The world had become smaller these days, an enormous mass of land named China having been wiped off the cabaret map. China alone used to take up five months or so of the itinerary—now Hong Kong was the only saving grace, but how much time could one spend there? Besides, it was a free port now, which meant that there was considerable freedom everywhere, and the night guests expected that much more; satisfying the guests of a free port was rather difficult for most dancers.
The most priceless commodity in the cabaret market was youth. Dancers’ rates varied according to the ebb and tide of this fluid quality. As a result, dancers had to get themselves photographed every three months and produce a certificate to prove that the picture was a recent one. Connoisseurs scanned these photographs carefully and fixed the rate. Marco Polo said it was a very treacherous business—passing off four or five-year-old pictures as recent ones was common practice. The hotel had, therefore, made arrangements with a few well-known studios around the world where the dancers had to get themselves photographed. I believe a couple of studios in Calcutta were also part of the list. Dancers got themselves photographed and then sent the pictures to Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Manila or, girdling the Pacific ocean, all the way to distant America.
‘These night-blossoms cost a lot,’ Bose-da smiled and said. ‘For instance—the German girl named Hydrogen Bomb used to charge a hundred and eighty pounds a week, besides board and lodging and passage money. or take the Egyptian, Farida, who was advertised as the butter-breasted beauty—she and her sister charged three thousand pounds a month between them; that’s nearly forty thousand rupees. Then there was Lola, the Tomato Girl, from Cuba, who used to have ten tomatoes hanging around her body every day, selling them at hundred rupees each. If you paid for it, you could tear off a tomato from anywhere on her body—she would bite it, suck a little of the juice and give it to you; you could suck a little and give it back to her. She charged five hundred dollars a week. But Marjorie, a fabulous singer, used to get just hundred dollars a week, and she didn’t attract much of a crowd, either. She was a Negro. I’ve never heard a lovelier voice in my life.’
These huge payments to the cabaret beauties were also a great gamble. No one could tell whether Calcutta’s discerning citizens would be pleased enough to throng the hotel every night, drinking bottle after bottle and paying up. For six days a week, they’d make the night as bright as day; only on the dry day, when no liquor was sold, was there no show. Who wanted to listen to music or watch dances holding empty glasses? Instead, there were special programmes at lunchtime on Sunday, but those shows were much more restrained, much more civilized.
Discerning circles responded quite favourably to the advertisement for Connie. ‘The language has a lot to do with it,’ Bose-da said. ‘Between the movie chaps and ourselves, we’ve exhausted all the words in the dictionary that describe feminine beauty. However explicit, nothing is provocative enough. After days of spicy food, you long for plain home cooking, which is why I thought of “Connie, the Woman, is Coming to Calcutta”.’
People started enquiring over the telephone the day after the advertisement was published: rich fathers’ sons, contractors who needed deals, sales officers who wanted to keep purchase officers happy. I had to take many of those phone calls.
‘Hello, is that Shahjahan Hotel?’
‘Good afternoon, this is the reception.’
‘Could you tell me something about Connie the Woman? Is she starting her shows on Saturday?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’d like to book a table for the first night.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, we’re full on opening night. We have only three hundred and fifty seats, you see...’
‘Hello, is that Shahjahan Hotel? What’s the admission fee for Connie’s show?’
‘The admission fee is five rupees, and dinner is seven and a half rupees.’
‘What about the dress code?’
‘There are dress restrictions, sir, evening formals or national.’
Phokla Chatterjee telephoned, too. ‘Is that Bose? This is Chatterjee.’
‘Mr Bose is not available right now, sir, this is Shankar.’
‘Look, I want three tickets on the opening night, booked for Mr Ranganathan.’
‘We don’t have a single ticket, sir. We’re all sold out.’
‘What? What about at black-market rates?’
‘No sir, we haven’t given more than five to anyone.’
Phokla wasn’t willing to let go so easily. ‘I have to have the tickets,’ he said. ‘By hook or by crook. Ranganathan is leaving the very next day. Tell me the names of those who have booked tables—you’re Bengali, we expect some consideration from you. Is it fair for all of Calcutta’s pleasures to be monopolized by non-Bengalis?’
