Menoka has hanged herself

by Sharmistha Gooptu

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, I have to hide myself, as if I’m a chor or dacoit or something…’ now she was really sulking. ‘If you’re so scared, then…why all this…leave me…I still have Unique studio, if nothing else…’

  She would issue this threat often enough but it never failed in its impact.

  ‘Why do you have to say that, you know you’re meant for bigger things…I told you, you’re going to be out of Unique…’ Anil was disquieted.

  ‘And how? How Anil Babu?’ Raju was in no mind to relent. ‘Will you get me into Bharat Talkies? Can you? If you’re so close to the malik there, why can’t you tell them to get me out? Throw the money on Unique’s face…whatever they ask…no, you won’t, because you’re afraid. Look at Mishtu Da, everybody knows what he and Lily Madam are up to inside that office, in the afternoons. Does he care? He doesn’t care…he isn’t afraid of anyone…’

  Anil pursed his lips. What could he say? How could he make her understand? Mishtu Modak had nothing to lose in his own backyard, he had. Modak had no character, everyone knew him to be in the clutches of his mistress. Anyhow, he didn’t ever plan to take that Lily woman home, she was his paid keep, like so many such doings in the studio para. Raju, she was different. He might have married her there and then, only he knew she wouldn’t… not yet. He had to wait for his time. Not that he had not thought of getting her into Bharat Talkies, somehow. But then, how could he without raising eyebrows? What was he to tell Shankar Da? He was no Ambarish Dev Burma. For the likes of Ambarish, people looked the other way. But people like him had to guard their backs. The studio para was always gossiping, people there always looking for something to pin on you, sully your character.

  His silence made Raju angrier still.

  ‘Yes, now you have nothing to say…’ her voice had risen. ‘Why should your great Bharat Talkies have a girl like me? Rajubala only gives maja,’ she snorted, ‘to the chotolok, no? Those char anna walas, those loafers… how can they put me in a bhadralok’s picture? Up the bhadralok’s backside, that’s what I say…’

  It was true, everything about Raju went against Bharat Talkies…its brand of high class entertainment. That Lily woman had hit the nail on the head, when she had said no outside action. No one really could think of Raju as anything but a masaladar heroine, ‘maal’, as her char anna wala admirers loved to call her. Action, dances, her body, that was it. But who knew if she couldn’t rise above it. That she couldn’t be a great actress. He had put it into her head. Now it was his nemesis.

  These spats saddened him, though Raju would be herself soon enough. She never dragged it long. Rather, she would be amiable sooner than him. That was her— nothing ever affected her too deeply. She didn’t even seem to think things through too much…like…how much he cared for her, or even, why she would come with him… did she really love him? And he…had thought of nothing but her. From when he had first seen her in a Raju Darling picture. He had furtively hung about the Unique studio, one day accosting her outside the gates…he’d been prepared for a sneer or a scolding, even worse. But she had heard him.

  He’d been reckless then, he wanted to start a bioscope company he had told her, she and him, equal partners…he might have said anything, to get her. Not that he had not meant it. He had imagined it, she and him, like Ramola and Shankar…only he was no Shankar Chattopadhyay. He was afraid…Raju was right. Afraid of taking a risk. Afraid of spoiling his chances…Shankar’s trust in him, his hopes that if he kept going Shankar Da would help him start his own company. And he had Raju. For now. What if he took a chance and failed? What if Bharat Talkies had failed Shankar? Would he still have had Ramola?

  Raju was grumbling softly.

  ‘You didn’t say what to do…about that outside picture? What do I say to Bharatmata now? Their Sen Babu said, by month’s end you will have your advance… you only have to say yes. The boss himself will come to your house with the money. Now if I tell them I can’t do action…what? As if I know what to tell these people?’

  She nudged him. ‘Bolun na, tell me, what do I tell them?’

  He didn’t look at her. He didn’t know, he just didn’t know. Anything he would tell her might then come back to bite him. What indeed was the worth of these so-called agreements that studio people like him would press on these girls, who sometimes couldn’t write even their own names? What if she just went ahead with Bharatmata, action and all? And what if she then had a showdown with Unique? If he knew her, Raju would drag him right into it.

