Show Business

by Shashi Tharoor

  “Do you have to go, Ashok?” she asks, as the ayah begins to change the diapers and we move away from the babies.

  “You know I do,” I reply reasonably. After all, it is my profession.

  “You spend so little time with the girls,” she says.

  What she really means, of course, is that I spend so little time with her. “They’ve got you, my love,” I point out. “That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? One of us must be with them as much as possible. I’ve got to go out and earn the daal and chawal.”

  “But you don’t need to work so hard anymore, Ashok,” she says. “We can afford all the daal and chawal we can possibly want, and more. You told me yourself you didn’t know what to do with all the black money that’s been pouring in.”

  What she really means is, you don’t have to do so many films with Mehnaz Elahi. She’s heard the rumors, like everyone else. But she never asks about her. Never even mentions Mehnaz’s name. Proud woman, my wife. I like that about her: her pride.

  “Sweetheart, it’s a treadmill,” I explain, a slight note of impatience entering my voice. “I can’t get off it. Not without serious injury. There’s a special responsibility to being at the top, you know. I’ve got to maintain my position. And the only way I can do that is by making more and bigger hits. The best scripts keep being offered to me because I’m Number One. I do them, so I stay Number One. The moment I say no to a sure-fire property, somebody else will snap it up and producers will begin to believe that Ashok Banjara is duplicable. Then no one will want to pay for the original article anymore.”

  “So what?” she asks. “You’ve achieved everything there is to achieve in the industry. Why should you have to keep on struggling?”

  “I’m not struggling, Maya,” I snap. “I’m working. Now you’ve got to be reasonable. Please.” I walk to the door.

  “Ashok.” There is a catch in her voice. I remember, almost in wonder, how the slightest hint of tears in Maya’s tone would melt my heart. Not it is all I can do to control my irritation. “Ashok, don’t go today. Please. For my sake.”

  “Maya, sometimes I don’t understand you at all.” I do not attempt to dampen the asperity in my response. “People are waiting for me. There is a whole studio gearing up for a shoot. How can I not go?”

  “You won’t be the first actor who’s failed to turn up for a shooting,” she says. “You could be ill. I could be ill.”

  “But you’re not,” I reply. “And I’m not. Maya, look, if there were a good enough reason, of course I could tell the studio I can’t make it. But just like that?”

  “So my asking you isn’t a good enough reason,” she says, averting her face.

  I can’t take any more of this. “Look, I’ve got to go,” I growl. I shut the door harder than I intended. But I don’t have the time to go back and apologize.

  What has come over Maya these days? Some postnatal emotional instability, I suppose. It’s not as if the triplets are driving her around the bend; with an ayah and two servants, she doesn’t have to do much more than occasionally hold the bottle. Maybe it’s too easy, maybe she needs a more demanding style of motherhood. She seems happy enough sometimes, but then suddenly she goes all teary and irrational with me, like today. I’m glad her mother is coming next week. That’ll take the pressure off me. It would have been even better if she’d gone to her mother for the birth, of course, but then Bhopal’s facilities can’t match Breach Candy’s. So I suggested Maya’s mother come here instead for the delivery, but Maya had some sort of silly determination to start parenthood alone, with just me around. She said it would bring us closer together. She even wanted me to be in the delivery room, for Christ’s sake. The hospital smartly put a stop to that idea, but it was a reflection of the way in which Maya seems to be grabbing for me all the time these days. Through the triplets she’s reminding me all the time that I’m not just Ashok Banjara, megastar; I’m also part — hell, I’m the head — of a unit of five. Paternal responsibility’s the role, and I guess I know the script.