‘I can do nothing, sir,’ I said. ‘I’ll read you the names: Mr Khaitan, Mr Bajoria, Mr Lal, Mr McFarlane, Saha, Sen, Chatterjee, Loknathan, Joseph, Lang Chang Sun. There’s more: Singh, Sharma, Ali, Basu, Upadhyay, Jajodia, Motiram, Hiraram, Chuniram, Chhatawala, Whiskywala.’
‘All those buggers are having fun on the house, and genuine parties like us can’t get tickets.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Those bloody pigs have expense accounts—they’ll submit even the bills for their pleasure women to their companies. And we who want to pay our own way in can’t get a seat. The government’s snoring its head off. All right, check if Agarwalla’s name is on the list.’
‘Yes sir, against two tables for five each,’ I said.
‘Thank god, I might as well ask him to let me have a table. That bugger Ranganathan is a south Indian. Has nothing but tamarind and sambar at home in Bangalore, and a harridan of a wife. The poor chap’s here on business for a few days, and wants a little titillation. But he’s new here, knows nothing, and he’s full of fears—fear for his life, fear for his heart, fear of diseases—which is why he doesn’t dare go anywhere he wants to. So I’m his guide.’
I was about to put the phone down when Chatterjee asked me a question I’d never heard before. ‘By the way, I forgot the most important point. Why didn’t you put the statistics in the advertisement?’
‘Statistics, sir?’
‘You’d better find out from Bose, I’ll call you later.’ Chatterjee rang off.
Bose-da explained the meaning of the word ‘statistics’ to me. ‘And to think you used to work at the High Court,’ he chided me. ‘Don’t you know the yardstick of modern civilization? In today’s world a man is measured by his bank balance and a woman by her figure: 36-22-34, 34-20-34—that is all our patrons need to get the picture.’
We didn’t have Connie’s statistics yet. ‘I have ones that are six months old,’ said Marco Polo, ‘but we can’t give out those.’
Phokla Chatterjee phoned again.
‘Yes sir, we’ve sent a reply-paid cable for the latest statistics,’ said Bose-da over the phone, ‘but we haven’t got an answer yet. It’ll be a very nice show, sir, it’s not just a dance routine, there’s more.’
‘Really? Please give me a hint...it will help me keep Ranganathan warm. Poor fellow—his wife gives him hell every day.’
‘Sorry, I’m not allowed to tell you now, sir, you’ll see it all live.’
From eight in the evening, the road in front of Shahjahan was jammed with cars, as though someone had scooped up the most beautiful automobiles of the country in a giant net and brought them to the hotel. As car after car drove up and stopped for a moment at the gate, the doorman opened the door and saluted the passengers stepping out.
Attired in evening dress, I dropped in on Nityahari—to remind him to change my bed sheet. Seated amidst a pile of dirty linen, he said, ‘I’ll send you a fresh one. What’s the crowd of cars like?’
‘Huge,’ I replied.
‘Everyone in this country’s become an Englishman,’ he grumbled. ‘Those who claim that the English won India in an orchard in Plassey in 1757 know little about history. Actually, victory came many years l
ater, right before our eyes, on 15 August 1947, our Independence Day. The country went English overnight.’ Pausing briefly, he continued, ‘When Gandhi was leading the freedom struggle, when people were going to jail, singing “Bande Mataram” and wearing khadi, we used to be scared that our hotel jobs wouldn’t last long. My brother-in-law was a film projectionist in an English cinema hall in Chowringhee. The two of us were under the impression that all this would stop with Independence, that not even a fly would enter an English cinema hall, that Shahjahan Hotel would become a desert, and Mumtaz Bar would close down. Sending Christ, cricket and the cabaret packing, the Englishmen would also push off, leaving us old men in the lurch.’
