Rashid (sighing): God, imagine the state of their balls.
Ashok: Not to worry. They know how to protect their vital organs.
(They continue to stand and watch until the group succeeds in breaking the dahi handi amidst a lot of din. Then they disperse along with the crowds and get into their car.)
16. Ext. An open-air gym at VT: opposite the Capitol Cinema. Evening.
(Several youngsters dressed only in shorts are exercising with a variety of instruments. Their bodies glisten with perspiration. Rashid and Ashok who have obtained the permission of the man in charge, take close-ups of the more good-looking men, busy with their dumb-bells. The men are amused. Some of them comb their hair.)
17. Int. The flat. Night.
(Rashid and Ashok are smoking in the balcony.)
Ashok: Meaty, I’m learning so much about the intricacies of my craft. How a photograph can so completely distort the meaning of an action if it pleases. I’m indebted to you for the insight.
Rashid: For once you’re giving me credit. Thank you Richard Franklin, editor of Six Inches. Thank you all our models.
(They kiss.)
7 p.m. I fill my fountain pen. I want to drink the poisonous substance.
18. Ext. A nondescript street. Day.
(Rashid and Ashok are walking behind two well-built men in their late twenties. From time to time the men stop and one of them lifts the other ecstatically. They are evidently very happy about something. Every time they stop, Rashid and Ashok stop too, maintaining a safe distance of about twenty feet. Every time they embrace, Ashok goes slightly closer and takes a picture. He has just taken his fourth shot, when the men suddenly turn around. The joyous expression on their faces has gone. It is replaced by a stern, suspicious look. The conversation that follows takes place in Hindi.)
Man 1: Hey mister, what is it? Why did you click our pictures?
Ashok: No reason in particular. I’m a photographer by training and I just click whatever catches my fancy. Sorry if you feel bad.
Man 2: But why us? What did you find so special about us?
Rashid: The friendship between the two of you. In these days of strife and hatred, it’s so reassuring.
Man 1: Where do you two work?
Rashid: I’m a businessman. Ashok is a photographer, as he’s already told you.
Man 2 (to Rashid): What business do you do?
Rashid: Textile business.
Man 2: Why do you speak like a chhakka?
Rashid: What do you mean? It’s my natural style.
Man 1 (to Ashok): Can I take a look at your camera?
Ashok: Sure. Why not?
(He gives his camera to Man 2 who scrutinizes and then returns it.)
Man 2: Is your camera imported?
Ashok: No, it’s Indian.
Man 1: Is it very expensive?
Ashok: No, not much. Less than a thousand rupees.
Man 2: Will you show us our pictures when they’re developed?
Ashok: Of course. Tell us where we can contact you.
Man 2: Why don’t you give us your address or telephone number?
Rashid (to Ashok, in English): No, Sweety, don’t do that. It’s risky.
Man 2 (to Rashid): Hey mister, we understand English, okay?
Ashok (to Man 2): We are in the process of moving house. So you give us your address, and we’ll see that the pictures reach you.
Man 2: I’m at the BDD Chawls at Worli, room number 22.
Ashok: Okay, I’ll see you there with the photos.
Man 1: One moment. Do the two of you live together?
Ashok: Yes, we’re flatmates. We must leave now. We’ve got to attend a meeting.
(Before the men can say anything else, they quickly get into their car and drive off.)
19. Ext. The Bombay streets. Day.
(Rashid and Ashok are driving.)
Ashok: Meaty, I told you this would happen. Those chaps were cops.
Rashid: They were thieves. They wanted to steal your camera.
Ashok: That’s just lower middle class mentality. Don’t tell me you’re not used to it, having lived all your life in Bombay.
Rashid: And they were rogues. They wanted our address, so they could come and blackmail us.
Ashok: I know that. But why did you have to tell me in front of them? It made them all the more suspicious. I was much more tactful. I told them we were moving house.
Rashid: Fuck them. Are you setious about going to their place with the snaps? You must be mad if you are.
8 p.m. I don’t know why, but I feel terribly depressed all of a sudden. I pace the room for a while.
20. Int. The Liberty Studio at Fort. Day.
(Rashid and Ashok are giving in their film for developing. They are asked by the manager to collect the pictures two days later. They come out of the studio and get into their car. After they drive off, we see the two men on the opposite side of the street. They have followed Rashid and Ashok, and are tracking their movements. They enter the studio and have a word with the manager.)
21. Int. The flat. Night.
(Rashid and Ashok enter. They have had a drink on the way.) Rashid: Fishy odour. You’re smelling of spunk, naughty boy.
Ashok: It’s the Versova seashore. What else can you expect when you live in a fishing village?
Rashid: I want to eat fish and chips. And I want to sing a song called ‘Penis in Your Anus’.
8.30 p.m. I pour myself a drink. Maybe that’ll do me, though not my liver, some good. The doorbell rings, but there’s no one there. Those neighbours’ kids . . .
