‘No problem, sir,’ said the manager, loosening his tie. His shoulders sagged as though it was the knot that had been holding the air in.
‘Where do you live?’ Ray said.
‘Arakkonam, sir.’
‘Isn’t that very far?’
‘Yes, sir, I take a bus to Central and then a train from there.’
‘Is your house near the station?’
‘No, sir. My bike is parked there. It’s a half-hour ride to my place.’
‘When do you get home?’
‘Usually around nine, nine thirty, sir.’
‘Any kids?’
‘Yes, sir, one daughter,’ said the manager, smiling. His shoulders regained some of their buoyancy.
Ray took a wad of notes and stuffed them down the man’s pocket and walked off before he could object.
‘Elliot’s Beach,’ he said to the first parked auto on the road.
At the beach, he sat on the parapet and stared at the people. In the dark, they seemed larger than he could recall from the last time. There seemed to be not just more people but more fat people. The Indian behemoth had obviously been rolling on in his absence, methodically cranking out a workforce for the so-called civilized world. A row of fast-food joints doing brisk business guaranteed that its members were as extra well-nourished as their Western counterparts.
Further away, a helmet-free biker performed wheelies, each one higher than the previous, to a cheering group of youngsters. A policeman turned the other way, licking a drippy chocobar wheedled out of a tricycle vendor.
The biker revved his machine, letting off a cloud of white smoke. Did he know his tank had more kerosene than petrol in it? A girl in a tight tee said, ‘Yay!’ The biker took this to be a cue for his set piece, gunned his machine and let go of the clutch. A moment later, he was flat on his back on the road; it was an oil spill he hadn’t seen. His bike fell right next to him, its stuck accelerator letting off a high-pitched whine, while his fractured ego clattered about and came to rest a little further along. Vehicles honked, continued along their determined path, horseshoeing around the former hero and the friends who had come to pick up his pieces.
It had to be a mistake.
Mouli was being dramatic. He had been a film man all his life, it went with the territory. And he was old, too. And the old, as Ray knew from a surfeit of great-uncles and aunts, were notorious conspiracy theorists.
He would call up Rajarajan. He would talk. He would set it right.
He looked at his watch. It said 9.30. This would be roughly the time he would have been driving by Japantown had he been home.
8
Ray tapped the gear to neutral, switched off the ignition and slid to a silent halt outside Rajarajan’s beachside bungalow. It had been easy enough to find.
He had got Rajarajan’s number from Mouli.
‘SMS him and tell him who you are, then call him,’ Mouli had said. ‘Chances are he won’t pick up an unknown number.’
Ray was surprised when Rajarajan answered his call (that had been preceded by the SMS, of course). He was even more surprised at how cultured and forthcoming the man had sounded.
‘It’s the only building on that road,’ Rajarajan had said. ‘Can’t miss it. Looking forward to seeing you.’
What he had omitted to mention was why his house was the only building there: his compound walls stretched from one end of the street to the other, while a stubborn row of huts lined the other side. How effective were the high walls in cutting off the unphotogenic poverty?
‘Kaun chahiye?’ said the blue-uniformed watchman. Why the Hindi? Maybe watchmen who pretended to be north Indian got better rates. It was obvious his borrowed Honda City (Abie’s second car) didn’t impress him.
‘Rajarajan-ji,’ said Ray, ‘he asked me to come at six o’ clock.’
The guard referred to his watch and looked at Ray.
‘It is five-fifty,’ he said, ‘but I’ll inform and see. Wait.’
Opening the maroon gate with the letters ‘RR’ emblazoned on it a mere crack, the guard slithered back in.
Ray studied the neighbourhood. A fish cart stood parked next to a tiny shop that sold cigarettes and peanut candy. An anarchy of boys appeared out of nowhere and ran by. Almost every one of them found time to give the Honda a thump along their frantic course. A minute later, a lone boy of similar vintage cycled past, hot on his comrades’ trail.
The watchman returned.
‘Come!’ he said.
