front of her bedroom dresser and began removing her makeup. She followed that up with a sugar-based exfoliating scrub.

  A tedious ritual and one she’d only just begun.

  Sometimes Raveena wanted to say to hell with it and jump into bed, face dirty, teeth un-flossed, but then a vision of Angelina Jolie or Kate Winslet would surface in her head, and she’d remember the stars she was up against.

  So, as she battled dead skin cells and misbehaving pores, she went over the remaining details Griffin had filled her in on after her mother’s excited outburst at the restaurant.

  There was one aspect that had startled her most:

  No audition.

  She couldn’t believe there was no audition for the role. Only people like Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro (known as Bob in the biz) had roles hand delivered to them.

  Not Raveena Rai.


  But apparently the director, Randy Kapoor, while in Singapore attending an international Bollywood awards show, had seen a commercial she’d starred in.

  The commercial was for a super-absorbent Japanese tampon the length and width of a toothpick.

  The Vagitsu.

  Don’t visualize it.

  Two years before, India had won the Miss Globe crown—similar to the Miss Universe title—for the first time. Indian fever struck Japan, and the Vagitsu Company had approached Miss Globe to star in its ad campaign.

  She declined.

  Apparently, Miss Globe did not want to embarrass her traditional Indian family by appearing in a tampon commercial.

  Raveena had no such qualms.

  After an international casting call, she was flown first class to Tokyo, put up in a five-star hotel and spent a week on a set that was straight out of Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra. For seven days she wore a number of gauzy outfits, shot sultry looks into the camera, and was paid more money than she’d ever seen in her life.

  For her efforts, she also received a lifetime supply of the Vagitsu.

  Truly a fabulous product and now the number one tampon in all of Asia.

  FDA approval is still pending in the United States.

  Anyway, thanks to that commercial, which was still running, Raveena was able to afford a trendy one-bedroom condo in Santa Monica instead of a cockroach-infested studio in North Hollywood, and get presented with a Bollywood acting offer on a silver platter.

  All without auditioning.

  Speaking of the role, she only had a brief sketch of the story. It revolved around an American girl of Indian heritage who grows up without a father. It’s only when her mother is on her deathbed that the heroine discovers her father is very much alive and living in a small village in India.

  Before the heroine can react, the mother offers up another deathbed confession. The father has no idea that his daughter even exists. The mother then conveniently—for the storyline—dies. The heroine, who has never been to India, ends up hopping a plane determined to find her father.

  No mention of whether she gets her malaria shots or not.

  Of course, after three days in India she realizes there’s more than one village in the country. So she hires a tour guide, the hero. The hero and heroine begin their journey across India looking for dear lost Daddy, slowly falling in love and facing many adventures and sticky situations along the way. One of which involves a nasty-tempered camel and multiple molestations by a monkey.

  When the heroine finally reunites with her father, there is much singing and much crying, as the old man is also on his deathbed. However, finding out that he has a daughter gives him the will to live.

  Raveena could play the role in her sleep.

  Beauty routine finally over, she threw on her favorite pink cotton nightshirt, slipped in between the sheets and closed her eyes.

  Call her crazy, but she couldn’t decide what to do.

  Bollywood was so…far.

  It was time to talk this over with her friends.

  Chapter 4

  Siddharth was the number one actor in India.

  But he couldn’t care less.

  He was bored.

  High above the trees of Bombay, ensconced in the penthouse flat he shared with his mother and sister, having just returned from a week-long shoot in Mauritius, Siddharth leaned back in the recliner, stretched out his long legs and began flipping through channels on the new flat-screen TV.

  One of his movies was airing on the Zee Network. He grimaced, and it wasn’t from the chicken tikka masala that Pratab—the family cook—had prepared for dinner.

  On screen, Siddharth got down on one knee and began shaking his shoulders to the beat of the music.

  His grimace deepened into a scowl.

  He was thirty-two, for God’s sake. How much longer would he have to play the boyish college heartthrob?

  Siddharth flipped channels and came upon another of his films. This time he was running through a field of tulips in Holland, his arms outstretched, beaming from ear to ear, flashing his famous toothy smile.

  Siddharth remembered a time when acting had been his passion. Now all he did was star in film after film about lovers who came together, were torn apart, and then brought together again at the end.

  He’d finally taken a risk last year and starred in a film where he’d played the villain.

  He’d had the time of his life.

  But the film had bombed at the box office.

  Siddharth’s status as an A-list actor remained untouched, but he’d learned that the Indian audience wanted to see him as a romantic hero and would settle for nothing else.

  Ever since Siddharth’s father had passed away when he was sixteen and his sister Sachi just a baby, he’d become the sole financial support for his mother and sister. He couldn’t afford to take chances with his career.

