by Shobhaa De
Bollywood Nights
Bollywood Nights
Shobhaa Dé
New American Library
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
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Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Penguin Books India edition as Starry Nights.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1117-5
Copyright © Shobhaa Dé, 1992
All rights reserved
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FOR MY HUSBAND, DILIP
CONTENTS
PART ONE
KISHENBHAI
AASHA RANI
AKSHAY ARORA
SHETHJI
AMMA
LINDA
ABHIJIT MEHRA
AASHA RANI
PART TWO
AASHA RANI
JAMIE (JAY) PHILLIPS
SUDHA RANI
APPA
JOJO
GOPALAKRISHNAN
SHONALI
SASHA
READERS GUIDE
Waqt ne kiya kya haseen situm,
tum rahe na tum, hum rahe na hum.
(Ah the exquisite cruelty of Time,
you are no longer yourself, and I’m no
longer I.)
KAIFI AZMI IN KAAGAZ KE PHOOL
PART ONE
Kishenbhai
LIGHTS OFF! KISHENBHAI REGISTERED THE HARSH COMMAND OF the studio lackey with disdain. How many times in the past two decades had he heard those words? A thousand? Ten thousand? As darkness descended in the shabby, suburban preview theater, he eased his feet out of his white Rexine chappals, reached for his Pan Parag dabba, belched discreetly and touched the panch-mukhi rudraksha around his neck. A reflex action.
Or it was most times, anyway. Tonight’s film was special. He had more than just his money at stake. Kishenbhai wanted Tera Mera Pyaar Aisa to be a box office hit. Not so much for himself. But for Aasha Rani. His Aasha. She was no longer his, of course, he corrected himself swiftly. But she had been. And her rise to fame had begun in this very theater. It was an event he would never forget. His first film. And hers. His premier hit. And hers. His first love. And hers?
The man in the bucket seat next to him had already begun to fidget. Kishenbhai cursed under his breath. This two-bit bhangi in a synthetic electric blue kurta-pyjama was Gopalji this evening. Gopalji my foot, he’d silently snorted. He was no Gopalji. He was a scavenger from the gutters of Bombay. And today this same son of a bitch was a producer. A big-time, big-bucks producer. Bastard! Seven years ago he’d been a servile unit hand in Kishenbhai’s production company. Oh yes, he’d had his own production company then. A banner of his own. K. B. Productions.
At that time Gopal had been nothing but a fucking bhadwa who fetched paan for the director and whores for the hero. Kishenbhai remembered him well. “Abey saale!” he’d call out to the shifty-eyed sidey, “Get me my beedi packet.” Fetch, he’d say and off Gopal would scamper to bring him his Dunhills from the car. He was useful and resourceful. He could iron the heroine’s taffeta petticoat without burning holes into it. He knew where to get camels at a day’s notice for a song picturization. Why, the bloody bugger even pancaked faces when the makeup man fell ill. Gopal had made himself indispensable. And detestable.
Kishenbhai recalled the day he’d sacked him. That was nasty. But inevitable. Gopal had overstepped. He had made a pass at Aasha Rani. Kishenbhai didn’t want to think about it. He forced himself back to the present. Deafening music while the credits rolled. Why did all Hindi films (even the arty ones) insist on raucous ear-splitting noise during the all-important opening sequences? Was it to shock the audiences to attention or to numb and deaden good sense? Jaaney do… he was beyond caring. This was what the bastards wanted. And this was what they got.
Aasha Rani hadn’t bothered to show up for the preview. She wasn’t expected to. In any case, she now had a small theater attached to her swanky Bandra bungalow. Plus a dubbing studio. Good business sense, Kishenbhai mused. Who was her guru? Whoever it was had gotten her to part with her precious money. Kishenbhai laughed silently at the image his mind suddenly conjured up: “Aasha Rani, darling, part your legs, you can part with the money later.” She deserved whoever it was. She deserved what he was doing to her. Scheming bitch! Chalo chhodo, all women were the same. All filmi women, at least. No exceptions. Not one.
When Kishenbhai discovered Aasha Rani she had been nothing. A “dhool ka phool,” the film rags gleefully dismissed her. An awkward, ungainly, overweight girl from Madras. And so dark. Chhee! Kishenbhai didn’t like dark girls. He’d always gone for doodh-ke-jaisi-gori women himself. His own swarthy complexion was worked over with Afghan Snow and Pond’s Dreamflower talc, a part of his daily postbath ritual. Aasha Rani had laughed and laughed when she’d found him at his careful toilette. But that was later. After she had officially become his. No, he hadn’t married the bitch or anything. But it was known in their circle that Kishenbhai had gotten hold of a new chidiya. It was a signal to all others to keep their paws off. But Gopal had deliberately chosen to ignore the commandment. Gopal had always felt one-up on Kishenbhai. Because Gopal was from Himachal Pradesh. Very fair, and with light eyes.