9 p.m. Tomorrow I’ll take out the typewriter and type out what I’m writing today. I am a one-finger typist. I don’t understand word-processors or anything too technologically advanced. It’s a sort of impotence.
22. Int. The Liberty Studio at Fort. Evening.
(Rashid and Ashok are collecting their photographs. To their surprise, they find the two men in the studio, waiting for them. Even more surprising, the photographs are already in their possession. Seeing this, Rashid loses his head and screams at the manager.)
Rashid: How dare you give our snaps to these fellows.
Man 2 (flashing an identity card): Police!
Ashok (to Rashid): I told you.
(The rest of the conversation is in Hindi.)
Ashok (to the policemen): But how did you know we gave our rolls for developing here?
Man 1: We followed you on a motorcycle after our infamous encounter the other day. We waited till you left the shop and then told the manager who we were and what we wanted.
Ashok: But I thought we had parted as friends on the understanding that we’d bring you your snaps at BDD Chawls.
Man 2: That was according to you, not according to us. (He produces the photographs and we see each one of them at close quarters. They look sinister.) We demand an explanation. Why have you taken all these photographs? What do you intend to do with them?
Man 1: The pictures look dirty. Your intentions are malafide.
Man 2 (to Ashok): Is your friend a foreigner?
Ashok: No, he’s Indian.
Man 2: Which part of India is he from?
Ashok: He’s Parsi.
Man 2: Bawaji?
Man 1: You’ll have to come with us to the police station.
Rashid: What for?
Man 1: For taking these pictures.
Rashid: Why make such a hullabaloo about them? They are merely Bombay shots that depict different aspects of life in the city.
Man 1: We’re not convinced. You’ll have to come to the police station.
Rashid: What nonsense!
Man 2: Hey, mind your language. Don’t use words like ‘nonsense’ or you’ll get it.
Ashok (to the men): Look, yaar. Can’t we settle this amicably?
Man 1: What do you mean? Are you trying to bribe us?
10 p.m. The drink has done my spirits some good. I feel less depressed. I pace the room again.
23.
Int. The flat. Early morning.
(The double bed in the bedroom has been separated into two single beds. Light filters in through the curtains.
Rashid and Man 2 are asleep on one bed. Ashok and Man 1 on the other. They are covered in blankets. Ashok wakes up, sits up in bed and surveys the situation. There’s an action-replay of events going on in his head.)
Cut to: Flashback of events that transpired the previous evening, sequentially.
24. Ext. Liberty Studio. Evening.
(The two policemen strike a deal with Rashid and Ashok outside the studio. Currency notes are exchanged and the four are seen getting into Rashid’s car. Ashok as usual is at the wheel.)
25. Int. Gokul Restaurant and Bar at Colaba, Saturday night. (Rashid, Ashok and the two policemen have downed several drinks and are in the process of ordering dinner. The other tables are full of gay couples who are drunk and all over each other. It’s a totally new experience for the policemen who are enjoying themselves thoroughly.)
26. Ext. The Bombay streets. Night.
(Rashid, Ashok and the two policemen, all very drunk, drive from Colaba to Versova. On the way they stop briefly at the BDD chawls. They sing incoherent songs and have close shaves on the road, even at this late hour.)
27. Int. The flat. Early morning.
(Ashok wonders whether he and Rashid seduced the policemen or the policemen seduced them. He goes back to sleep. We hear all of them snoring.)
(Credits)
Midnight. I gobble up a lot of stale food which has been lying in the fridge for days. It is quiet now. The neighbours’ kids are fast asleep. I’m frightened of too much quiet.
Karate
Adil Jussawalla
Eyes sewn, my head a bag of tricks,
I pad down streets to find my enemy.
New York London or any tall
Story I’ve a part in,
He is the same
White man whose daily dis-
Appearance is my brief.
Whose wars have put me on a false, if nimble
Footing. Whose tame goings-on
By day
Conceal a fratricidal fox by night.
What is it
Disproportions me of my big-time twin,
Symbiosis of loving that must kill? What pigmy
In me wants it?
I spot a giant. Call
So he won’t disappear down the fatal
Error of some steps. Warn him
As he comes:
Before night
Takes in its tongue with its yellow pill,
Before day
Swallows it with a smile,
Before dawn
Breaks round his head the lights of his last
Aromatic breath,
His head will flop,
My hands will chop, then fold.
The Raising of Lazarus For Adrian Husain
Adil Jussawalla
The rapid indirections of a trip,
A hand of stone secure about the throat,
God’s hateful hiss of air as through a tin . . .
Reversal of a process I had been through
Snaking back to sleep.
Until I felt his mouth’s coherence lift,
I had forgotten what it was to die.
And then remembered: the slow
Brutalities his knowledge drew to scorn—
Scorn of my condition, scorn
Of scorn itself, scorn of my last petering
Outwards from his hands.
