by Diksha Basu
‘Until I get bored.’
‘Can you see yourself settling here?’
‘Who knows? I like it enough for now.’
‘Yeah. I like it so far too, but I’m just a bit scared. You know? I can’t help but worry that I’m taking time away from the American ladder. Like, what if the Bollywood thing doesn’t happen …’
‘You’re quite a worrier, aren’t you? So what if it doesn’t happen? Something or the other will.’
‘I guess. I just keep trying to maximize my future happiness.’
‘I’ve noticed. And you manage to minimize your current happiness pretty well in the process.’
Dino oozed all things Italian. He was sexy in a ruffled, messy kind of way and worked as an ‘entrepreneur’. Basically he did nothing. Apparently he’d always been adventurous and left Milan a few years ago to explore the world. He worked with an NGO for HIV + children in Ghana and then made his way to India. When I met him, he was busy making his way through all the women in Bandra … particularly the ones with a foreigner fetish. He didn’t really strike me as the NGO type, but he was definitely adventurous. He was forever complaining about not being able to find a relationship but just couldn’t seem to stop himself from falling into bed with every woman he met.
The first few months took on the speed of a Shinkansen train. At first I could make no sense of this fantastic city at all. The sights, the smells, the people, the buildings, all seemed to assault me and to make love to me to in equal measure and NYC faded rapidly from my memory. I’ve never been one for commitment. I dove into the city, head first, and hardly came up for air.
Much like I had spent my free time in NYC, I walked. Of course, Bombay isn’t really a city conducive to walking, so I soon changed to trains and taxis and rickshaws, and loved it all. I took the crowded local train down to Churchgate Station and jostled for space with the little fisherwomen. Actually, I thought they were little and cute at the beginning, but realized by the end of the first day that they were strong and feisty and had no qualms whatsoever about jabbing you in the ribs with their elbows.
I walked all over South Bombay. In Bombay, naturally, my video camera had to be in front of me to capture my face, glowing with sweat and happiness, reacting to this bizarre country. It had to capture me smiling and sharing an intimate laugh with the dirty but beautiful street children running along beside me. I would make it here. I just knew I would. I mean, I already had the kurta-with-jeans look going. How much harder could it be? I had heard that Shah Rukh once stood at the end of Marine Drive and declared that he would be the king of Bombay some day. I was tempted to do the same, but instead declared on Facebook: Naiya Kapur is falling in love. With Bombay.
The heat, while crippling, wasn’t unmanageable. I just learned to duck into every air-conditioned space I could find, and got used to the rivulets of sweat that dripped down my back. I bought bangles and ethnic print skirts on Colaba Causeway. I drank beer at Leopold’s but then realized I was the only Indian in there – waiters not included – and definitely the only one not carrying a copy of Shantaram and looking around desperately for a glimpse of Gregory David Roberts. I left. I didn’t want to be doing anything other than being fully, 100 per cent non-NRI Indian.
Rough Guide in hand … well, in bag, with furtive glances, I explored the city. It was odd being a tourist in a place where I looked like a native. I discovered little Parsi restaurants and wolfed down patra ni machi and berry pulao. I watched Bollywood movies at Regal and caught bharatanatyam performances at NCPA. Those were a bit of a struggle. I have a really hard time sitting through things when I’m alone. I can sit through a good movie, but I struggle through ‘cultural performances’. When I was young, I remember driving to New Jersey with my parents to watch kathak. I hated it. I loved that the whole family got together to drive down for a performance, but I hated the actual show. I fidgeted and struggled to stay awake. I still have that problem.
I started off wearing mostly FabIndia clothes but discovered soon that the colour runs on to your skin when you sweat. I thought my stomach was bleeding one day and nearly raced over to a hospital in a panic, but then discovered it was my red kurta. I ate at a Shiv Sagar once. I have never done that since and never intend to again – few things depress me as much as gaudily dressed Gujarati families eating in silence.
