Don’t go too far —
It frightens me.
Don’t come too near —
It frightens me.
Don’t go too far, don’t come too near,
Be like a star, shine on my fear,
Enlighten me.
Don’t go too far —
It frightens me.
Don’t come too near —
It frightens me.
I want you in, I want you out,
If you go or come, I want to shout,
It’s night in me.
[At this point the film skips and jumps, scratches and crosses of light appearing in the upper corners of the frames. The censors have added to their archives of forbidden pleasures, leaving their symbol — an isosceles triangle, the inverse of the national symbol for contraception — on the certificate that precedes the movie.]
The next morning the inhabitants of the slum, Ashok, Ashwin, and Mehnaz at their head, block the bulldozers with their own bodies. Destruction and development are briefly held at bay. But then Ashok is arrested by a corrupt policeman, Kalia, and though a court soon sets him free, he loses his job and home (to the tune of a lugubrious version of the title song).
But all is not gloom and despair. Mehnaz (who, it turns out, is only Pranay’s adopted daughter) and Ashok have a simple slum wedding. This takes place in a suspiciously spotless temple that only a studio could have devised. Their exchange of garlands is blessed by Ashwin and assorted extras.
When the audience returns from intermission, it is election time. The Indian public is to enjoy its five-year privilege of choosing the agents of the country’s recurring misrule. Ashok is to challenge Pranay in his own constituency.
The election campaign has all the effervescence of a Bollywood cabaret. Montage: Pranay’s men declaim his virtues from loudspeaker-equipped vehicles and distribute rupee notes to the truckedin crowds at his rallies; Ashok’s neighbors accost individuals in the street with palm-folded sincerity. Pranay has glossy posters and gigantic hoardings of himself expensively displayed on every convenient site (and some inconvenient ones), while little urchins with charcoal scrawl Ashok’s electoral symbol — what else but a simple wrench? — on every available wall, sometimes ripping down a picture of his rival to make space.
At the height of the race, Pranay challenges Ashok to a public debate at a sports stadium. Pranay confidently predicts that Ashok will not accept the challenge. Ashok, the villain declares, is scared, knowing his ignorance makes him a very poor match indeed for Pranay’s greater experience. Despite his misgivings Ashok has no choice but to accept the challenge. Pranay declares that his rival really has no intention of turning up for the debate. If Ashok does not come to the stadium, Pranay says, it will confirm once and for all that he is not up to the job.
On the day of the debate, with the campaign reaching its climax, Ashok is abducted by Pranay ’s thugs. The villains scheme is to demonstrate Ashok’s cowardice before tens of thousands of people. Our hero is left tied to the back of a chair in an old warehouse, a gag across his mouth.
At the stadium, where huge red banners advertise Pranay’s challenge to his rival, people are filing in. “Where could Ashok be?” Ashwin asks Mehnaz. “This is not like him at all.”
She suspects foul play and tells Ashwin about the warehouse where her father hides smuggled goods. As the sidekick sets out to rescue the hero, Mehnaz, rapidly transformed by colorful folk attire and accompanied by a half dozen pretty women from the slum, keeps the restive crowd entertained with an impromptu harvest dance. The song to which they undulate went to Number One in the Binaca Geet Mala, Radio Ceylon’s hit parade, for six long weeks:
Our message is the message of the earth}
Hope for those who’re wretched from their birth,
We want to give a break
To the little folks who make
Chapati, not cake
And have everything at stake
To prove they are humans of great worth!
Rise and shine with a smile of joy and mirth!
As the women sing and sway, clicking little sticks together and kicking up their legs, Ashok struggles with his bonds, but he cannot free himself. Ashwin arrives at the warehouse and finds it guarded by a solitary chowkidar. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the man’s foot; when the hapless extra looks down, Ashwin knocks him out. “The oldest trick in the script,” the comedian sighs, before smashing a window and leaping in to free Ashok.
In the stadium the dance comes to an end.