  It’s not that I mind all that much. I keep telling Maya I’m happy to see myself that way: Ashok Banjara, husband and father. What the hell, I’ve certainly not shied away from that image in the media. Cyrus Sponerwalla played the births for all they were worth. Filmfare had a double-page spread of Maya and me holding the triplets up to our beaming faces. Star and Style did a whole feature entitled “NEW! Ashok Banjara’s Favorite Costars.” Even Radha Sabnis, whose tone is getting slightly bitchy again since I’ve failed to make a habit of pouring her champagne and submitting to rape, mentioned it in her Cheetah column: “Darlings, Ashok Banjara may not be able to teach Dustin Hoffman much as an actor, but he has certainly turned out to be a pretty good producer, eh? Triplets, and all girls at that! Well, the Hungry Young Man would never be satisfied with just one woman in his life, would he? Grrrowl …”

  But now the excitement is fading, and Maya’s brief return to the pages of the film magazines seems to be over. I’m getting on with my life, but she doesn’t seem to know what she wants. Apart from me, that is. All to herself, all the time. Well, she can’t have that. I can’t afford to give it to her.

  At the studio they want me to do another song picturization, a duet with Mehnaz. Mehnaz is a big name now; it hasn’t hurt that she’s unusually willing, for a star, to wear what the film industry euphemistically calls “modern dress,” garments so skimpy they make obvious what “traditional” dress used to leave to the imagination. “Modern” is the adjective most commonly applied to Mehnaz, but “willing” is the one I prefer. She’s always willing: on the set, with the dance director, and (why be coy about it?) in bed. Everyone looks forward to working with her. Especially me.

  Old Mohanlal is our director today and he’s as anxious as ever, his creased brow revealing nerves as frayed as his cuffs. It looks as if seven has become his standard place on the Mohanlal Scale of High Anxiety. But things have changed. The dance director is a more adventurous soul than was old Gopi Master. He’s a Goan called Lawrence who actually has new ideas, in tune with the new music that is sweeping our sound tracks. The traditional techniques of the Gopi Masters have passed away along with the illustrious, semiclassical composer duos who dominated the film world for decades, chubby men with oily hair who thought the violin the last word in modernity. The principles of classical Indian dance don’t apply anymore to the snazzy rhythms our popular music directors are now unashamedly plagiarizing from the West. Both the beat and the spirit of the films call for a fresh choreographical approach, and Lawrence is the one who provides the fancy footwork for it. Mohanlal just watches, his face lined in worry and incomprehension.

  Lawrence must be fifty if he’s a day, a wizened and wiry little man with more energy than Radha Sabnis after champagne. He wears a sleeveless T-shirt, tight corduroy trousers, and smooth-soled dancing shoes specially made for his tiny feet by a Chinese cobbler in Calcutta. Lawrence doesn’t just direct, he dances all the routines himself, my bits and Mehnaz’s, explaining every step and repeating every action till we’ve got it right and his T-shirt is soaked in sweat. Through it all Mohanlal pulls threads off his white cotton shirt and gray hairs off his now more sparsely covered head. A feature of Lawrence’s dancing style for me is the use of martial gestures: feet kicked high and strong, hands slashing through the air karate-style, assertive thumps of leather boots. Thanks to Lawrence I can dance and still retain my macho image; nor is my lack of fluid bharata natyam grace any longer a handicap. But Lawrence also comes up with the hip wiggles and pelvic gyrations that have pushed Mehnaz Elahi so rapidly to stardom. I stand and watch this quinquagenarian gnome, all lean dark skin and sinew, stretch and swivel and grind his nonexistent curves for Mehnaz to imitate, and I resist the urge to laugh. No one else, not even Mohanlal, seems to find anything incongruous in the movements of this fisherman’s son, whose style nets him more dance direction assignments than he can have had chicken dinners throughout his entire childhood.

  But toda
y’s scene is a curious mélange: a traditional, even hackneyed, girl-and-boy-get-amorous-in-the-rain song, with traditional, definitely hackneyed lyrics, being picturized to Lawrence’s untraditional, jack-kneed dance movements. While Mehnaz changes into the chiffon sari and skimpy blouse she is supposed to get wet in this scene — the kind of costume that would have made poor Abha’s deception impossible, but which heroines have only been called upon to don in these bolder times — Mohanlal spends fifteen anxious minutes discussing the picturization with Lawrence and me. Mehnaz has to be coy and revealing at the same time, and Lawrence has no doubt which he prefers. It is largely thanks to him that this daughter of an aristocratic Hyderabadi family has become the barest exponent of Bollywood’s brave new whirl.

