Manju Bhabhi was from Kashmir, a delicate rosebud of a woman. She was very fond of stories, but being unable to read herself, she depended on me to do the needful. She possessed a large treasure trove of books with colourful illustrations. I think Pratiek Master had bought them in a sale from the kabbadi. I would choose a new book, every day. Manju Bhabhi liked nothing better than to lie back in bed, while I sat at her feet, taking gleeful pleasure in correcting my pronunciation, though she herself was semi-literate.
I myself had been taught to read by my mother when I was five and now, at fourteen, read to Manju Bhabhi in the hot afternoons; the harsh summer sun casting porous patterns on her waist and cleavage, on the exposed parts of her body. As I struggled to look away – a knot forming at the base of my stomach – she stretched herself, moaning suggestively, her blue eyes drooping from the languid torpor of the summer heat and the sound of my adolescent voice that was beginning to crack.
As always, I squatted by the edge of the bed, where her fair feet dangled, the silver anklets riding upwards, as I struggled to glance down. Focus on the chapter I was reading from, modulating my voice, slightly embarrassed at the way it squeaked on occasion, despite me trying all I could to take on the accent of each of the characters. Manju Bhabhi squealed like a child every time I modified my tone, working doubly hard at getting the impersonations right. Sometimes, Manju Bhabhi would bend down, her heaving cleavage in my face, as she gripped my fingers, tracing them over the individual letters…her flawless skin, supple, sensuous…like a memsahib, like those white women with small tits and large eyes.
In my mind, Manju Bhabhi was no less than a movie-star.
Years later, when I met Marie, her porcelain skin and her big, beautiful eyes reminded me of her.
Marie Bourdaine was French.
Like Manju Bhabhi, she was also feminine, fantasy, and forbidden.
Evening was slowly descending over Paris; the bright, laser lights on the Eiffel Tower gleamed incandescently. The Seine shimmered in the distance. I put down my glass of brandy, wiping the corners of my lips, studying the fine lines that now crisscrossed my mouth, in the ornate mirror on the wall of my room in Hotel du Champ de Villiers. The same room that I had first visited Amitabh in. Room number 654.
I ran my fingers over my copy of Blindside. A mid-sized, much-thumbed, battered hardback with a black cover, holding it close to my lips. My heart sinking the way it had, when the news of Amitabh’s gruesome death had first played out on French national television. His intense stare, the colour of the thick veins on his dark hands, his brooding silences, haunted me for months.
My breath rose and fell, as I slipped my hands inside my lace negligee, weighing my breasts in my palms. I closed my eyes, feeling his touch once again. As vividly as I had then, almost a decade and a half ago.
The project Amitabh had travelled to Paris for was of a magnitude never dreamed of before. It was to be an epic production with a cast of two hundred people, we were informed, as the mega three-month auditions culminated; the French Press going overboard when, for the first time ever, over a hundred entertainers from faraway India – clowns, acrobats, trapeze-artists, percussionists, classical singers, actors, mime-experts, technicians and even snake-charmers – arrived on a long-distance flight, helmed by a man with a name that was difficult to pronounce – someone called Amitabh Kulasheshtra: a dark, brooding, tall, theatre director, probably a few years younger than me, in his early forties.
He was here to stage a legendary Indian classic, penned by an ancient bard, Kalidasa, a sweeping tapestry of love, loss, friendship and betrayal – the test of a woman’s fidelity and the wrong-doings of the man she loved. Whose child she carried in her womb. A mighty king, a man of the world, a virile warrior – La Legende de Sakuntalam – was to be performed under an open sky, a historic Indo-French artistic collaboration; a magnum-opus of a scale both countries had never before witnessed.
I was chosen to play the role of Sakuntalam – where my fame as the foremost opera singer in France meant that I led the entourage of performers from my nation – in a rousing musical adaptation that would blend the lost traditions of both.