“We’ll never make it,” Ashok pants; it’s too far to run, the bus is too slow, and they can’t afford a taxi. They step out into the middle of the road, forcing a black and yellow auto-rickshaw to screech to a stop, its driver shouting imprecations. Ashok and Ashwin leap in. “To the stadium, quick!” they exclaim. “It’s a matter of life and death!” The three-wheeler’s scooter engine bursts loudly into life and they careen down the street.
At the stadium, Pranay declares that his opponent has conceded his unfitness by his absence. As Mehnaz tries to contain the restlessness of the crowd, the camera cuts back and forth between the mounting tension at the stadium and the hero’s desperate dash to get there in time.
A traffic jam! The auto-rickshaw phut-phuts to a halt before a confusion of trucks, cars, cycles, and bullock carts, horns (and horned creatures) bleating. But the driver now knows his passengers’ cause; the auto-rickshaw mounts the curb, scattering hawkers and passersby, and races exhilaratingly down the sidewalk, its driver tooting a warning with repeated squeezes of the rubber bulb that serves as his only siren.
Scene shift: goaded by a triumphant Pranay, sections of the crowd start chanting, “We want Ashok, we want Ashok.” Pranay smiles hugely as the chants intensify and the crowd begins to rise to its feet. “Enough is enough,” declares Pranay. “I cannot be expected to wait forever for someone who does not want to face the real issues in this election. I suggest we give Ashok a count of ten, and then cancel this meeting.” Mehnaz gasps in dismay, but can do nothing. “All together now,” says Pranay, and the crowd joins him in shouting, “Ten!”
The auto-rickshaw squeezes between two buses, as Ashwin comically presses himself into Ashok’s side in fear.
“Nine!”
The auto-rickshaw brakes to avoid a beggar child, spilling Ashwin in the process. As he clambers back on, Ashok throws the child all the coins in his pocket.
“Eight!”
The auto-rickshaw weaves to avoid a car and grazes a fire hydrant, which gushes forth brown water. A family of parched pavement-dwellers gratefully stretches out their hands toward the liquid.
“Seven!”
Inspector Kalia is in the act of accepting a bribe from a shady character sporting an underworld mustache, trademark stubble, and dirty white bandanna when he sees the auto-rickshaw bearing down on them. With a scream he and his accomplice move aside just in time, in opposite directions. The villain promptly flees, bribe unpaid. Kalia calls after him in vain, then pursues the auto-rickshaw.
“Six!”
The auto-rickshaw causes a car to brake sharply, sending a sheet of canvas floating from the car roof into the air. The canvas lands on a poor woman with two babies who is huddling against a wall and covers them like a blanket. The woman looks up at the auto-rickshaw in gratitude.
“Five!” Pranay’s smile has become triumphant; Mehnaz is in despair. The faces of Ashok’s supporters reveal both puzzlement and anxiety.
“Stop!” Kalia shouts from his police Jeep, drawing alongside the auto-rickshaw. Our heroes grin at him and roar on. Kalia is shaking a fist at Ashok when the three-wheeler turns sharply left, and Kalia and his Jeep, caught unawares, continue straight on, plunging into the sea with a splash. The crooked cop surfaces spluttering, seaweed replacing the habitual betel leaf in his mouth.
“Four!”
The scooter reaches the stadium. “Here, sahib?” asks the driver. “No,” says Ashok, “drive in!”
&nb
sp; “Three!”
Ashwin hastily reties the gag on Ashok and loosely knots the ropes on the hero’s wrist. The auto-rickshaw bursts through the entrance, past a startled gate attendant, and phut-phuts down the center aisle of the stadium. The crowd turns in amazement. Mehnaz’s eyes light up in hope.
“Two!” Pranay shouts, but he is the only one still counting.
The auto-rickshaw squeals to a stop in front of the stage. Ashwin clambers out, helping a bound and gagged Ashok into view. Ashok raises his tied wrists in the air. The crowd erupts.
