Death in Mumbai

by Meenal Baghel

  Emile found himself undone by Maria’s petite charms, her maternal instincts, and reassembled by her feminine playfulness and her seeming vulnerability. ‘She stood by me when I was going through a low phase,’ he once told me from jail, referring to the time when he failed to get into the commando course. The enforced distance also meant their exposure to one another was selective; the few times they came together each presented their best selves for the delectation of the other.

  In March 2008, a month or so before she went back to Mumbai, Maria went to Kochi to spend a few days with Emile. It was to be their last holiday. During the trip, he introduced her to his course mates. ‘I saw her, and said to myself—is this one a heroine! Then I thought, maybe… Kannada films,’ one of them jested. Maria had evoked a similar reaction in Neeraj’s friends, who had also been underwhelmed by her looks. I remember his roommate Haresh Sondarva looking at Maria’s smiling photograph in the newspapers, a month or so after the killing, and saying dismissively, ‘Pata nahin kaun si jawaani ki photo hai’ (It’s a photograph from her bygone youth).

  Regardless, Emile was besotted.

  He talked with Maria daily, keeping her appraised of every bit of his day down to what meals he had had, and he expected the same detailed accounts from her. Though they spoke in Kannada, a course mate said he often caught Emile asking her in English, ‘Where are you, who are you with?’

  ‘Sometimes, I could make out from his tone of voice that they were having a fight over her whereabouts. He was so possessive about her.’

  A senior police officer who was part of the investigation into Neeraj’s disappearance revealed that Emile did not like the implications of Maria being an actress—he did not even want his course mates to see her films. ‘I remember asking him if he kept any DVDs of Monica’s films and him refusing curtly. I could tell he did not want to talk about those movies,’ recalled one of his navy friends. And yet, says the police officer, Emile was taken up with the idea of having a glamorous woman as his girlfriend—though it seemed he had little idea of her romantic history.

  But within a year of their meeting, this possessiveness coupled with his inability to offer her a firm commitment began to undermine their relationship. The Maria who came to Mumbai in April 2008 was a different creature from the woman who had arrived three years before. She had lost weight dramatically, shrinking to mousy proportions, her pronounced dark circles caused comment, and her ambition had the edge of desperation. The woman whom Kiran described as ‘no go-getter’ now clung to Neeraj’s casual promises as if to a lifeline, seeing highways to glory in the feeble trails he offered.

  And what of Emile caught between his parents implacable ‘no’, and his lover’s soft persistence? Every strenuous objection his parents made added to Maria’s appeal, and also to Emile’s guilt and feelings of obligation towards her. After she arrived in Mumbai on April 29, 2008, Maria started to bring Neeraj into their conversation with disturbing frequency.

  Past evidence suggests a pattern in Maria’s behaviour, but unlike her openness with her Bangalore boyfriend, Pavan Kumar, she did not disclose to Emile the extent of her involvement with Neeraj, for she desperately wanted a marriage with him. But the merest hint of another man was enough to create malignant doubt. On the night of May 6, when he called Maria, Emile heard Neeraj’s voice in the background. It was well past 11 pm, early hours in Mumbai but extremely late for sleepy Kochi. What was Neeraj doing in Maria’s flat at that hour, he demanded to know. Maria had just moved into the new flat at Dheeraj Solitaire that morning and she had called Neeraj over to help her shift, she told him. As the lovers bickered, Maria told Emile her phone battery was dying, and asked him to call her on Neeraj’s number. The two men spoke. One, a glib flirt; the other, a conservative, possessive man with an enormous sense of propriety and a temper.

  ‘He wants to know what I’m doing here,’ Neeraj hollered in the background when Emile was speaking to Maria a few minutes later. ‘What kind of a fiancé is he when his girlfriend needs another man to be with her?’

  We will never know if these were words spoken in jest, a burst of misplaced machismo, or sheer viciousness. We’ll never know, but they were a catalyst to the events of the next morning.

