How About a Sin Tonight?

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  NOVONEEL CHAKRABORTY

  RANDOM HOUSE INDIA

  Published by Random House India in 2012

  Copyright © Novoneel Chakraborty 2012

  Random House Publishers India Private Limited

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  EPUB ISBN 9788184002928

  For

  R.

  I wished for you before it all began. I’ll need you after it

  all ends. In between, I’m giving life a chance…

  ‘Sin is the only note of vivid colour that persists in the modern world.’

  —Oscar Wilde

  SCENE 31

  Location: Mussoorie

  ‘Film producers are like condom ads; they always want you to play safe. Those chutiyas don’t understand if you want a baby, you can’t play it safe,’ the director said, noticing the young journalist sitting opposite him scribble something in his notebook.

  ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘don’t mention anything about the c-word.’

  Arunodaye T. Manjrekar was known as ATM in the Hindi Film Industry and media for one simple reason: till date he’d directed seven Hindi films out of which five were among India’s highest grossing films ever, inflation adjusted for all time.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of certain extremist groups who are against nudity in your film?’

  ‘I’m sure they understand it’s all for the sake of art.’ In his mind, Arunodaye had exhausted his dictionary of slang.

  ‘Was it tough to coax the actors to do the nude scene being shot today?’

  ‘Actors are adventurers. And an adventurer never says no to his fears.’

  It was tough, but in the end he’d put together a dream star cast with which he had already secured the eyeballs of more than three-fourth of India and almost the entire NRI diaspora.

  Arunodaye’s walkie-talkie crackled with a voice, ‘Sir, the shot is ready.’ The journalist took his cue and left.

  Inside the room where scene 31 was to be shot, Arunodaye noticed the first camera framing a tight close up from the right while the second was ready to capture the two actors naked in a master shot. ‘Perfect!’ he murmured and turned to the actors who had donned white bathing robes. ‘Start whenever you two feel comfortable.’

  He left them amid a quietude of their own thoughts.

  As the actor advanced towards the actress, her heart started beating rapidly. ‘I am not doing this. The character in the script is.’ She prepared herself to enter the mind space of the character. Though the scene scared her, the character was still way simpler than the one she played daily—herself.

  They came close, disrobed, and smooched. Placing his hands on her rear, he lifted her up and looked arrow straight at her. The director cleared the take and announced a five-minute break. And just when the actress thought something that had kept her awake for nights was finally over, the actor gave her a compulsive kiss on her lips. It shocked her. A bigger shock happened when she kissed him back almost as an offensive reflex.

  His warm breath felt like obnoxious insects crawling all over her face. It aroused her but also made her feel cheap. The moment he cupped her breasts, all the intangible and invisible entities within—her thoughts, her soul, and her will—froze momentarily.

  It was when their tongues, once again, met and fought urgently like two sparrows fighting over the first piece of morning bread, that she felt the frozen entities melt.

  She wrapped her toned legs around his waist tightly. Instead of the neat bed, he pinned her against the freshly painted wall in the driving-the-peg-home pose. With each push, she knew the paint on the wall was getting spoilt as much as the paint of her soul.

  As her hands explored his back like an eager tourist, her heart rummaged through excuses—from rubbish to real—in order to justify her willingness to enjoy what he took for granted about her.

  Her mind went blank with the first pelvic thrust of his. With the second, she heard her thoughts loud and clear.

  When a man is desperate, he injures others. When a woman is desperate, she hurts herself the most.

  His thrusts were switching thoughts on and off in her mind alternately. Third thrust, her mind was blank again. Fourth…

  Sex is everybody’s home, nobody’s address. Blank.

  When we are young, our heart is like a village full of simpletons. As we grow up, it changes to a big, bad city. Its desires become stranger and darker.

  Blank.

  Our actions are our immortal version.

  Blank.