“One,” Pranay says feebly, looking around him wild-eyed. Ashok ascends the stage and stands before the mike. A delighted Mehnaz, beckoned by Ashwin, comes up and unties the gag. “Brothers and sisters, this is how they tried to silence me!” announces Ashok as Mehnaz waves the gag with a flourish. “But they cannot silence the voice of the people!” The crowd roars its enthusiastic approval. “This man” — Ashok points at Pranay — “thought he could humble me in your eyes by preventing my voice from being heard by all of you today. I was tied and gagged and thrown into a godown. But the people do not go down so easily.” There is good-natured laughter mixed with sounds of outrage toward Pranay. “It is this crook, this smuggler, this kidnapper, this razer of your homes, who claims to represent you today and asks for your votes. What answer will you give him?”
The crowd roars its reply with one voice, which is echoed in the pounding of angry feet swarming toward the stage. His eyes widening in panic, Pranay screams a futile plea for mercy, then turns and flees, the throng at his heels. A long shot shows him running into the distance, the cries of his pursuers fading into the dust kicked up by their feet.
The final shot: a kurta-clad Ashok, newly elected, is being garlanded in triumph. He folds his palms in a namaste, then raises them above his head in a gesture to the crowd. “The people’s court has given its verdict,” he declares. “Together, we shall march on to a new dawn.”
The camera pans to a poster of Ashok’s election symbol, the wrench, behind him, and the theme song returns to the sound track:
I’m just a good mechanic
If your car breaks down, don’t panic —
I’ll fix it?.
And the screen fills with the portentous words THIS IS NOT THE END, ONLY THE BEGINNING.
The camera lingers in close-up on Ashok’s garlanded face, the adulatory crowd, and the words on the screen before the picture fades to the strains of the national anthem and the lights come up in the cinema hall.
Monologue: Night
ASHWIN BANJARA
Maya tells me she hasn’t been able to speak a word to you so far in the hospital. She just sits here and looks at you, she says, till the thoughts well up in a surge that drowns the words. “There was so much I wanted to say to him earlier, and couldn’t,” she told me today. “What is the point of trying to find the words now?”
Of course I tell her how useful it might be to you, how it might help to bring you back to normal, and she just smiles sadly. I don’t suppose the “normal you” gave her much joy, did you? No, that’s cruel — and I don’t want to be cruel to you. Not now.
It’s strange about Maya, that you should have married someone like her. I suppose everyone at home keeps telling you that. I pictured you with someone beautiful and brittle and glamorously Westernized, like smuggled bone china. Instead she’s stainless steel, Ashok-bhai, like the thalis Ma used to serve dinner on when we were little. Always there, clean, safe, durable.
I don’t think you know how close I’ve become to her, Ashok-bhai. Closer, certainly, than I am to you. It’s not as if she tells me her secrets or anything like that. Maya wouldn’t; if she has secrets, they’d remain secret. And she has too much pride and too much loyalty to you to discuss her feelings about you with me. What she said just now was as revealing as she has ever been.
And yet what companionship there is in her silences! When I am with her I feel instantly secure, caught up in her strength, her determination, her fierce sense of what is hers to protect. I become part of her defenses, not a stranger to them. With us there is so much that need not be spoken. Especially in relation to you. We understand each other instinctively because we are both your — no, forget it.
What was I going to say — “victims”? That wouldn’t be fair. Let’s just say we both have gone through certain experiences with you, as brother, as wife, that have defined us and helped us define each other. Experiences of which you, the catalyst, are blissfully unaware. That’s the incredible thing about you, Ashok-bhai: you sail through life with such grand style, the breeze in your hair and the surface of the water all placid, without the slightest idea of the churning of the currents beneath, the torment of the smaller fish, the fate of the creatures caught up in your propellers. In fact, you wouldn’t even notice if it was seaweed you were cutting up in your swath, or sardines, or dolphins bleating for help. OK, OK, I’m getting carried away. But I have not met another human being as completely unconscious of the effect he has on people as you. It must be wonderful, that perfect self-absorption, that remarkable degree of self-contentment. I, who find myself constantly anxious about what others might think of me, envy you in this as well, as in so many things.