Ray followed the man into the house. From the look of it, the gaudy maroon-and-white building, sitting in the middle of five grounds, was nothing short of ten thousand square feet. He made a quick calculation. Thanks to Abie, he was up-to-date on the Chennai real estate market. At today’s rates, the monstrosity would be worth twenty-five to thirty crores.
A white marble cherub stood urinating in the middle of the lawn but a sorry trickle was all that the dehydrated Graeco-Roman could manage in Madras conditions. A sports utility vehicle of a make that Ray didn’t recognize occupied pole-position in the parking lot. A white-clad driver jealously wiped non-existent spots off its maroon body. The Mercedes and the BMW, parked right behind the big car, waited their turn. A red Maruti Swift was partially visible behind a tree. It probably belonged to the watchman.
Ray found himself seated on a maroon-and-gold sofa in a room that was slightly bigger than his house. An ‘S’-shaped staircase with a maroon-and-gold banister swivelled up to a rectangular corridor that ran all along the first floor. A redundant mirror-image of Staircase One led to the same destination. Maybe one was for going up, one for coming down. A glass showcase, packed with shields and mementos from Rajarajan’s successful ventures, paid silent homage to the box office. A lone photograph of a plump man accepting a Tanjore plate from Karunanidhi, permanent fixture in the politico-celluloid world of Tamil Nadu for half-a-century, hung above the case.
A man materialized out of nowhere with a glass of cold water. Ray took the glass and stared at the film magazines that lay in disarray on the leather-topped centre table.
An hour later, Ray knew several things about Rajarajan: six of his films had been silver jubilees, he had won the Filmfare award for Best Director twice and he had received an honorary doctorate from a university he had never heard of. But he still didn’t know where Rajarajan was.
Not long after, the same man who had given him the water came back. This time his tray held two sweaty glasses of lemonade. The man hurriedly bypassed Ray and screeched to attention at the base of the staircase. The operation had the air of a well-worn ritual. Then there was the sound of laughter. Two men in tracksuits emerged from one of the rooms upstairs. On seeing Ray, the one in front raised a hand in greeting. Automatically, Ray did the same.
‘Hi,’ said the man whom Ray recognized as a thinner, fitter version of Rajarajan’s photos. The man ran down the staircase and picked up the lemonade from the waiting tray. The glass may as well have been suspended mid-air, and its carrier invisible. The man took a sip before speaking.
‘Have you given our guest lemon juice?’
His tone was soft but the help looked like he had been struck across the face.
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll bring it right now. Didn’t want you to wait…’
In his hurry to obey, the man with the tray twirled around so fast the other glass tipped over and fell on the subtly gleaming Italian marble floor. In a room that had displayed as much life as a locked library in the last hour, the shattering glass had the impact of a head-on collision.
Rajarajan took another sip of the lemonade, stared at the trembling man holding an empty tray and shook his head. The hired help dived to the floor and was on all fours in an attempt to undo the mess. His effort failed because of the rivulet of bright red he added to the shards of glass and the sticky lemonade on the floor.
‘Friggin’ idiot!’
Ray noticed Rajarajan’s exercise companion for the first time. His French beard didn’t dis
guise the double chin and the track-top cradled what looked like a concealed cannonball. It seemed his workout wasn’t working out.
~
Ray and Rajarajan were seated in his freezing office while signed photographs of movie-types, what looked like an early Husain, and a framed poster of Twelve Angry Men did jury duty. The companion had sidled off to the bar (‘Have a drink, I’ll join you in a bit,’ Rajarajan had said) and the shattered glass had been hurriedly got rid of. Ray wondered if the shattered man had met with a similar fate.
‘Your father was a great man,’ said Rajarajan without preamble. He wiped the last of the exercise sweat with the corner of the towel that was slung around his neck like a dead snake. The faint fragrance of boozy sweat rose in the closed room, bringing back foetid memories of his hostel days. Ray stifled the need to retch.
‘When I heard of his demise, I was in Turkey, you know, shooting the climax … combination dates and all that,’ Rajarajan said.