He rose, saying, ‘I have to visit your lady Connie.’ Then, almost as an afterthought added, ‘And yet, strangely enough the demand for pillows seems to be rising, liquor sales are increasing, and hotel rooms are full. But I have to go, I can’t stand here talking to you all day. I’m going to find out if Connie wants extra pillows. I’ll even offer her a bolster,’ he said, rubbing his nose with his left hand. ‘Those foreigners don’t use them. I sometimes feel like getting them addicted to bolsters. Just revenge for what they did to us. I’ve even done it with one or two of them. The Nata pillow, they call it. Once you acquire the habit you can’t shake it off! The bolster has ruined the Bengali race.’
Cars were still arriving outside. Old men got off young cars, and young men got off old ones. The very essence of male Calcutta seemed to have gathered at Shahjahan—barely a couple of miles from where Tagore and Vivekananda were born, where Aurobindo and Subhash Bose joined the quest for an independent India, where William Jones sowed the seeds of Western thought in this country, where David Hare taught children how to read and write.
There wasn’t an inch of space at Mumtaz bar. William Ghosh was lording it over the crowd at the restaurant door, seated at a table with the ticket book and a cashbox. Many people were buying advance tickets. Phokla Chatterjee and his companion Ranganathan had already occupied chairs in the front row. He was in national dress that evening. Parabashia stood at the door, keeping a watch on people’s attire.
When a man in shirtsleeves was about to enter, Parabashia stopped him. William rose and showed him the notice in front of the door (Rights of Admission Reserved), saying, ‘We’re terribly sorry, but you can’t enter in that dress.’
The guest’s face reddened, and he said, ‘Even in independent India it’s still a South African regime, I see.’
I told him, ‘There’s plenty of time, you could change and come back.’
Growling with rage, he disappeared, only to return in fifteen minutes, looking the perfect Westerner. When I nodded to him he said, ‘Two hundred and fifty rupees down the drain—I had to buy a ready-made suit. I’ll teach you people a lesson. I’m going to write a letter to the papers about this.’
Alcohol was flowing like water; Tobarak Ali and Ram Singh had started whipping open soda bottles from eight o’clock, and the beer, whisky, rum and gin, free of the confines of bottles, were dancing about inside glasses. When Marco Polo went to Ram Singh to find out the situation, Ram Singh said, ‘Very hot. We’ll sell six or seven thousand rupees’ worth.’
After downing two White Labels, Phokla ordered a large peg of Dimple Scotch, while the salt-and-pepper haired Ranganathan sat nursing a shot of Cinzano vermouth. Chatterjee said to us, ‘Mr Ranganathan’s put me in a real spot; I keep telling him, when in Rome do as Romans do—Connie’s from Scotland, and so is Dimple, but he keeps sitting there with Italy on his lap.’
Ranganathan shook his head and said morosely, ‘Blood pressure.’
Chatterjee said, ‘Try a peg—that pressure will climb down from the rooftops to the basement. And Connie will work as the sedative—put your nerves to sleep. This is her first appearance in Calcutta, but a friend of mine saw her perform in Cairo, he went from Damascus to Cairo for her show.’
‘I’m not particularly used to whiskey,’ said Ranganathan.
‘Don’t say that before these young men,’ said Phokla. ‘They’ll start laughing if they hear that even at fifty-two you haven’t got used to whiskey. Such things are unimaginable, even in our wildest dreams, in Calcutta.’
Ram Singh, Tobarak Ali and the other ‘wet’ boys had worked up a frenetic pace by now. The hall had become pungent with the foul smell of tobacco, as though teargas shells had been thrown inside. The hands of the clock were gradually creeping up to ten, and the clink of the dinner crockery sounded like part of an orchestra.
‘How much longer?’ shouted Phokla.
It was my turn now. Bose-da could barely speak, thanks to a bad cold, and kept coughing. Marco Polo had agreed to ‘give the young man a chance’. Over in the corner Gomez’s band played on indefatigably. Bose-da signalled to me from the door, and, as in a cinema hall, the bright lights in the corners went out. With a beating heart I went and stood in front of the stage, the mike in my left hand. At my signal, the orchestra fell silent. ‘Cheerio,’ said Gomez softly.
I saw before me seven hundred eyes suddenly come alive with expectation. Almost without my knowing it, the words slipped out: ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Though I couldn’t find a real lady in the hall that evening, I repeated, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On this splendid evening at Shahjahan Hotel we hope you have been savouring the cuisine of our French chef, and the wines carefully chosen from several countries. I now present to you Connie—you have seen many women in your eventful lives, but she is the woman, the only one of her kind created by God in this century.’