  Finally, they knew this short film with no dialogues and yet a plethora of subtitles had to end. She knew what he was waiting for. A nod. He knew what she wanted. A burst. They knew what they wanted. A climax. Orgasm was the prey they both were out to hunt with equal urgency. Not a sound could be heard and yet there was a stentorian sexual symphony audible to them.

  It was the actor who opened the door and walked out. The first one to enter the room was Gita, the actress’s girl Friday, followed by assistants, technicians, and spot boys. While helping her ‘madam’ wear a warm, furry overcoat, Gita heard her madam whisper to her, ‘Get an I-pill. Quick.’

  Amid all the chaos and chirpiness, only Guddu, a spot boy, happened to notice the haphazard blotch on the wall. And if what he thought was right, Guddu wondered, the media would have a raging hard on with this piece of juicy gossip. And when the media has a hard on, someone gets fucked twenty-four seven.

  BOOK ONE: (1986-2010)

  SECRETS OF A SIN

  THE LEGEND

  SHAHRAAN ALI BAKSHI

  10:00 a.m.

  If you want to give a woman an earth-shattering orgasm, I remember her confiding in me, first make her sit near you. Then look straight into her eyes till she gives you a confused shrug, slowly bringing both her hands onto your lap and holding them tight. Make sure it’s a warm grasp, not a threatening grab. After which, lean towards one of her ears and whisper with all your honesty what she means to you. And then gently embrace her, allowing your nervous breath to kiss her vulnerable nape.

  I was twenty-one. She was sixteen when I first saw her. Between two hearts of that age, there exist infinite possibilities. And there were. I swear. Whenever my today wakes up in the arms of my yesterday, those unrealized, unacknowledged, untraversed possibilities appear before me and streams of cold sweat drench my brow.

  The world celebrated my forty-fifth birthday last month. And in all these years, I have come to realize that love is actually an act of sowing. Problems start when we convince ourselves into believing it’s an act of reaping instead. Thereafter, we use love as a fertile farm land for harvesting whatever we desire from life and a relationship, assuming being in love is in itself eligibility enough to deserve whatever we thought, wished, and coveted for.

  Today—October 21—is Mehfil’s fortieth birthday and I am here, in this once famous brothel which was her identity and destiny.
Fifteen years ago, I had bought this entire place along with the small lane which branches out from the main road to lead here, like an unexpected disappointment often does from the spine of happiness. Men came here from different walks of life with only one thing in common—an indomitable libido. Libido, Mehfil told me, is a drunkard’s faith. They follow it blindly wherever it takes them. And prostitutes are the ones who encash on that faith. Much like what happens in most holy places around the world. Though she was young then, every word of hers made some kind of celestial sense to me. She didn’t have what I wanted in my dream woman except for the outer appearance; maybe. But she had everything I never realized I would need in my woman. This also made me understand that there are two kinds of beauty—outer and inner. Everyone doesn’t have the former since it’s subjective. On the contrary, inner beauty is present in every one. It’s not subjective but its exclusive; visible only to a select few. And love is about winning that exclusivity.

  This house where I am right now was called Neela Makaan then for its vibrant blue colour. Though the colour has faded considerably, the public memory hasn’t. It still is a forbidden place.

  Neela Makaan used to house six prostitutes and a swarthy, foul-mouthed, middle-aged woman who was their pimp. Mehfil was the youngest. I used to visit her as often as a young couple visits the memory of their recent marriage. I remember at the funeral of one of the prostitutes, staring at the burning pyre, Mehfil had remarked, ‘That’s the life of a woman in every prostitute and the prostitute in every woman. Men come and light a fire in some corner of us and we keep burning till we turn into insignificant ash and thereafter a slave to the wind of destiny that carries us as per its desires.’

  I don’t know when and how she became my emotional dictionary. The moment something would torment me from within, I would scamper up to her to find solace. I loved the way she had, at her age, unknotted everything within her, around her. Compared to her, I was a dumb boy. Now, of course, I am a man…in between, I fell in love with her.