But, to be fair, you demand so little of people. Perhaps because you never see what you can demand of them; you have no idea of the potential of any human being, not even their potential to give. So you see people in specific little frames, playing a part in a particular situation — fulfilling your needs in bed, directing you in a film, helping you win an election — and you are completely indifferent to them outside those frames. If someone encroaches upon your life in a way that’s beyond the role you’ve subconsciously assigned him or her, you don’t know how to handle that person, any more than if an actor had walked in front of the camera and spoken someone else’s lines. Everyone has a place in your screenplay, but that place is well defined. When they have played their part, you have no use for them, at least not until their part comes up again.
Once at a party in Delhi I met a girl called Malini who said she knew you before you joined the movies. Rather nice girl, really — she’s involved in some sort of street theater movement, bringing culture to the masses, but not pretentious at all about it, very committed in fact. She gave me the impression that she’d been close to you; she said wryly that she’d tried to dissuade you from going to Bombay because she was afraid you wouldn’t make it there. (She laughed about that so charmingly that I caught a glimpse of the kind of person she must be — passionately caring but modest — and I marveled at your luck in finding them every time.) It was clear, as much from what she didn’t say as what she did, that you meant a lot to her — and that you had at least given her the impression at one time that she meant a lot to you.
Anyway, you know what she said? Mildly, not complaining, but with a tone of regret that I thought masked some stronger feeling. She said that once you left Delhi you made not the slightest effort to contact her ever again. She said she was so sure you would that she kept making excuses for you — that you were having a very rough time in the early days, that you were waiting to be a success before you got back in touch, et cetera. Of course, you didn’t write or call, and she realized, as so many before and since have realized, that she wasn’t as important to you as she thought she’d been. But it took some time for this to sink in — how much we all like to deceive ourselves, Ashok-bhai, about you!
She decided to take the initiative herself. At first she had no idea how or where to contact you, and then you had a couple of hits and your Bombay address started popping up in the magazines, at least the name of your bungalow and the rough area it was in. So she wrote to you — a simple, direct, personal letter saying how happy she was about your success, bringing you up to date on her own life, and expressing hope that you could meet on. your next visit to Delhi. She got in return, three months later, a printed postcard with your picture on the back, a standard fan mail response typed on the other s
ide, and an autograph she knew wasn’t really yours — because she has your real signature, you see, on the program or brochure of a play you had done together. You can imagine how she felt. I could: she didn’t have to tell me, and to her credit, she didn’t even try.
I told her about your Sponerwalla and your Subramanyam, and how her letter probably never even got to you, but what excuses can you make for such a thing? The very fact that you hire and keep a secretary who can do something like that shows how little you care, how unimportant these things are to you. How unimportant people are to you. People don’t really matter to you, Ashok-bhai; they never have. With no exceptions: not Dad, not Ma, not me, not even your kids, and certainly not Maya. Least of all, I’m sure, these Mehnaz Elahis of yours or the Malinis of the past. It wouldn’t surprise me if you ended every relationship the way you ended the one with Malini, without a good-bye. Why bother to take the trouble to say farewell when you don’t really care if the other person fares well or not?
I’m sorry, Ashok-bhai. I suppose everyone who comes in here and talks to you says all sorts of pleasant and cheerful and affectionate things to buck you up and help you reemerge into our world, whereas here I am, needlessly wounding you. And yet who has better right than me, after growing up in your shadow all these years, doing all the things you rejected, and finally watching the biggest prize of my life fall easily into your lap when it was at last within my reach? Don’t get me wrong, Ashok-bhai, I’m not bitter. I’ve never been bitter about you, just accepting. You were there from the day I was born, you were part of my firmament, like the sun and the moon and the stars, and the things you did or that happened to you were as ineffable, as unsusceptible to change, as the movement of the planets. I reacted to you, but I never presumed to think I could do anything about you. You simply were, and I adjusted my life accordingly. So you hit the ball into the neighbor’s when you didn’t feel like bowling to me, and yet a few weeks later there I’d be, bowling to you again. I discovered early that, in relation to you, free will was always an illusion.
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