The first week was an orientation of sorts. The Indian contingent was jet-lagged and was having trouble adjusting to the time difference and the starkly divergent food habits. Communication was another grey area. Most of us spoke French, with a smattering of English. While most of them used their own regional language, a smattering of Hindi, and almost no English at all. We shared little in common, except the man who manned this unwieldy ship – who didn’t make any extra effort to go out of his way and get familiar with us, his resistant silences and cryptic answers, casting a veil of suspicion, making us unsure of what we had signed up for, in those early days, before we started rehearsing.
The ice was gradually broken over some elaborate team dinners where we were introduced to cuisine from our respective cultures and went on sight-seeing tours together. To foster intimacy, a cultural bonhomie, as it were.
Again, I saw him in my mind’s eye, sitting by himself, at the end of the double-decker bus that had been hired to take us all out. ‘You, you don’t seem to be much interested in history,’ I tried striking up a casual conversation with Amitabh, that day, stiffly extending my gloved hand, having walked back to the tour bus by myself to grab a drink of chilled water. He had declined to get off the bus at the various tourist attractions, where it stopped, immersed in making final changes to the script.
Amitabh didn’t answer. His head was deep in his manuscript. His well-built arms held it close to his eyes, as he read to himself. His untrimmed, tangled, salt and pepper tresses billowed across his weather-beaten face as he leaned against the window.
‘Everyone wants to see the Eiffel Tower…you should too. It is a French treasure,’ I broke into a smile.
Wordlessly, Amitabh took off his dark-rimmed reading glasses. Staring at me, intently, he said, ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains…have you read Jean Jacques-Rousseau, Marie?’
I sat down on the empty seat next to him, ‘Oui…my father was a teacher and he made sure my brothers and I studied Voltaire and Rousseau; he insisted on mastering the great thinkers of the Revolution.’
Amitabh absorbed this, nodded briefly, and returned to reading.
‘There was…there seemed…’ I recomposed my sentence, clearing my throat to add, ‘there seemed to have been some trouble in India? We were told you might not be directing the production, after all, due to some personal problems? I mean, we almost thought this play would not take off…your name kept coming up…but, I…I mean, we were not really sure you would actually come…and, I just wanted to say, I hope things are better for you…on the home front…’
I drank a large sip of water. Amitabh stared at me over his glasses, but didn’t respond.
I soldiered on: ‘It’s not easy, Monsieur Kulasheshtra, to mount such an ambitious production…to gather so many men and women of so many diverse creative traditions…to think of recasting a classic this way…using performers from a country so very far away from your own…to be able to imagine such a sweeping topography…it requires tremendous vision and, and sheer genius…to get it off the ground…everyone talks of your brilliance here…I pray your problems…I mean, the troubles holding you back, are resolved…’ I paused expectantly, wondering if I had said too much. A loose curl kept coming in the way; I shoved it aside, as our eyes met.
‘There was a death,’ Amitabh said shortly.
I swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, forgive me for being so insensitive…so direct…’ was all I could manage, my throat parched.
‘It doesn’t matter; I…don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about your village instead, Marie. About your first snowfall…your first song…your first kiss…I would like us to know each other better. I cannot kindle the character of Sakuntalam in you until I know who Marie is. Marie Bourdaine…’
I was unsettled by his
presence so near me. I gripped the seat in front.
‘Yes…’ I shook my head, continuing, as my thoughts raced, ‘I too need to know more about Sakuntalam to be able to portray her with utmost starkness. Talk to me about her. Tell me the colour of her eyes, how she slept at night when the moon played hide and seek, how her voice sounded, if she had any friends? If Dushyant, the king she signed her heart away to, was the first man she made love to? I want to know everything, Amitabh,’ I don’t know why I switched to using his first name.
Amitabh finished his cigarette and stubbed it under his toe. ‘I am in the hotel across the street from where you all are being put up. I can’t seem to get the name, right…Room 654, meet me there this evening and I will tell you all you want to know.’
‘Hotel du Champ de Villiers…’ I laughed lightly, adding in a soft voice, ‘Would you like me to see you alone…tonight…after the official dinner, that is?’