  The reason why I haven’t renovated this place is both obvious and personal. I can still feel her here, in this place. Not like a memory, but a premonition. In the weary doublesized bed where I am sitting right now; in the stained and smelly lime coloured bed sheet which still transpires the perfume of her love for me; in the frail and exhausted looking pillows which are still young with the phantasmal caress of her dense black hair; on the morose, old walls that now look shy with seepage but once supported her delicate shadow valiantly; the ceiling which has a thick layer of dust along with a cavalcade of cobwebs that, I know, have safely locked the echo of her smiles and cries in its heart, and that’s the reason I don’t allow anybody to clean anything here. In the halfbroken window frame where she used to stand tying her hair and admiring either the blue sky above or the once busy street ahead, the creaking door, the discoloured mosaic floor, the broken ventilator and most importantly, in the emotion that connects all these inanimate things and makes them vibrate with life. I have carried their pain with me like generations carry a curse. Since her departure, I have been living in a vacuum, with time at a standstill.

  Just like there was permanence in her temporary presence in my life, the spring that I find in these twelve hours acts as a good antidote to the winter I encounter for the rest of the year. Physically, I loiter around to start with. Emotionally, I drain myself as my past copulates with my present. And pleasantly it all starts flashing in front of me…

  Once upon a time there was this beautiful prostitute princess and a penniless prince…

  I glance at my Tag Heuer; it’s a little past ten a.m. Like always, I’ll lie on the bed now and close my eyes…

  For the rest of it.

  In the summer of ’86, a nervous young boy stepped down on to the warm chest of one of the platforms in Victoria Terminus, Bombay. Seeing the fleeting clouds of people all around, he thought to himself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ His face then resembled a messy traffic jam with the vehicles of hope, fear, joy, disappointment, curiosity, and skepticism—all honking away simultaneously for attention. But he knew no one would look at him because one nobody for a mass of nobodies is a gigantic nobody; an invisible man.

  The rush at the station seemed like a gush of sperms had been released into the womb of Bombay. As if everyone was on the run for having stolen something. Jerking his legs anxiously, he felt their numbness disappear. He had been sitting for twelve straight hours in squat position beside the train’s door. It was after his best friend Avinash dropped him on his Rajdoot at the Ratlam railway station that he managed to board an already loaded train. It was also his rich friend, Avinash, who had given him fifty rupees to sustain himself before he met Bheem; Avinash’s only contact in Bombay.

  At thirty, Bheem was a super success story. He had his own biryani centre in one of the hungry bylanes of Bombay. But for his townsfolk in Ratlam, more than his hard work, it was the mysterious Goddess of verisimilitude called Bombay which changed Bheem into Bheem Seth. The name was a paragon of disgrace once. But the moment it slept with success, it became a metaphor for good times. It was Bheem who had promised Avinash he would do something for Shahraan. And in his ‘something’, Shahraan had sniffed the sizzling starters of his seminal dream of making it big in Bollywood.

  When Shahraan had announced his dream to his parents—Dayanath Ali Bakshi and Ratna Devi—they had taken him to a Tantrik the very next day.

  Dayanath was a former freedom fighter and a primary school teacher in Ratlam. The middle name ‘Ali’ was chosen by him for the men in his family to showcase a secular solidarity. His ignorant lust for Ratna Devi made them conceive seven children; Shahraan being the fourth child and the first son.

  The Tantrik beat him left, right, and centre with a broom and stopped only when Shahraan accepted to study further. Satisfied, the Bakshi couple provided the baba a sumptuous bhog. Two mornings later, their insurance-for-old-age was well on his way to Bombay.

  Shahraan got a push from one of the commuters, making him move forward. He noticed a man standing idle by a pillar.

  ‘Beware of two kinds of people in Bombay; the ones who are idle and the ones who are busy,’ Avinash had advised him. Following the commuters obediently, he reached one of the exits of Victoria Terminus.