So, in the early stages of being in Bombay, I really did do everything I felt I should do to get in touch with my Indianness. But then I gradually discovered Bandra and it was there that I discovered an India that wasn’t so different from New York, and that didn’t make me feel obliged to sit through Carnatic music recitals. At first glance, Bandra isn’t all that different from the rest of the city. The streets are not spotless, the buildings aren’t all posh, the waterfront is definitely not reminiscent of Mykonos, but scratch the surface a little and Bandra is a whole different world. Instead of silk saris, middle-aged Indian ladies in short skirts and tank tops mingle with hipsters from around the world. It’s a strange, strange little suburb.
Once I got to know the nooks and crannies of Bandra, I very rarely travelled all the way back down south. It just felt so far, and everything I enjoyed and everyone I knew seemed to be in Bandra anyway. The suburb also offered a pretty high concentration of attractive people, and a little eye candy never hurt anyone. And the strangest thing, in Bandra, I could wear what I used to in NYC. I mean, I still often wore kurtas and long ethnic skirts, but when I did, I was definitely in the minority. When, however, I wore jeggings and a tank top, I fit right in. This was definitely an India my father didn’t know about. And probably one he would never want me to know about.
So, that was pretty much that. Every once in a while I felt like I wasn’t getting the real ‘India experience’ and so I would set off to do something different. The guilt of not being Indian enough was still fresh, so one day I decided to go and just walk around Dadar. In case you’re a tourist thinking about coming to Bombay and think you’ll be adventurous and different and off-the-beaten-track and decide to stroll around Dadar, don’t. There is nothing, nothing, to do there. Sure, middle-class Maharashtrians are nice enough; so, I imagine, are middle-class Punjabis, Tamilians, Gujaratis, Biharis and everyone else, but here’s the problem with the middle classes – they aren’t particularly interesting. It is one thing to stroll around Dharavi and poke your head into the slums, but Dadar? I’ll be impressed if you manage to spend more than forty-five minutes there without dying of boredom. The houses are all identical-looking apartment blocks. The people seem identical too. They are all simple and nice and naïve in their synthetic saris and bush shirts. The shopping is done the same way it is done in every other city in India – little corner shops and street-side vegetable and fruit sellers. Nothing new here. What happened to hopes, dreams and aspirations? All I know is that when I got back to Bandra that evening, it felt like a hotbed of ambition and energy.
That aside, the best part about Bombay? Bollywood is everywhere. You can’t throw a stone without hitting something or the other that is related to Bollywood. Kitschy, gorgeous movie posters line the streets all around town. Movie theatres are a dime a dozen, ranging from single-screen theatres that offer samosas to their patrons, to huge multiplexes that have fully reclining seats and caramel popcorn and soda on seat service. I loved it. I used to drive past Juhu Beach at least once every two days just to stare at the giant hoardings for new releases.
As far as my social life went, since nobody was really from Bandra, settling in and making friends was effortless. I quickly established a routine of sorts.
One morning, after seeing off yet another beautiful, scantily clad woman, Dino came dramatically into the living room, lit a cigarette and said, ‘It is impossible to find love, no? Why must they all be either beautiful or intelligent? Why can they not be both?’ To which Jess replied, ‘It isn’t like you talk to them enough to find out if they are both. And what are you whining about anyway? You’re screwing the hottest women in town.’
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‘Please do not talk like that, Jess. I make love to them.’
‘Right. Of course you do.’
‘You two are pretty and intelligent. But are there only two of you? Would you two like me to make love to you?’
‘Not again, no,’ Jess replied.
I have to admit I was tempted to have him make love to me. I loved how passionately he defended his love-making – as if it were his duty to please women from around the world. On many a drunken night, I’ve had to fight the urge to climb into his bed.