Amitabh touched my face. His slender fingers tracing patterns down my cheekbones. My face powder left a trail on his fingers. ‘This has to go,’ he dusted his fingertips. ‘Sakuntalam was a child of the forest, untamed, completely natural, without artifice…she decorated her lengthy tresses with hand plucked blooms…’
That night I knocked on the door of his room.
‘How did you hurt your head?’ I asked impulsively, minutes after entering inside, after he had taken my coat, tossing it casually on his unmade bed. Gesturing to me, that I be seated there, if I so wished.
‘Ballav Salve,’ he replied cryptically, sitting next to me, his tanned arms brushing my thighs, making me strangely restless.
‘Ball…Salve? What is that?’ I asked naively.
‘Not what, who.’ Amitabh corrected me. ‘Salve was a militant union leader in India chosen by a majority of Mumbai mill-workers to lead them in a head-on conflict between the Bombay Mill-owners Association and the unions. He orchestrated a massive strike, forcing the entire industry of Mumbai to be shut down for over a year. Approximately 25,000 workers went on strike and more than 50 textile mills were closed in Mumbai permanently.’
I was carrying a bottle of red wine and two flimsy paper cups. I poured us each a drink.
‘I had rallied behind Ballav Salve since I believed that he was predominantly fighting for greater pay and better working conditions for the workers, whereas, in reality, Salve and his allies were just looking to capitalize and establish their stronghold on the trade-union scene in Mumbai. I staged provocative street plays all over India, portraying their pitiable conditions, openly sloganeering against the Congress government. The Congress Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who perhaps considered Salve a serious political threat, tried reaching out to me, hoping to use my influence to persuade the warring mill-workers. While the meeting proved inconclusive, the government’s taking a firm stance of rejecting Salve’s demands and refusing to budge despite the mammoth economic losses suffered by Mumbai and the industry, rendered a false impression to a lot of people, especially in the theatre circuit, that my involvement, was, perhaps, nothing but a political gimmick to gain cheap publicity. As the strike progressed, Salve’s stubborn militancy in the face of government persistence led to the failure of any attempts at further negotiation. Disunity and dissatisfaction over the strike soon grew rife, and….’
I drank in silence.
‘Our views were different and so we parted ways eventually,’ he gulped down his drink.
I kicked off my black pumps and leaned back on the pillows. ‘You mentioned there was a death…?’
Amitabh’s face took on a look of anguish. He held out his glass and I poured him some wine. He walked up to the window and gazed out. He spoke after a long time:
‘Maya was my daughter. An angel, so pure…only two when she died. It was my fault. I never realized that she was so sick. Even the night she…’ he stopped, and turned to me, taking a deep breath... ‘She had trouble breathing…I scooped her up in my arms, kissing her, trying to calm her down rather than rushing her to the hospital, as I should have. She turned blue, after a while. So many times, Sarlu had reported this same symptom to me…suspecting something being amiss…always complaining of her breathlessness…how she tired easily and passed out twice while playing…I always told her it was nothing. Playing down her fears…the times I was home, nothing of the sort ever transpired…and so I blamed it on Sarlu’s compulsively worrying nature…how she wanted things to be the same…’
He drained his glass. I took the cup from his hand and refilled it, without his asking, this time.
Amitabh gulped down the whole drink in one shot, his ears reddening. Saying nothing else.
‘Sarlu, your wife, I presume?’
Amitabh sat down beside me and switched on a bedside lamp. For a while, he gazed at the tiny specks of light reflected in his drink.
‘Sarla, actually. My wife was the only child of the man who was my guru, my mentor, my father, in many ways…the man who taught me all I know about the stage…educated me about the world…’ he poured me a drink, then. Some of the wine spilt over, staining the white sheets.