Ray waited while Rajarajan looked at the ceiling for appropriate condolence words.
‘I couldn’t eat for two days,’ he said, after a longish pause.
Ray didn’t know why but he nodded.
‘Well, you know, these things happen,’ said Rajarajan, fiddling with his laptop. Something on its screen seemed to amuse him and he succumbed to a smile before wiping it off.
‘One must be strong.’ He reached across the table to touch Ray’s arm. ‘The show, as they say, must go on.’
He stretched his arms out wide and looked at the laptop again.
‘So,’ he said.
Ray wondered how to broach the subject, the reason he was there. Negotiating had never been a problem for him. He had been doing it for years, in a variety of situations. In what he hoped had been a firm and inoffensive manner. But it had all been at a professional level. This was an entirely different proposition. How was one to take a mirror to someone and point out their warts? The table that separated them suddenly looked as hard to cross as the Mojave Desert.
‘Well, the reason I’m here is my father,’ Ray found himself saying.
‘Yes, a great man,’ said Rajarajan, again.
Ray wondered if the director was not getting it deliberately or was just plain thick.
‘You see, unfortunately, what I have to say is, er, a little embarrassing.’
‘Oh?’ said Rajarajan.
‘The basic issue is this … it’s about your last movie.’
‘Oh, you mean Arali,’ he said. He made the movie’s name sound like a proclamation.
‘Yes,’ said Ray.
‘People are saying it’s my best work,’ said Rajarajan. He pointed to what looked like a framed newspaper cutting on the wall behind him. All Ray could read was the headline.
Tamil Film Comes of Age
Ray’s attempt to get back to the job at hand was thwarted by the director pulling out a stuffed file from a drawer and thrusting it at him.
‘All this praise. It’s embarrassing, you know,’ he said.
Ray had no choice but to take the file.
‘I’m just a humble film-maker but the way these chaps are going on…’ he said, his arms doing a Shahrukh Khan, ‘you’d think I was some sort of messiah.’
Ray put the file on the table and stared at it for a second without opening it.
‘Go on, take a look,’ Rajarajan said, sinking comfortably into his seat.
Ray knew the look. He had seen it many times. Super-busy CEOs, who rationed out seconds like solitaires, suddenly opening the floodgates of their clocks when the conversation veered towards their own greatness.
‘Mr Rajarajan, I’m sorry.’ Ray pressed down hard on the file, as though to prevent it from bursting open with the sheer irrepressibility of the greatness within. ‘This is difficult but I have to tell you why I’m here.’
Something in Ray’s tone made Rajarajan look at him sharply.
‘Okay,’ he said, his posture changing from reclined to attentive. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s about your film and my father…’
~
After the honk and swerve of the evening traffic, the civility of the five-star bar felt eerie. Ray stared at his drink, a scotch he had ordered, with four cubes of ice he hadn’t. In the background by the swimming pool, paying heed to a new law, a pack of smokers stood in a collective haze.
‘Your father must consider himself lucky that his script got made at all. If I hadn’t given it life, it would be part of the old newspaper pile in your house…’
Why hadn’t Abie taken his call? There had been some mention of an overseas client visiting. He scrolled down the phonebook and stopped at Padmini. He called her and cut it off before the instrument picked up his intent. What if phones of the future could dial numbers you thought of? With no immediate fear of that, he dialled her number and cut it off again and again. Seeing her name glow and die, glow and die, was strangely comforting.
Rajarajan’s phone came flying at Ray like one of Abie’s beamers from school. He caught it before it got him in the face.
‘Go on … look up the A in my phonebook.’
He did as he was told.
‘You see AB?’
He nodded.
‘That’s Amitabh Bachchan, the Amitabh Bachchan. Now look up C, you’ll see CM. Take a wild guess.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘That’s short for chief minister. Feel free to browse up to Z – you’ll find the who’s who of India.’
There was this one time in school when the PT master, Sabhapati, had told Ray that his family could be traced back to the Ramayana. The observation was a result of his three misfields in a crucial school match. Sub’s exact words had been: ‘Your fielding makes it very clear, Ray. Your great-great-great grandfather was definitely a foot-soldier in Hanuman’s army.’