  Mohanlal no longer speaks to me in Hinglish: I’ve been mouthing Salim-Javed dialogues for too long now to need that concession to my Anglophone background. Lawrence’s Hindi has never been too strong, though, and it is soon apparent that his planned moves for Mehnaz completely contradict the reticence of her lyrics. Mohanlal, his anxiety climbing to a nine, feels the dance has to be altered to conform to the song. Lawrence is volubly outraged. “Change the lyrics,” I suggest jokingly. “We can’t,” Mohanlal replies in all seriousness, his pitch ascending to a ten, “the song’s already been recorded.” Of course I know that, but my point is that no one is going to care about the lyrics anyway; they’re just going to want to see Mehnaz succumbing to me on screen, and the words she’s mouthing will seem incidental. I take Lawrence’s side in the debate. Voices are raised. Mohanlal’s voice and nerves both threaten to snap, but finally he gives in. Things have changed since Musafir. I don’t lose too many arguments on the studio floor.

  Mehnaz enters at last, a vision in blue georgette on creamy flesh, and Lawrence, appropriately enough, blows a shrill whistle. He is not expressing admiration, merely signaling to the idlers that their time has come to be usefully engaged. The hubbub in the studio dies down. Mohanlal collapses on a chair. We are ready to begin.

  “Lights! Camera! Action!”

  The tape starts, but the rain doesn’t. We try again. This time the rain does, but the tape doesn’t. Mehnaz and I are prematurely wet and growing increasingly exasperated. “It doesn’t matter,” says Mohanlal, uncharacteristically calm. “We’ll show it raining before the song starts, so you can be wet already. OK? Ready, Ashok?” This last is because I have been staring somewhat obliviously at Mehnaz in the first flush of her wetness. I have seen her without anything on in the privacy of her bedroom, and yet when I watch her fully dressed in public it is as if I am seeing her for the first time.

  “Ready,” I reply, though I feel anything but. The tape starts, and I pretend to sing:

  Let me shelter you from the rain,

  Keep you safe from all pain,

  Kiss you again and again,

  Let me hide you from the eyes of the world.

  Kisses aren’t legal yet with our censors, so Mehnaz evades my offered lips and escapes my clutches, dancing away. But I catch hold of one end of her sari pallav, which unravels, so as I flamenco toward her she is forced to pirouette back to me, pleading:

  Let me slip away, my dear,

  And overcome my fear,

  Please don’t come so very near,

  Let me hide before my modesty’s unfurled.

  “Cut!” Rarely have I so resented a directorial intrusion. “Now what’s the matter?” Mehnaz asks. Mohanlal’s anxiety is compounded with embarrassment: it turns out her bra strap’s showing. “What do you expect, with this blouse your tailors given me?” she flashes with spirit. “There’s more cloth on one of Ashok’s handkerchiefs.”

  I would have preferred her not to reveal so much familiarity with the contents of my pockets, but the point is taken. There is a hasty consultation: actress, director, costume designer, wardrobe attendant, and (since I have nothing better to do) me. Alternative blouses are brought out for inspection and discarded, for a variety of reasons, as inappropriate. The final solution, I have to admit, comes from me: she could wear the same blouse, but without a bra.

  Mehnaz looks at me expressively, and I move my hands in a Can you think of anything better? gesture. She retreats to her dressing room while the cameraman calls unnecessarily for a baby — not one of my triplets, thank God, but a small spotlight — and the makeup man powders my glistening nose. When she returns, my heart skips a beat. Little has now been left even to my satiated imagination.

  “Go easy on the close-ups,” Mohanlal mutters to the cameraman in less-than-chaste Punjabi. “Keep her you-know-whats out of the frame. I don’t want the censors cutting the entire bloody song.” The cameraman raises a blasé eyebrow and nods elliptically.

  We start again. The first couple of verses go without incident.