He brought me round but never asked the matter
With my life nor why it went.
Nor took the fatal tablets from my coat.
Song of a Hired Man
Adil Jussawalla
I’m head of this affair,
rioter, home-made
red-flagging bum;
singing of hope for a fee
though nobody wants it—No.
Have aged to the shape of a crow,
saying Ave’s for Bhave
selling undies to rundies.
Cheat everyone,
No one cheats me.
Sleep at odd
angles and hours
since she went at a crossroads
of sunstroke, killed for no ice.
Bark. Anger the run-down
at their siesta—their open-jawed
fledglings awaiting my worms,
my children, my followers;
myself, a snatcher
of eggs, stray cats,
upstart crow who flaps
big-bottomed foreign-returneds
who pay court
(tennis of course)
to their Laxmis, their banks,
their dicks perpetually depressed.
Stars that gave out
at the burial of sailors at sea,
swam through her eyes,
now the eyes of girls who stare
as I pass
(if I had the wings of a dove
I could dove-tail so sweetly)
till a steel-genitalled Jaguar stops me,
Miss (mortified) India at the wheel.
But I make do somehow,
tickling the teat of a temple—
learnt evasive action
from a colonel, British,
my love-life easy.
Hot tropical trains
aprickle with limbs and eyes,
ribbed nags
under a masjid’s shadow,
the hack’s long
agony, engineer whips and wheels
are not my concern.
I’m head of affairs far sweeter,
more bitter—Love’s soft
partition alone responsible, O
for scars
on the neck,
on the back,
on the throat—
proud flesh, bound
for the skeleton-scraper.
Followers of all
the pallidly orthodox
I shunned, all unfelt needles.
A beach lies before me
asprawling with boats,
the cotton-city emptying
its spindle of people
into the sea—along with
this elephant god I carry
asquat on a rat.
Hai Ram!
the fine oppositions of the Hindu
imagination—
as lean as fire
as fat as fat.
Slap-happy,
dissolve now,
dissolve, bright clay,
and from my possession,
work deep in the sea, dissolve,
waste deep . . .
and perhaps . . .
after another ten years
of this ritual
dunking, debunking . . .
after ten years, what?
Alone by the sea now,
count my gains.
Singing of hope means
a little less pain,
a little more change—
that seems to be all.
Got your Black Label quota.
Got the Godfather’s call.
I’m head of this affair,
rioter, home-made, let.
‘Never Take Candy from a Stranger!’
Gyansingh Shatir
Dear readers! I am like a wild plant which is reared by the elements but whoever happens to see its flowers, starts plucking them and destroying them. There is a saying in the village:
God must not bless anyone with fair colour,
It is like inviting the enmity of the whole town.
In view of this saying, my fair colour was enough to make me a victim of circumstances but my ill-luck was such that my features were charming too. Whoever happened to look at me liked me and started kissing and fondling me. Some would embrace me with their looks. To escape their amorous glances, I would cast down my eyes and go away from their presence. If I did not move away from their gaze, I felt the onlooker was tearing through me as if eating
me. None of the other children could match up to my good looks. I would look at myself in the mirror, store my picture in my eyes and compare myself with others. Everybody seemed to me a combination of unrelated limbs; creativity’s half-hearted attempts. Whoever appealed to me a little, I would look at him with the eyes of a critic. Some had crooked eyebrows, some unequal eyes, some had mismatching nostrils and uneven lips. The ears never seemed to match the faces.
Yet, I noticed that my face was as if a painter had drawn a centre line before painting the organs on it. My countenance made me a self-worshipper. When I looked in the mirror, I wished to love myself and started kissing the mirror. This new experience transported me to a new extravagance of jealousy. I touched myself, kissed myself and with a desire to embrace my rival, I would look behind the mirror and finding no one there I would feel aggrieved. I was very fond of the mirror and always kept a broken piece of it in my pocket. But I lost that precious possession somewhere and could not manage to find another after that. To get rid of my agony, I invented a new game. I went to graze the cattle and sat down by the stream at such an angle that I could see myself in the water. This side of the Satrukha, there was a hunched rosewood tree, whose branches had spread over the water like a cape. The branches stood at a good height above the water and it was my favourite place. I sat there for hours and watched myself in the water-mirror like the lotus of the legends. It is said that the lotus was actually an angel. He happened to see his face in the water once and it delighted him so much that he forgot his divine duty. He was banished from the kingdom of God with a curse that he would forever stand in water but would never be able to see his own charming face.
The girls admired me and would offer anything to enjoy my company. They cajoled and caressed me and took me away with them. It was difficult for me to choose between Parkash Kaur and Swarn Kaur. They would decide my fate by a toss and whoever won would press me close to her bosom and sleep as if there were thieves around conspiring to steal me from her.
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