  ‘I had gone to a party organized by my juniors while Emile had been talking to Monica. He was pacing constantly and he was on the hands-free. At 11.30 pm when I got back to the room I saw Emile in a state of extreme agitation,’ Emile’s roommate, Lieutenant Vasanth Kumar, told the police, recalling the events of that night. ‘He demanded the keys to my motorcycle, saying that he had to leave for the airport and that he would bring the bike back upon his return.’ In his state of upset he entirely disregarded Vasanth’s warning about breach of discipline. ‘It’s a matter of life and death,’ he said implacably, determined to leave. ‘My ticket has been bought.’

  ‘I could see Emile was shaking even as he spoke to me, asking for the keys,’ Lieutenant Vasanth recorded in his statement to the police. It was the same body language that had left a younger Vinay fearful of him, and a whole batch of St Mathias classmates battered and bruised. Convinced that Emile would have an accident if he drove in this agitated state, Vasanth offered to drop him to the airport for his flight. Emile packed a bag and the two friends set off at midnight without informing anyone at the base. En route, Emile got another call from Maria. ‘He got off the bike and walked some distance away so I could not hear anything of their conversation.’

  As for Neeraj, he spoke to his friend, the television actress Barsha Chatterjee at 1.30 am, promising to meet her for breakfast at seven in the morning. It was his last recorded call, after which he put away his mobile in the other room, and turned his attention to Maria.

  BOOK II

  Oshiwara—Three Characters in Search of a Film

  4

  EKTA KAPOOR

  ‘The young, especially those from small towns and middle class families, like Neeraj, join because they want quick money, they want expression—their names and faces on TV.’

  —Ekta Kapoor

  EKTA KAPOOR WALKED into the meeting late, and within ten seconds, like a tearaway bully on the beach, she dismantled all the castles the others had been building. ‘I want Crash,’ she said, referring to Paul Haggis’s multiple-Oscar winning film.

  The meeting had been convened to discuss her newest project, a movie ‘inspired’ by Neeraj Grover’s killing. Ten films, Ekta informed everyone, had already been announced on the subject. Since Neeraj was a Balaji product and Maria had come to Mumbai aspiring to work with Ekta, it only made logical sense that they should stake ownership. ‘If there has to be a film on the TV industry then why shouldn’t we be the ones making the story?’

  Except, at this point, there was no story.

  The executives of Balaji’s fledgling film division, and the actor Rohit Roy, who had been signed on to direct his first full-length feature film, were in a massive conference room, brainstorming. ‘I have the opening sequence all ready in my head—it begins with a woman’s audition tape running…’ Rohit said to the young assistant who had joined the company two days ago; the assistant looked suitably impressed. Someone suggested a Madhur Bhandarkar-style voyeuristic drama, while another executive came up with the idea of an ‘intense love story’. The consensus was veering in that direction when Crash landed.

  ‘It blew my mind,’ Ekta said. ‘Let’s also have the plot set over one night featuring several characters and their stories… Your budget,’ she said, turning towards Rohit, who was beginning to lose some of his good cheer, ‘would be Rs two to three crore.’

  I met Ekta, India’s most successful television producer—and an astute mind—to get an insider’s perspective on the world that Neeraj and Maria aspired to. At which she suggested I sit in on her meetings to see how she works and creates.

  In the US, a single episode of a television show like Sex and the City or The Wire costs more than the budget she was offering Rohit for his film. But television in In
dia works on simple volume—the more episodes you produce the more money you make. ‘It’s not amazing talent that makes me special,’ Ekta explained without any hint of self-deprecation, ‘but the sheer volume of work I have done.’ In its fourteen years, her company has produced over seventy shows, which have defined Indian television. Her approach to movies is similar. ‘I’d like to produce quickies made on a tight budget.’

  The quick turnover demands a constant feed of actors, technicians, and scriptwriters, making Balaji Telefilms one of the largest employers in Bollywood. ‘Every day about a hundred people come to us looking for jobs. I know, because I have to deal with them.’ Like Muammar Gaddafi’s battalion of women bodyguards, a brisk bevy of bejewelled, tilak-sporting women that included a writer, a head of production, and an assistant, insulate Ekta from the pressures of her own celebrity status. Tanushree Dasgupta, who has been with her for nine years, is at their head.