Anyway, here she was now. Beautiful sequence. Well shot. Aasha Rani was very finicky about the opening shot. Yes, Aasha Rani had certainly learned all the tricks. She knew her face better than anybody else. She knew she had a difficult nose. And a heavy chin. But she also knew that once her eyes were the focus and her lips properly pouted, nobody bothered about anything else. Kishenbhai searched the image on the screen and found the mole above her lips. She used to hate it in those days. “Nikaldo na,” she’d plead with her makeup man. It was Kishenbhai who had convinced her that the mole looked very sexy. That it drew attention to her mouth. These days she darkened it. He tried to stop t
hinking about old times and to concentrate on the song she was moving her lips to. Still the same Aasha Rani—terrified to open her mouth too wide lest her crooked dogteeth showed up on the screen.
Soft-focus lens, a backlit shot, three-quarter profile—everything just the way she wanted. He let the words of the song engulf him. Nothing special—though the sound track had a minute or so of suggestive panting. The visual had her in a Jacuzzi, one slim leg sticking out. It was supposed to be a fantasy sequence in which the heroine dreamed of her wedding night. Aasha Rani had really let herself go for this one. He watched as she caressed herself with a cake of soap. The camera panned her body lovingly, lingering near her breasts. Those breasts. Gopal farted in the next seat. Kishenbhai shifted uncomfortably. Despite himself, he was beginning to feel aroused. Shit! he thought. The bitch still gives me a hard-on.
Gopal nudged him. “Kyon ji—kya cheez hai.” Kishenbhai pretended he hadn’t heard. The scene shifted to a honeymoon suite in a five-star hotel. Aasha Rani in full bridal finery. Why were brides in Hindi films unfailingly North Indian? The same red-and-gold sari, the same jewelry, the same mehendi, the same bindis.
In the beginning she never wore red. “Chhee!” she’d say, “I’ll look so dark in it.” It was her dress designer who had convinced her to wear bright colors. “No rey baba,” Aasha Rani had resisted, “Mummy says don’t wear gaudy clothes.” Mummy says. In those days every sentence of Aasha Rani’s began and ended with “Mummy says.” Did she still talk like that?
How he hated that mummy of hers! A belligerent cow with ghoulish kaajal-blackened saucer eyes. “Geetha Devi” she called herself. Geetha Devi and he hated each other from the very start. But then, Geetha Devi hated everybody. “Mummy is not like that,” Aasha Rani tried to explain when he’d cursed her one day. “Mummy does that to save me,” she’d continued. “From what?” Kishenbhai had thundered. “Men,” Aasha Rani had answered simply. And his anger had disappeared. He’d reminded himself that she was just a child. A fifteen-year-old. With a forty-inch bust.
Kishenbhai turned his attention back to the screen. Shit! She still wore those bloody falsies! She didn’t need them; he’d told her a hundred times. But mummy had insisted. So had all the producers. “Achcha lagta hai, yaar,” they’d said, looking at the rough cuts. “Kya achcha, saala pahad dikhta hai,” he’d answered.
Aasha Rani had great tits. Kishenbhai could vouch for that. After all, who had bought her all those bras from St. Michael’s? She used to beg him each time he went to London, “Don’t get me anything else…just soft toys and bray-si-yares” (as she pronounced it). Kishenbhai used to take great pride in asking the salesgirls to help him look for black-lace, three-quarter-cup, underwired 38-Cs. He’d imagine them admiring him, envying him.
And her menagerie of stuffed toys! Toba: pink kittens, blue rabbits, silky black leopards with yellow eyes, polka-dotted pandas, even a four-foot giraffe. “My zoo,” Aasha Rani would giggle coquettishly, clutching a teddy bear as she posed for the centerfold of a filmi rag.
He could never understand her fetish for toys. “You don’t know about my childhood,” she’d tell him, hugging a doll. “I never had anything to play with—no toys, nothing.” He’d heard the story before. The father who had deserted them. The mother who had been left with three girls to raise. The poverty. The deprivation. The struggle. He didn’t mind getting her these things. Though he did feel faintly foolish walking through customs with the huge fluffy monkey she’d asked for. What kind of animals, Kishenbhai wondered bitterly, did she like now?
The opening sequence ended with a tight close-up of Aasha Rani’s face. Why did she still use those silly false eyelashes and the colored contacts? Why? She had beautiful eyes. Blacker than the moonless night sky. Innocent as a virgin’s. It was amazing. Here she was, so many men and so many films later, still looking vulnerable, innocent, pure.
Kishenbhai had gone through a quarter of his Pan Parag. He got up to go for a quick pee. He knew he wouldn’t be missing a thing. Perhaps one more tuneless song, a rape or a dacoity.