All the lights went out at once, and a soft hum of anticipation rose in the hall. But under some invisible influence, it suddenly died out, though for just a moment. By some strange chemical reaction, the fading sound was unexpectedly transformed into light. Piercing the darkness, a needle-sharp beam of light fell on the stage, seeking someone in its inebriated wandering. Someone had even appeared onstage, but the drunken beam simply couldn’t stay still long enough. Was the figure on stage, wearing a veil of darkness, Connie herself?
Without teasing the patrons’ curiosity any longer, the beam grew stronger. But where was Connie? She was nowhere to be found. Instead, a two-foot-tall dwarf in evening dress was strutting about on the stage. He had a three-foot-high top hat on his head and a cane in his hand.
Without giving the disappointed audience a chance to express its disapproval, the dwarf took off his hat with his left hand and, twirling his cane, climbed on the chair, saying, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am Connie the...’ Then, as though he had forgotten, he started muttering, ‘Man or woman, woman or man...no, I am the woman Connie, Connie the woman.’
The audience started shouting. A few among them couldn’t sit still any longer. Rising from their chairs they started screaming, ‘We want Connie—where did this blasted dwarf turn up from?’
According to our plans, I had to do some acting, too. Pretending to be dumbstruck by the appearance of this dwarf instead of Connie onstage, I stood before the mike and said, ‘Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot quite understand. Barely five minutes ago I was in Connie’s room. She had finished dressing and was just about to take a vitamin pill. You go ahead and make the announcement, she told me, I’m ready. And now this two-foot-tall gentleman has arrived out of nowhere!’
The dwarf wasn’t put out, though. No sooner had I finished than he raced up to the mike, brought it down to the level of his face and said in a thin, feminine voice, ‘Believe me, I am, I am Connie—I took the wrong pill by mistake. All the same, I’m delighted that all of you have stayed awake for me till eleven at night.’ After that he started dancing like a cabaret girl, at which the entire hall burst out in protest.
I went up to the mike and said, ‘Don’t be impatient, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sending for a doctor right away. It’s the wrong tablet that’s led to this unforeseen mishap.’
The dwarf said, ‘Five minutes ago I was a woman, I was young—but now?’ He started feeling about his
body, as if searching for something, pulled out another tablet from his pocket, gulped it down and started muttering an incantation. Suddenly the lights went out once again, and a Marwari businessman in the front row screamed. ‘My God! There’s someone sitting on my lap!’
In the darkness, I said, ‘Don’t be scared, what does it feel like?’
He had got over his fear by now, having realized just who it was. ‘Very soft!’ he replied.
Now a single beam of light came on, and it revealed Connie sitting with her arms draped around the man in the front row. She had on a tiara and a necklace, besides the soft, multicoloured fabric covering her from neck to ankle. A few more lights came on, and, dragging her captive up to the stage, Connie bowed to the audience.
The prisoner freed himself, along with his enormous paunch, with great difficulty and went back panting to his chair. I announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you Connie; she has been on television several times, she has even appeared before His Highness King George VI, but tonight each one of you is her king—the king and emperor of Connie, the Woman!’
Connie began her dance now—but in that long, flowing outfit, there wasn’t much pace to her routine, which deflated the audience a little. ‘My darling Calcuttans,’ said Connie, ‘I believe some of you have been asking for my statistics. I’m sorry, but I never can remember figures—maybe one of you could measure them for yourself? Any mathematics professors among you?’
There was no reply from the audience. ‘A chartered accountant perhaps?’ asked Connie, making a face. No reply.
‘A tailor?’ The hall was still silent. ‘Dear, dear,’ she wiped her eyes in simulated grief, ‘are there no tailors in this great city? Don’t your girls wear anything that’s stitched?’
Everyone burst out laughing, but I felt my stomach churning, my head reeling. I thought I would collapse any moment. Gomez tugged at my jacket and said, ‘Cheer up, it’s going very well.’
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