  ME:

  Let me shelter you from the rain,

  Keep you safe from all pain,

  Kiss you again and again,

  Let me hide you from the eyes of the world.

  MEHNAZ:

  Let me slip away, my dear,

  And overcome my fear,

  Please don’t come so very near,

  Let me hide before my modesty’s unfurled.

  I pull her to me, drop the end of the pallav, and hug her, as we dance in a circle. She has only the thin blue strip of the blouse between her neck and her navel, and I am strongly aroused:

  Let me hold you ’gainst my chest,

  Feel the pressure of your breast,

  Hug, caress you and the rest —

  “Cut!” We hear the dance director’s whistle before the actual word. This time it is Lawrence who is unhappy. We aren’t going around fast enough in the circle and we’re holding each other too close (no surprise there). He summons an assistant, a thin, sallow man in glasses, grips him at the elbows, shows us where his heels are, and demonstrates the way he wants us to dance. Mehnaz studies them attentively, but when I stare at these two middle-aged men solemnly going around in circles, I cannot help breaking into a broad grin. Lawrence is not amused. “Let’s see you do it now!” he says, blowing his whistle.

  We start, but Mehnaz falls headlong into my arms and the whistle is blown almost immediately. In getting her grip and pace right, Mehnaz failed to notice her feet and tripped on an inconvenient plant. Lawrence now decides, much to my resentment, since I have done nothing wrong, to dance with her himself in order to show her how it should feel. I watch Mehnaz, blouse bouncing, in his arms and feel a twinge of possessiveness. A makeup man comes up with a dirty handkerchief to clean the current mixture of rainwater and sweat off my face, but I wave him away angrily.

  At last, we continue:

  Let me hold you ’gainst my chest,

  Feel the pressure of your breast,

  Hug, caress you and the rest —

  Let me wrap you up and keep you near my heart.

  I wrap the pallav around both of us. I can feel Mehnaz’s heartbeat through the syncopations of the sound track. I imagine it is her own voice, and not that of the pockmarked fifty-six-year-old playback-singing veteran, that is breathing huskily at me:

  Let me go, dearest, please,

  I must plead for my release,

  Your importunings must cease,

  Let me save myself and hold myself apart.

  The whistle sounds again. This time Mehnaz’s lips were out of sync with the sound track. She flushes, but I move my lips to indicate, “Don’t worry.” We resume, and a dhoti-clad delivery man bearing a tiffin-carrier walks into one of the reflectors, sending Mohanlal’s hands skyward and the cameraman into paroxysms of choice Punjabi invective. At last we catch up to the bit where Lawrence gets really bold: I push Mehnaz back from the waist as we dance, my face dangerously close to hers, my hands shimmering on her torso, and intone:

  Let me taste your shining lips,

  Place my hands upon your hips,

  Feel your rises and your dips,

  Let us travel to the heights of paradise.

  Mehnaz is o
bviously aflame. She wants me, she wants me here and now, but the script and the situation leave her no choice:

  Let me be, precious one,

  I am burning like the sun,

  I’m afraid I have to run,

  Let us only speak the language of our eyes.

  “Cut it!” Mohanlal shouts in triumph. “Thank you, Ashokji, thank you, Mehnazji. We’ll use that one.”

  “Sorry, boss.” The cameraman is lugubrious. “We can’t.”

  “What d’you mean?” Mehnaz, already beginning to turn toward the dressing room, is apoplectic.

  “Look, Madam.” The cameraman points into the distance. Well in the background, unnoticed by all of us but certain to show up on the screen, a uniformed security guard sits placidly on a stool, surveying the scene with indifference.

  “I don’t believe it,” I say, but secretly I am happy to cavort once more with Mehnaz for the camera. Strange: with Maya, the moment I realized I loved her and wanted her to be mine, I desired nothing so much as to lock her away from prying eyes, to protect her from the cheapening gaze of the public. But with Mehnaz, I can resist no opportunity to flaunt her in front of everyone. I enjoy being with her in public, and I enjoy being watched enjoying her. “Let’s do it again,” I say decisively.