The loo was filthy, with cigarette stubs thrown in the stained urinals. There was no water in the solitary basin. Kishenbhai reached for his handkerchief and wiped his fingers. He knew some men who didn’t bother to do that. He was finicky about such things. After all, he had touched himself; a few drops of urine were bound to be there. And the same hand for eating later? Chhee, chhee. Once again he thought of Aasha Rani. He’d asked her once whether she washed herself after peeing and she’d been shocked by the question. In those days everything used to embarrass her. She’d blushed and nodded her head. “Good!” He’d patted her on the back. “These Punjabi bitches never bother. Dirty creatures. All chamak-dhamak outside and filthy inside. Moldy bras, stained chaddis, smelly underarms. Chhee! Bekar fucks.” She’d frozen at the sound of that forbidden word. And today? Today, the prudish Aasha Rani was all fucked up and fucked out.
Kishenbhai went back into the theater and tried to concentrate on the film. The hero looked too young for her. Kishenbhai couldn’t remember his name—what was it—Amar something. How old was he? Did he even have pubic hair? Chikna-chikna face. Eyes the color of melting caramel. A rosebud mouth. In Kishenbhai’s time, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Forget about fucking, could this fellow frig? What would he look like without those fancy clothes? Had Aasha Rani seen him naked? He’d heard makeup room stories, but those were floated about every star all the time. And in Aasha Rani’s case, more so. This young fellow wasn’t her type anyway. And then he asked himself—was he? Would anybody today believe that he, yes, he, Kishenbhai, had been the first man in her life? That it was he who had had her first—not by force, or brutality, but with tenderness and love? Yes, love, whatever that crap was.
SHE HAD LAIN THERE on an impersonal hotel bed watching him with those innocent eyes as he undressed carefully. “Do you know you are the first naked man I’m seeing, besides my cousin, but he was only a boy?” she’d commented. “Aren’t you afraid?” he’d asked, climbing out of his trousers and folding them neatly. “Of you? No. Not at all. Why? Should I be?” Those eyes had regarded him coolly, and he’d wondered briefly if she was as innocent as she looked.
“Do you know what we are going to do? Has anybody told you about…about sex?” he’d stammered, sounding a little foolish to himself. “Nobody has told me, but I’ve read about it in books. Amma never talks about such things. And my sisters are so silly, they only giggle and giggle when people kiss in English films.” “This involves more than kissing,” he’d said, removing his socks. He was down to his underpants now and feeling ridiculous. “Oh my God!” Aasha Rani had suddenly screeched. He’d jumped. “What happened?” “That mark!” she’d said, her hands over her mouth. His hands had flown to his thigh. “Oh, that? Didn’t I tell you? I got it when I was twenty. Some crazy fight after shooting. Too much booze, too little money. All-around frustration…We had real goondas in the industry then. Thugs. I owed someone money. He came to ask for it. I started to fight and phatak—out came a knife. Twenty-nine stitches. I don’t heal very well. Or very quickly.” And with that, he’d climbed out of his briefs and into bed.
For the first ten minutes, Aasha Rani had traced her long nails along the jagged edges of his wound, kissing the tiny bumps where the stitches had joined his torn flesh and crooning into his groin. He’d felt himself growing against her soft cheek and had pulled her up. “You know baby-jaan, at this rate I will fall in love with you. Become your gulam. That will destroy me, and it might destroy you.” She had closed her eyes and snuggled up to him trustingly. “Let’s not think about all that; just love me.”
He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her breasts. “When did you get this big?” he’d asked, caressing one and then the other. “When I was thirteen. I got my periods early. Ten and a half. Amma was very angry. As if it was my fault. I felt terrible. I started growing and growing after that. By the time I was twelve, I was already wearing size thirty-six. I hated my
breasts. Nobody else had such large ones. I couldn’t skip or run or jump around like other girls my age. I couldn’t wear pavadai. Even my dance guru made me feel conscious. He told Amma, ‘This girl should wear saris. Cover her up.’ I think it’s God’s curse.”
Kishenbhai had propped her up on a pillow and said, “You’re beautiful. Just look at your breasts. Beautiful. Works of art. Perfect.” “All the men I meet these days want to touch them,” Aasha Rani had said tonelessly. With a jealous leap he had covered her body with his and entered her. “Never let them, do you understand? You are mine. Only mine. These are mine. All mine.”
Her eyes had remained open throughout. Not a sound had escaped her lips.
HERE SHE WAS AGAIN. It was a disco scene in which she was wearing an outfit that exposed most of her midriff. Aasha Rani looked good in gold, especially if her makeup and accessories were coordinated. This was the dress that had created a trend in film cabaret costumes. Instead of the usual glittering sequins or dyed feathers, her dress designer had come up with coins. Not real ones, of course. These were made out of tinfoil and linked together with delicate chains. She wore a flesh-colored bra and nearly invisible beige bikini panties underneath. Her tights were spangled Lycra, clinging to her legs. The uplift of her specially constructed bra was such that it gave her a deeper cleavage than her natural one. The Tina Turner wig was an inspired touch, like the gold-painted ropes around her neck. She looked straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi film. Kishenbhai noticed her navel had a rhinestone stuck in it. It reminded him of something.