  When Ekta, famously and publicly devout, goes jogging every Tuesday from Mahim to Siddhivinayak Temple at Prabhadevi, she is often waylaid by people on the road wanting roles for themselves, their children; she hands them Tanushree’s number. Others get in touch with acquaintances working at Balaji Telefilms while trying for a break, as Maria Susairaj did. Maria befriended Balaji employee Jyoti Jhanavi on Orkut, who in turn introduced her to Neeraj, who was in charge of auditions there. Most recently, Ekta’s Facebook account had been overrun with pictures of young men baring their six-packs. ‘They think that’s their show-reel,’ she said, quite tickled.

  Last year, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring scriptwriter from Naini, Uttar Pradesh, Akshay Shivam Shukla, having exhausted all avenues of meeting the Boss Lady, came up with a most ingenuous plan. On August 4, the day of Shravan Puja, he infiltrated the Balaji Telefilms office disguised as a priest.

  Unfortunately for him, the staff soon realized that instead of mantras, Panditji was mumbling mumbo-jumbo. Shukla was pulled aside, questioned, and thrown out. In protest, he spent the night outside Balaji House, and when morning came he tried to immolate himself with a litre and a half of kerosene. The watchmen, desperate to douse the flames, pushed him into the open sewer that runs alongside the building. Cops were called in, a case was registered, and Shukla—finally deterred from his mission to meet Ekta—was admitted to Cooper Hospital.

  ‘Eighty per cent of people in TV today have gone through Balaji,’ she told me, with pride. ‘The young, especially those from small towns and middle class families, like Neeraj, join because they want quick money, they want a platform to express themselves, to see their names and faces on TV. In their hometowns, TV is the primary source of entertainment, and to have their families see their name and face on TV is a big power trip.’

  Her own creative head, Vikas Gupta, was a loose-limbed, floppy-haired twenty-one-year-old from Uttarakhand who leapfrogged up the hierarchy one evening when he saw Ekta struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with one of her episodes. ‘My mother would not buy the logic of the lead character,’ he told her casually.

  ‘On instinct,’ she said snapping her fingers, ‘I decided to make him Balaji’s creative head. It’s a big job, and I’ve made him sign a tough contract, but he understands the audience consists of women like his mother. Also, I liked his attitude.’

  That was what had also first brought Neeraj to her attention. As she waited for her private lift to take her up to her fifth floor office, one of the aspirants hanging around on the ground floor saw Ekta and flicked an impertinent salute. ‘It was a really arrogant gesture, but I liked it,’ she said, letting me into the secret of how she creates stars. ‘There are only two things we look for in our lead actors: the man should have attitude, and the woman should look innocent. Between you and me,’ she said with a wink, ‘virginal.’ This has led to some peculiar casting problems—‘It’s become difficult to find young urban women who meet this criterion.’ Ekta bypassed this problem by casting schoolgirls. Her youngest heroine has been a sixteen-year-old.

  As television boomed into a Rs 27,000 crore industry in just over ten years, Oshiwara transformed from the dump Ekta first came to in 2000 into one of Mumbai’s most fashionable neighbourhoods. Young television stars and technicians, who spent upwards of twelve hours a day in near-squalid studios at Goregaon, Saki Naka, and Malad, going weeks without a break, invested heavily in plush homes here. The skyline is dotted with Singapore-style condominiums with hard-to-pronounce French-sounding names. (The illusion of a First World lifestyle is reinforced with easy access to fancy cold cuts, cheese and wines, the latest Almodovar DVD, and 24/7 air-conditioned houses. This lasts only until one steps outside, and is rudely brought down to potholed earth.) Real estate expansion has been matched by a thriving nightlife, forcing even froufrou South Mumbai restaurateurs like Rahul Akerkar, the owner of Indigo, to open branches here.

  The idea and attitude of Oshiwara now pushes beyond the reclaimed marsh. It is in the vanity of little-known designers housed in glass-plated buildings announcing their genius tersely, like Giorgio Armani, or Jimmy Choo, and without a smidgen of irony: Rahul Agasti, Turakhia Dhaval, Roopa Vora, Babita Malkani.