  Ramola

  ‘This won’t do Ramola, and it’s no good sulking…’

  Shankar was exasperated. Why couldn’t she see sense? She simply couldn’t afford to lose control, no matter what. And he had told her that a hundred times before. She had her back to him now, standing stiffly by the window, angry. But it was no use, really.

  ‘You’re going to have to keep a lid on yourself…this just won’t do…’ he said again.

  Another two days this time he would be on board the ship. If only he could leave behind a part of himself with her! There would be others, like Nishith Babu, who would try her patience. When he wasn’t there. When she was running the studio. And she would have to deal with them like he did. Not let it get the better of her, like with Nishith Babu that morning. Anyhow, the likes of Nishith Roy had age on their side and they had to be humoured, no matter how tiresome they got. Bharat Talkies’ reputation was built on it, on him having brought them all together, Nishith Roy to Ambarish Dev Burma, even Ramola herself…the best of the old and new.

  Nishith Babu had gotten it into his head that Ramola needed tutoring to better get into the skin of Mira. After all, devotionals were his forte.

  ‘Hocche na, ma, thik hochhe na, you’re not getting it right, my dear,’ he’d nodded earnestly, having seen the shot sequences.

  ‘I dislike his all-knowing manner, and I won’t have it,’ Ramola had declared once they were alone. ‘Why on earth did you have to show them to him?’

  ‘Because he kept asking, and I couldn’t very well keep putting him off. It’s not even a full half hour, what we have now. We mightn’t even keep half of it in the end, you know that,’ Shankar had retorted.

  ‘And he judges me from that? Is this my first picture? Am I a nobody? To be lectured like a school girl?’

  She had not hidden her displeasure and Nishith Babu had left injured. But not before a bout of histrionics, to which he was given, and which Shankar would have liked to avoid at all cost.

  ‘No matter, ma,’ he’d nodded tearfully. ‘I am just an old man, a Vaishnava bhakt. It had been my longest desire to make a picture on Mirabai and her Krishnaprem. But I did not mean to interfere. I have had a long career, and shaped many others, I now want only to be with God… no matter, ma, you have my blessings…’

  Nishith Babu was getting on in years, but in all fairness, he had contributed in fashioning her screen persona. He had been around since the very early days, when the first silent features were being made, had joined Bharat Talkies soon after her first picture had released and he had directed her in her best pictures. He was a good many years older than she, and she had been an obedient pupil, and he, though affectionate, had often claimed credit for her successes. It was something she had come to resent.

  ‘Why couldn’t you just play along? It’s not as if he’s going to have anything to do with this picture?’ Shankar was feeling drained. They’d argued the last half hour, and it really was not worth it. He still had things to get done before Thursday, when he left…just two and a half days.

  ‘Now he’s going to play the injured party to one and all, saying we belittled him, that we have no need for him anymore…getting the ohos and ahas out of everyone under this roof. It doesn’t go in your favour, Ramola…our favour, you should know that. Now I’m going to have to go around and speak to him sometime today, hear him out. He’s still highly regarded, by one and all, you know that. Why do I have to do this every time, Ramola? Why don’t you learn?’ He found h
is voice raising and stopped himself.

  She turned to him. ‘I still don’t know what you mean, Shankar…just play along with him. Why do we have to humour people that don’t matter? Why do you always say that? It was no business of his, it’s not his picture. It’s our studio and our picture…you’re going to make it how you have thought of it. And I know what I want to bring to Mira…’

  ‘Look, Ramola,’ Shankar lowered his voice.

  ‘This is the last time I will say this. There are two ways of doing it. Or anything for that matter when it comes to the studio. You can either tell people on their faces, “I’m the boss”, or you can smile your way through things and still get them done how you would like it, like how I do it. You know only too well that I do everything my own way. Only sometimes…’ he paused, it seemed an effort to put it all into words. ‘It helps to let people think they got their way with you, even if just a little bit. I’ve found that people take their orders more easily that way…’ He paused again, catching his breath.