As far as my career was concerned, conquering Bollywood didn’t turn out to be the cake-walk I had expected, but I started to get the hang of it. I had come in feeling far too optimistic about how the industry would treat me, and it took me a while just to acclimatize and reconfigure my ethics. I was determined to not fall into the clichéd traps of the casting couch. I thought I would have the world at my feet with just my pretty face and charming personality. Turned out, a lot of girls in Bombay had prettier faces and equally charming personalities. The x-factor is very different in this city, in this crazy industry. I began going to auditions, but those were few and far between and never resulted in anything concrete. It seemed to be a lot more about meeting and knowing people, and so I started meeting and knowing a lot of people. I began partying almost every night, and if that counted as work, I was one of the hardest working people in Bombay those first few months.
Jess had a close friend named Ritesh who had moved to Bombay from Calcutta about eight years ago. He wasn’t Bengali, he said, but loved all things Bengali. I don’t really know why he kept stressing that. Anyway, he had originally moved to Bombay to be a scriptwriter but after a couple of false starts, he ended up writing Bollywood gossip for some tabloid. He wrote under the name ‘Bollywood Babu’ and took great pleasure in making fun of the people who didn’t help him realize his dream. He was dreadfully bitter but also catty and great fun. He had been the first one to write about the make-up the big male stars apply to make their abs look more sculpted. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Ya, ya. It’s brilliant. I mean, they aren’t doing it on huge paunches or anything, you know. But the actual definition is all eye-liner.’
‘Really? I would never have guessed. I suppose on camera it’s easy.’
‘On camera? What nonsense. They do it when they’re out chilling philling with friends too. I saw Kunal Seth with it once and he was totally doped out. He jumped into the pool and bas, came out with black streaks on his tummy and no abs.’
‘I wish I knew how to create fake abs. I’d finally be able to give up on the gym.’
‘Oh ho, it’s hardly difficult. I’ll do it for you, no? Here, see? Look at my abs. How real it looks.’
With that, he pulled up his shirt and lo and behold! A perfectly defined six pack. I put on mascara every morning; he put on his abs.
Oh, he was also a recovering cocaine-ketamine-heroin addict. He talked about his addictions openly. A bit too openly, if you ask me. When I was introduced to him, about four minutes into the conversation, he told me about a time when he snorted ‘cocaine-phocaine’ that was adulterated with laxatives and ended up soiling himself in the middle of a party at a nightclub. I fumbled to respond to the horrific story, but he himself was so casual about it that it was easy to feel comfortable despite the cringe-worthy confessions. I liked that about him from the start.
He knew a lot of people in the industry and had the advantage of having a completely ambiguous sexuality. He insisted he was straight and kept rattling off the names of model-esque women that he had slept with, but walked around wearing kurtas with exceptionally low necklines and talked with classic limp-wrist. Also, he never once hit on me. He desperately wanted to be an intellectual but equally desperately wanted to be a glamour queen.
The minute Ritesh found out why I had moved to Bombay, he got really excited.
‘Uff, thank god. Jess finally has a friend with some sense. Of course you should do Bollywood. Especially since you’re pretty enough for it. Lovely plan. I will help. You will be my project.’
‘Really? So you know a lot of people? I don’t really know where to start.’
‘Cho sweet! Drop the nonsense innocent act for starters. Of course I know a lot of people. The adbhantage of doing a lot of drugs is that you make a lot of friends. It’s nonsense when people say being an addict is lonely. It is, in fact, lovely. But I should warn you, many of them are absolutely mad, so tread carefully.’
‘Really? Like how?’
‘You’ll see. Achcha, I’m off. There’s this hot MTV veejay’s father’s funeral this evening.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Do you know her well?’
‘Not at all. But I really want to sleep with her and girls are all nice and vulnerable at their fathers’ funerals.’
So Ritesh gave me the number of some casting agent friend of his and some film directors. Technically, that couldn’t be categorized as helping me out as much as he could, but I didn’t really know what else to ask of him. And I think he lost a lot of ‘good friends’ when he decided to get clean.
I messaged all the directors that Ritesh gave me contacts of and not even one replied. I messaged some productions houses that I got the numbers for and again, no replies. I messaged some ‘talent coordinators’ and this time, a lot of replies, but mostly to ask me out on dates, not to coordinate my talent.