  Looking around desperately for a way out, Shahraan recollected Avinash’s words. ‘Ask someone about Parel and they’ll help you out.’

  He saw a man dressed in a safari suit dragging a suitcase. He approached him.

  ‘I am Shahraan Ali Bakshi and…’

  ‘You have a problem.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please carry this bag for me till there. And I’ll help you out.’ Shahraan agreed. His ‘there’ came half a kilometer outside the station.

  Keeping his bag down, Shahraan queried, ‘How can I reach Parel?’

  ‘Don’t disturb me,’ the man almost rebuked him. As a taxi came, the man ensconced inside while Shahraan, without losing on time, ran alongside it looking helplessly at the driver and asked, ‘I am Shahraan Ali Bakshi. I need to go to Parel.’

  ‘Ninth platform,’ the driver quipped.

  It didn’t take much of an adventure for Shahraan to reach the ninth platform where a local train was waiting. As he intended to get in, Shahraan noticed a man in a vest and a khaki-colored half pant semi-blocking the entrance and doing some invisible calculations in the air. He seemed to be wearing high-power spectacles that magnified the size of his eyes. The man suddenly glanced at him and said, ‘Hello, I am Unnisau Saitalis.’

  A lunatic! God bless him, Shahraan thought and said aloud, ‘I am Shahraan Ali Bakshi. This train is going to Parel, right?’

  ‘To Thane. It will pause at Parel. Knowing the difference between a destination and a temporary stop simplifies things.’ The man beamed at his not-asked-for wisdom and made way for Shahraan who hopped into the train.

  There was an exhibition of bored faces inside. Faces claiming to have given up on their dr
eams long ago. Faces suggesting life is after all a betraying bitch. The faces brought a sudden rise of fright in him which made him promise himself: Shahraan Ali Bakshi isn’t going to be just another face in an exhibition. He will be an exhibition for millions of faces.

  Unnisau Saitalis helped him find the small yet busy Bheem’s Biryani Centre by the Parel railway station. His lodging and food problem was solved immediately since one of Bheem’s boys working at the biryani centre, Krishna, had already been informed about his arrival.

  There were five boys who lived on the first floor of the two-storey semi-built structure, with the ground floor being used as the biryani centre.

  At first Shahraan thought it would be difficult for seven to squeeze in. Krishna corrected him.

  ‘Not seven. With you it’ll be six. Bheem bhai doesn’t stay with us.’

  ‘Where does he stay?’

  ‘Nobody knows. All we know is that he comes here every evening by four and stays till eight.’

  It was on the third night that Shahraan finally met Bheem, though he had met him twice before in Ratlam. And each time Bheem’s weight had multiplied. Now sitting on a floor mat in the huge hall room, Shahraan could see a trace of a triple chin on Bheem whenever he sipped the dull-looking country liquor in between his banter.

  ‘No job for you in my biryani centre,’ Bheem declared. Everyone noticed how his belly juggled to his movement.

  ‘But I need to sustain myself.’

  ‘Let me complete, bachcha. You’ll work for me alright but on my new taxi business.’

  ‘Are you going to sell this place off, Bheem bhai?’ a concerned Krishna asked.

  ‘No chhote. I have purchased three taxis and have fixed drivers for two of them. The third driver will be you, bachcha.’

  Shahraan abhorred the idea in the beginning. He learnt driving from a fellow driver who also helped him get a license. Right from early morning to late night he was driving continuously. From Parel to Bandra to Ville Parle to Andheri to Pali Hills to Juhu Chowpatty to Haji Ali to the Gateway of India, he took everyone, everywhere. Eventually he started taking pride in driving the taxi since he realized that it was a true representative of a secular India that his father once fought for. People of every possible caste, creed, age, and sensibility availed his taxi. In the womb of monotony he discovered an overlooked adventure. He used to observe the passenger’s body language, picked on their diction, and at times analyzed their thought process listening to their personal prattle. Soon the taxi became his four-wheeler acting school.