  ‘Do you think it’s been easy with me, with the likes of Nishith Babu or any of the others that think I’m good only for managing the studio…that there’s no art left in me? That I’m only the producer, though they will not ever say it. Do you even know what superiority Nishith Babu would direct at me, when he first joined the studio, no matter that I was the boss here? When we were still new, and him joining us made a difference to Bharat Talkies. When you had done only one picture, and I was struggling to get it all together…’

  ‘And…why didn’t you ever tell me this before,’ Ramola was angrier now at the thought of Nishith Babu making things difficult for poor Shankar.

  ‘Because I saw that he could shape you, that he and you worked well together…in those days. I didn’t want you to be affected by any of it. Anyhow, Nishith Babu wasn’t the only one. I realized that they had age on their side, they had been around for longer. I was much younger, back from America with big things in my head. People laughed at the idea of a Hollywood kind of studio here—when things around here were random at best… anything could happen in the name of making a bioscope picture. They would call me foolhardy, you know that… some of them who’ve been with us all of this time would have been happier, Ramola…had we failed…’

  ‘I know that Shankar…but you still kept them…’

  ‘Yes, I did, and that’s because just you and I cannot make a world-class studio. We need these people, who are all good at what they do. And for that we will need to play along with them. Keep them in good humour…and, more importantly, Ramola, because it is only too easy for us to be called impudent…that success went to our heads. It is something that makes people band up against you, if only to bring you down. It is something that you have to guard against, more especially when I am going to be away, darling.’

  Ramola had a tear rolling down her face. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered, ‘do you sometimes also play along with me, just to keep me in good spirits…like with everyone else here…?’

  ‘Really, Ramola…how did you even,’ he started, then the glint was in his eyes. ‘Well yes, darling, you know, given how difficult you can be sometimes, and so angry, one does have to be careful with you, doesn’t one?’

  ‘You’re horrible Shankar Chattopadhyay,’ Ramola smirked through her sniffle. ‘Always lecturing me, like I was the last person left on earth.’

  He was grinning now, ‘You are, for me…’

  ***

  A smile appeared on his face as he looked up from his desk and out of the window. There she was, in her pink cardigan, clutching the folds of her sari, daintily treading her way through the grass, Nishith Roy plodding by her side. Nishith Babu was absorbed in the speech that he was delivering to her, and she nodding demurely, though he could tell from her smile that possibly she was not even hearing all of it. It didn’t matter, so long as Nishith Babu was kept happy. People seldom realized, not if one smiled and nodded from time to time.

  After lunch Ramola had announced that she was going to see Nishith Babu.

  ‘You don’t have to, you know,’ he had said. ‘He’d wanted to speak with me anyways, he’d said, remember? Some ideas in his head possibly, about how this picture can best be made…’ he’d grimaced. ‘I’ll speak with him, he’ll be fine, leave it to me…I do this every day’.

  ‘No, I’ll speak with him’ she had said quietly.

  Anyhow, she’d always been more intimate with Nishith Babu than he, being his protégé, though of late she had distanced herself from him. But Ramola could be as charming as she could be cold, and he watched amused as they walked in the studio grounds, she lessening her pace now and then to keep with him, and he touching her arm or patting her shoulder as she laughed with him.

  He’ll be in good spirits, the old boy, when I find him later today, Shankar grinned to himself. In all truth, Nishith Babu was fond of Ramola. While he had never really hit it off with the old man. Nishith Babu thought him to be a sob-janta, a brash know-it-all, though why he couldn’t say. He’d always been respectful enough. He sighed. It was something that he had to live with, people sometimes imagining him to be overbearing no matter how amiable he made himself. But then, he had a studio to helm, he couldn’t not be in control. Still, he always did go that extra mile to have people on his side…Ramola didn’t.

  It would be good practice for her, not having him around these coming weeks…getting people to do her bidding, her way. Anyhow, anything really important could wait until he was back. It would be the day-today while he was away, and she only needed to be more patient.