Amitabh stood up, restlessly. ‘I have not done right by Sarla. I’ve let her down in ways that I can never forgive myself for. It’s possibly why I’m so defensive around her…she never forgave me for marrying her. Because I was her one friend and confidant; the only one who knew she was having an affair with someone else. But what could I do when her father asked me to accept her hand? I know Sarla blames me…but she is too proud—like Dada Saheb—to ever bring this all up…she probably thinks I agreed to marry her just to inherit her father’s theatre company, but what she has never realized is that marrying her made me feel like I had been bought. I was equally stifled, I felt unmanned. I should have been selected as the man replacing Sarat Chandra Joglekar in the Natya Mandali, which is what his theatre troupe was called, because I was worthy of it, and not because I was to become his future son-in-law. I have questioned my own conscience, umpteen times…wondering how Sarla thinks of me…I have always admired her…the way she was always so upright…I knew what a lot of people in the company also whispered, back then…that I was nothing more than a greedy suitor who was handed over the family business in a sort of dowry…it’s why Sarla resented me…why she never spoke a single word to me on our wedding day…nor the months after…never quite understanding how unworthy I felt…still feel... around her.’ Drawing the heavy silk curtains, he glanced back over his shoulders, once more: ‘Mind stepping out? These sort of places stifle me.’
I put the cup by the bed.
‘You can just turn off the lights, if you wish…I do that a lot, in places where I feel vulnerable…the darkness offers a sort of anoni…how do you say it...’ I bit my lower lip, ‘anonymity…’ I struggled with my English.
Amitabh sat on a couch, away from me.
‘You and your wife, are you saying you didn’t fall in love with her?’ I restarted the conversation.
Amitabh rubbed his eyes.
‘I didn’t fall in love, no. Not in the manner, you Westerners possibly interpret man-woman love…a physical union, almost always coming first. I grew up with Sarla…and over the years, I grew to love her. Not so much as a woman of flesh and blood…but as a comrade…as someone who I looked up to and looked out for…and, was even responsible for, in a way. It is possible to, you know. But Sarla has never trusted me; she’s not once spoken to me about Dada Saheb’s arbitrary decision to get us married; not once, in all our married life. Sarlu gave up acting soon after we were wed. I didn’t insist that she continue, either. I began writing and directing. Leaving her father’s legendary travelling theatre company and Kolhapur where he was based, to build our own nest in Pune. Sarlu didn’t object to the relocation or talk me out of it, selling off her wedding jewellery to fund my plan. I founded my own theatre company. I hired the actors and technicians I wanted. I travelled more. Sarlu opened a dance school at home. And, so we survived our fate, I guess. No one really prepared us fo
r the stubborn transition from theatre artists to life companions. It’s something that I had always known…when she signed her initials, below mine, in a crowded government office. When the registrar called her Mrs. Amitabh Kulasheshtra, for the first time. It was the end of something. And, perhaps, at, some level, the start of something, bigger…much bigger. It scared us. Both…’ his words trailed.
I stared at his silhouette, a part of me craving to reach out to him.
‘Pardon, Marie, I don’t know what got into me…this is the first time I have spoken to anyone…about all this…Maya…Sarlu…me…’ he shuddered, trying to raise his head.
I untied a silk scarf that I was wearing around my neck. ‘Viens ici et dors…go to sleep…’ I patted his forehead.
Amitabh shrugged his shoulders.
‘I, I can’t…I just can’t sleep, Marie…ever since…’ he stammered, looking spent.
I loosened two buttons on my silk shirt, saying nothing else. Then after a while, I carefully lifted his head, placing it on my chest. Running my right hand lightly over his eyes, I hummed softly: ‘Au Clair De La Lune…’
‘By the light of the moon?’ Amitabh murmured, slowly looking up, searching my face.
‘Oui…an 18th century folk song, a lullaby my mother sang to me. When I had a bad dream…’ I steadied his back.
Amitabh hugged me, clumsily, our lips brushing each other’s. ‘Don’t stop, Marie…please…stay here, with me, don’t go,’ he moaned, his nails digging into my flesh.
SARLA KULASHESHTRA
BLINDSIDE
Maya, our beautiful daughter, was born on a stormy September night, around midnight. It was a difficult birth. The doctors finally had to perform a Caesarean section after Sarlu underwent twelve hours of painful labour. Insisting on a natural birth.
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