  Disgusted with watching himself, he turned off the TV and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 5

  “Unlike you, Jai, not everyone was sexually active in the womb.”

  Raveena said this last comment a bit too loudly, and the man on the street corner gave her a startled look.

  She returned the look, because he had an iguana perched on each one of his shoulders and one on top of his head.

  Los Angeles. Love it or hate it.

  It was Sunday afternoon, they were driving into West LA, and she had just finished telling her two best friends, Jai and Maza, about the Bollywood role.

  Somehow the conversation had segued into Jai’s sex life.

  Then again, a conversation about blueberry muffins could take a sexual turn if Jai was around.

  Maza and Jai finished their cigarettes and put the stubs into the biodegradable baggie Maza always carried in her car.

  Raveena wasn’t a smoker and had opened the window. Now that the air was clear she closed it. She didn’t want to freak out any more people with their conversation.

  Jai and Raveena had been friends forever. Their parents moved in the same Indian social circle. The year the two friends had turned twenty-one, Jai had come out to her.

  Personally, Raveena had been more surprised by the zit she discovered on her chin that very same morning.

  As much as she loved him, Jai was under the serious delusion that most people thought he was straight.

  He was also paranoid that his parents would one day discover his secret sexual identity.

  Raveena didn’t have the heart to tell Jai that it was pretty obvious from the way his parents never brought up their son’s lack of girlfriends, his career as a makeup artist at MAC, or his DVD collector’s edition of the show Queer as Folk, that they probably had a clue.

  In the backseat, Jai pointed at the well-muscled blond man in a red convertible. “You think he’s into chicken tandoori?”

  Maza pressed a hand to her stomach. “Stop. You’re making me hungry.”

  Jai caught Raveena’s eye and winked. “I wasn’t talking about food, honey.”

  She didn’t wink back. “Can we please get back to discussing the Bollywood deal?”

  They were now stuck in a traffic jam on Sunset Boulevard. Only in Southern California could you find yourself in a traffic jam on a Sunday afternoon.

  “Personally, I’d love to get out of LA,” Maza said. “Go to a spiritual place like India and just live in a cave.”

  Ah…not!

  Maza gunned the engine of her Range Rover and pushed forward in traffic.

  Maza, the first friend Raveena had made after moving to LA, donated numerous hours to cleaning up the environment yet drove one of the most expensive SUVs on the market.

  Go figure.

  At least she was an excellent driver, which was more than Raveena could say for most SUV owners.

  One summer, just for the hell of it, Maza had driven a fourteen-wheeler across country. She claimed there was something Zen-like about truck driving.

  Raveena would imagine Maza, dres
sed head to toe in Donna Karan, cigarette dangling from her lips, Chanel sunglasses protecting her eyes, CB radio squawking, as she drove the behemoth of a vehicle all the way from California to New Hampshire.

  Maza was beautiful and seemed annoyed by the fact. She had an ivory complexion, thick black hair and catlike dark eyes. Regardless of the season, she always swathed herself from head to toe in black. For instance, on this gorgeous January day, Maza had on a black turtleneck and a black sweater.

  It was seventy degrees and sunny.

  Go figure.

  Maza was a writer and her first novel had been released last year. The book detailed the dark nihilistic journey of a woman tortured by life and her deepening mental disease. The story had left Raveena vaguely disturbed. The gothic fans that routinely showed up at Maza’s book signings left her even more disturbed and slightly frightened.

  A few months ago, one of Maza’s male fans had begun stalking her. He had confronted her in the middle of the night outside her cottage nestled deep inside the Hollywood Hills.

  When he’d grabbed her and demanded her undying love, Maza had calmly kicked her attacker in the crotch and dialed 911 on her cell phone, all without dropping her cigarette. She’d coolly continued to smoke, her boot firmly planted on the man’s neck as he lay prone and groaning, until the police arrived.

  Maza and Raveena met in a bookstore. Maza had been browsing in Witchcraft and Demonology when Raveena accidentally knocked over a stack of books titled Women Who Don’t Hate Enough. Maza had come over to help her restock them, and they’d been friends ever since.

  Maza forgave Raveena’s occasional buying of a Britney Spears album.

  Raveena forgave Maza cleansing her aura with sage before she stepped into her house.

  Go figure.

  Despite all of their oddities, Raveena was grateful the three of them were so close. For instance, here they were taking her to the Standard Lounge on Sunset to celebrate the Bollywood role.

  The one she hadn’t yet agreed to.

  “Can we get back to my dilemma?” Raveena asked. “I can’t just pack up and leave LA. They want me to commit to six months in Bombay. What if a great opportunity comes my way in Hollywood?”