  It is implicit in the flashy EMI-driven lifestyle prevalent here. But most of all it lies, said Jaideep Sahni, in the ‘severe ambition’ that crackles in the air. His is the classic story of the outsider who made it big in Mumbai. The forty-one-year-old from Delhi is the most sought after scriptwriter in the film industry. ‘Just sit at the Yaari Road Barista for half an hour and you will know what it’s about. The atmosphere is electric,’ he said referring to another coffee shop not far from where Neeraj and his friends hung out each evening. ‘Those men and women who look like Conan or Barbie behave as if they are out not for a cup of coffee, but for a screen test. Everything is about getting face time with the right people,’ said the writer of hit films like Company, Bunty Aur Babli, Khosla Ka Ghosla, and Chak De.

  Jaideep himself is often accosted at film premieres, where a glass wall cuts the Bollywood hierarchy off from the hoi polloi. Such is the premium on these opening nights that cinema chains like PVR have introduced the idea of ‘paid premiere’ tickets. ‘A well-dressed stranger will persistently catch your eye and since it would be rude to not respond, and one may be unsure of having met them, you go across. That’s all they need. After small talk about how they admire your work, or similar fawning attentiveness, they’ll follow you back into the enclosure, past the usher, as if that’s their natural destination.’ He laughed half-admiringly. ‘Once in, the person will drop you to go mingle with other directors and producers. Mission accomplished.’

  ‘Every nation has a defining characteristic. If it is confidence for the American, for the Australian it’s his appetite for fun. In India, what defines us is striving,’ Rajesh Kamat told me. A Mumbai boy, Rajesh was the CEO of Viacom 18, the company that owns the entertainment channel Colors, at the age of thirty-seven. He has left that job since we last spoke. Colors had raced to the top of the Television Rating Point (TRP) chart within a year of its launch, forcing others, including Ekta, to modify their formula. ‘It’s our striving for a better life, a better lifestyle. There is, even in these tough times, a disproportionate amount of money to be made in TV, which is why it’s so seductive for the young.’

  Having worked previously with Endemol, a Dutch company that licenses reality show formats—they produced two of the biggest shows on Colors, Fear Factor and Big Boss 2—Rajesh has closely watched this young workforce turn around the country’s television habits—television’s eternal saas–bahu sagas ceding ground to starlet Dolly Bindra getting foul-mouthed on camera.

  Over the course of an interview that stretched past midnight, Ekta who is now routinely counted among India’s wealthiest women, recounted how she started her own career as an eighteen-year-old producer. ‘I was in class twelve when my parents shifted from Bandra to their bungalow in Juhu, which I hated. I’d run away to Bandra every day to hang out at the Otters’ Club with my friends Anupam and Parvin D
abas, who went on to become an actor, and to walk around Joggers’ Park with Aunty Neetu [Singh-Kapoor].’

  Additionally, three days of the week were scheduled for partying, which caught the attention of the ever-vigilant Stardust. ‘I was just excited about doing nothing. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t smoke, I rarely drank, but Stardust ran a piece saying Jeetendra’s daughter was running wild.’ Her father, a man of modest and conservative upbringing—his family ran a small business selling artificial jewellery before he went on to become a big star, was appalled. ‘He couldn’t understand why I needed to be out of the house every second day… Not long after I turned eighteen he came into my room one evening and gave me an ultimatum—either I start working, or get married.’

  Ekta grew up watching endless hours of television and devouring tubs of ice cream while her father was busy shooting three shifts a day, and her mother stayed away either travelling with him or at kitty parties. She decided to make television serials. ‘I loved TV, it gave me great joy.’ Her friend Ratna Rajiah wrote a plot outline, which her cousin Gattu (better known as Abhishek Kapoor, the director of the Farhan Akhtar starrer Rock On) would direct. ‘Our pilot was called Jeans ‘n’ Josh and I must confess that the title was the only colourful thing about it; the serial was a grim look at things like peer pressure, AIDS, bisexuality, parental hypocrisy. We wanted to be dark and meaningful,’ she said, letting out an ironic little giggle. ‘It was our equivalent of a Madhur Bhandarkar movie, and both Gattu and I were very proud of it. But when we showed it to Ravina Raj Kohli at Star TV, she took one look at it and dismissed us, saying no channel would commission something so dark, and which dealt with suicide and all. “Give me something happy and family oriented,” she said. We were crushed. I remember getting out of the Star office and shaking my head to Gattu: “What’s the world come to, I say!”’