So I started my rounds of the audition circuit but, to be honest, I quickly started feeling disheartened. There were a lot of sleazy men around. And, I mean, gross sleazy men. Men my father’s age or older, with beer bellies and bad breath, who thought I would jump into bed with them. No amount of stardom is worth that. But the saddest thing is for some girls, stardom is worth that. So I knew that even if I said no to the gross old man and made some witty caustic remark that hit him where it hurts, I couldn’t actually hurt him because the equally pretty girl behind me would have agreed to do what I didn’t. So really nobody lost except me. That was the most annoying part.
In a way, I was fortunate that my first experience with the shadiness of it all came pretty early on. A Telugu film was being cast in a hotel in Juhu. One of the talent coordinators – pimps, rather – that I had sent my pictures to sent me an SMS that read:
Big Telegu Film Casting. 503 SeaSide Htl, JUHU
no telegu/experience needed. 6PM to 10PM,
FRI. CASUALS. Contact PRASAD
I went. It was the first message that had details like that instead of the usual one that read something like:
thanking u 4 pics. wld like to no more. can you meet
andheri w 9pm on thur? sending u adres
Also, a lot of big stars get their breaks in Bollywood via south Indian films. And, hey, this film didn’t even need me to speak ‘Telegu’. Why not? Since it said CASUALS, I threw on a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt and headed off to Juhu. I had no idea about the movie or the character, so I decided to look as versatile and natural as possible and give them a fresh palette to work on. I arrived by 5.45 in the evening so they could see me before the tedium of the auditions set in. Apparently, at least nine other girls wanted to do the same. And for these nine other girls, CASUALS meant skin-tight miniskirts with tank tops, clear plasticky heels, completely straight hair and full make-up. I’m pretty convinced two of them weren’t even women. And another two were there with their mothers – mothers who had more make-up on and more cleavage showing than the daughters. Girls went in, girls came out, girls went in, girls came out, and then I was called in. I was welcomed into a room that was one giant cloud of smoke. Four overweight men lounged about on a king-sized bed, chain-smoking and drinking whiskey. Two of them had red tikkas marking their foreheads. Men of God, naturally. They looked me up and down and chuckled. I felt like a big hunk of meat up for auction. One of them said, ‘Come, come. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like a whiskey?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Arre, have, na? What, you don’t drink? You’re a g
ood girl?’
The way he said the word ‘good’ made me want to crawl into the ground and never emerge again. Another one of the men continued, ‘Chalo, so you don’t want to drink. Good morals. Tell us about yourself. You want to get into acting?’
The rest of them sniggered. I nodded, feeling my ears on fire. These men were making me feel sick and small. They chatted amongst themselves while occasionally referring back to me and smirking. I wasn’t too sure what to do. I sat still for what felt like an eternity, but in reality it was barely five minutes. Another one of them turned to me, red-eyed, and said, ‘Baby, you’re not for us. Go, go.’ And that was it. I walked out shame-faced and feeling violated even though nothing had been said or done. As I walked out, the other girls in the hallway looked so calm and so collected. The girl who had been in the room before me was still out there, laughing and joking with some of the other girls.
I went home that night upset but not completely disheartened. I had, after all, survived my first casting situation. I had handled myself well and not allowed myself to look wounded or disgusted in the men’s presence. I was still determined to make it in Bollywood on my own terms. Besides, this was for a Telugu film. Big Bollywood films were bound to be different. These producers didn’t even have much to offer. It was one thing to behave shadily if you were truly in a position of power, but if you were a whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking, pot-bellied, tikka-wearing mid-range producer, you were irrelevant. I guess I had to learn from that. Learn which situations to laugh at and which to walk out of. In a matter of days, I actually convinced myself that it was good to have gone through the harrowing experience. I didn’t know then, however, that the casting couch comes in all shapes and sizes. And some casting couches are, in fact, plush and comfortable and very seductive.