That had signalled the end of his brief, inglorious career in cricket.
To the best of his knowledge, not counting the countless ‘motherfuckers’, that signature salutation of schoolboys across the world, that had come his way, that was possibly the most uncouth anyone had ever been about his family.
‘Your father was a loser, my friend. He was born a loser, lived a loser and died a loser. My suggestion is that you go back to the US and work towards getting yourself a citizenship.’
Every day, from the minute you woke up to the time you slept, whoever you were dealing with, from Warren Buffet to wayside beggar, everyone wanted one thing while you wanted something else. Conflict. It was the very essence of life. And negotiation was the bridge that got you to its better half, compromise. One negotiated even with terrorists.
But how did one negotiate with thieves? Because that was what Rajarajan was. A common thief. He was no different from the guy who cased a joint, oiled his body, jumped over the compound wall, undid the window grille and made off with the jewellery while you slept.
Rajarajan had got what he wanted. What was there to negotiate and what would the compromise be? What could he, Ray, ask in return for breaking into his father’s heart and stealing his brain?
‘If this is going to be your attitude, I’ll have no choice but to take legal action,’ Ray said.
Rajarajan looked at Ray, turned around to look at the poster of Twelve Angry Men and smiled. ‘Oh, a legal thriller. Would’ve never guessed that was your genre,’ he said.
He pressed a number on his phone.
‘Hey, Ananth, could you step into the office for a minute. Got an interesting case for you,’ he said.
The movie director’s eyes held Ray’s. His gaze was unwavering, entitled, like a beggar’s at a traffic signal. The door opened and the exercise companion walked in, holding a half-full glass of whisky. From the look and odour of it, he had showered and changed.
‘Meet Ananth Sundaresan, senior counsel, charges two lakhs an hour.’
‘Three, actually,’ said the fat man.
‘South India’s leading legal light and my drinking buddy,’ Rajarajan said,
giving the lawyer’s belly an affectionate pat. ‘Go on, ask him anything you want. He’ll advise you. Free of cost, right?’
‘S-sure,’ said the lawyer.
Ray remembered his first year in college when seniors had burst into his room and stripped him to his underwear. Back then, he had had the rest of the freshers for company. He stared at the lawyer.
Seeing the meeting going nowhere, Rajarajan chipped in.
‘See, Ananth, quite simple, actually,’ he said, ‘this young man – Ray – wants to know what his chances are if he sues a man who’s taken his father’s intellectual property, used it very profitably and not acknowledged it as his father’s. And, also, has absolutely no intention of doing so, ever, by the way. Is that it, Ray?’
Ray nodded.
‘Well, it depends. Firstly, whom are we suing?’ said the lawyer.
‘Me,’ said Rajarajan.
Ray looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Was there anything of his father in him? A young man in white placed naphthalene balls in the basin drains like they were pearls. The tap switched itself off as soon as Ray took his hand out of its range. The young man gave him a towel. Ray smiled at him and handed him a twenty. The man kept the twenty but returned the smile. It reminded him of his father’s.
The lawyer pulled out a file from one of the drawers. It was an old-fashioned one with a 5” spine.
‘These are the cases against RR. Filed in chronological order. The first one’s from 2001,’ he said, riffling through the large sheaf of papers.
‘Cheating, assault, copyright infringement…’ he read out the list looking at the papers. ‘You name it, we have it.’
Was that pride in the lawyer’s voice?
Rajarajan took the file from the lawyer and put it on the table in front of Ray and opened it.
‘You see the space here?’ he said, pointing to the three-quarter-full file. ‘It’s for you. Go ahead, sue me. You’ll be here for another twenty years.’
~
Ray sat, his seatbelt still buckled. The car had just died on him half-a-kilometre from home. He didn’t know why or when. It could have been a couple of minutes ago or it could have been fifteen. Every time a vehicle zipped by, his car wobbled sympathetically. Ray found it comforting.
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