  Anil would help, and she thought well of him, thank heavens for that! Anil never lost his composure. That boy will go far in life, thought Shankar.

  Anil

  Head in his hands, Anil stared at the blotter and ink bottle on the desk by his bed.

  No one had any inkling in his lodgings that he worked in the bioscope line. His landlady knew him to be a modest office-goer who paid his rent on time, never complained about the quality of meals and hardly ever had visitors. Had she known, she’d have sent him packing. No matter that she was a bioscope fan. He had himself gotten her tickets for the afternoon shows sometimes.

  That was it, with most people. They loved bioscope pictures, but treated bioscope people like they were lepers. Not that he actually acted in the pictures, nor had he any such desire, still, he was of that ilk. What would she say…if she knew of his doings? That he had rented rooms over a Muslim basti, near the office para, where he took Raju. Before that in a gully off Free School Street. He’d moved two places now, the first one because he couldn’t afford it after the first two months, it being right in the heart of the sahib para. And the last one because that bariwali was getting close to placing Raju, she’d been another one for the bioscope. Though Raju looked very different in her costumes and makeup…but she was sharp that one, even with her glasses. And then Raju, stopping to chat with her, bursting into laughter when she had wondered ‘Tomake kothay jeno dekhechi…haven’t I seen you somewhere…?’

  Now she didn’t like the place he’d gotten. As if he had people waiting to give out their rooms to a fellow that came there on some days with a girl he called his wife. People smelled a rat the minute he got talking. He’d only gotten this last one because it had lain empty the past year, after the Hindu–Muslim trouble in the neighbourhood. He hadn’t told Raju that. Not that she would have batted an eyelid, that girl didn’t seem to have fear in her.

  He’d been at his wits end since that evening. She’d thrown another fit. She had had a fresh row with that Lily woman the day before, and she had gone and said no to the Bharatmata people.

  ‘Khushi toh, happy? Now my chance is gone…’ she’d sobbed, as he had tried to calm her. She was not going to see him again, she’d said.

  ‘If you want to see me come to Unique studio and get me out of there, else find someone else.’

  He’d walked half the way home in despair before he had remembered to catch a bus…it was t
oo long a way to walk.

  His cold dinner lay uneaten on the jal-chowki, where the manservant Sibhu had left it. Sibhu had already made two rounds, ‘Ki go dadababu, won’t you eat?’

  His insides were churning. What if she had meant it, that she wouldn’t see him again? If even she did come around, it couldn’t go on like this. She felt caged, them making her do those very same antics in the same Raju Darling pictures, over and over again…that woman telling her she’d be no good at anything else…the poor girl didn’t want even to look at the handbills of her own pictures.

  He decided that same instant. He would have to speak to Shankar Da, tomorrow. It was just one day before he left. If Shankar Da trusted him enough he would hear him out. He had to get Raju into Bharat Talkies, somehow, from Unique Studio, even if it was the last thing that he would ever ask of Shankar Da.

  ‘I’ve given six years to Bharat Talkies…no, to Shankar Da…’ he thought as he lay back in bed and stretched out his aching body. He will do it…for me. But what if he says no? His head throbbed.

  What indeed would he tell Shankar Da? Could he even put words to it…him and Raju…what he felt for her. That he had to have her…somehow…anyhow…that he couldn’t bear it anymore. But then, wouldn’t Shankar Da know it anyway? If that was how he felt…about Ramola.

  Ramola

  It was nearing mid-day. Shankar Chattopadhyay was in his office at the studio gathering up the papers he would need to take back home. This time tomorrow he would be on the ship, on his way to America. It was a mild winter’s day but he’d felt warm enough to turn on the fan over his head. Sipping on a tepid cup of tea, he was running through things in his mind, making sure nothing was left behind.

  He felt worn out. ‘I must be getting old…I’m going to take half the year off after this one gets done and dusted,’ he groaned to himself.

  His trunks were all ready. Suits, sweaters, silk shirts, had all been ironed, neatly folded and packed and then the shoes and hats and gloves. He’d been unable to sleep the night before, lying awake, a hundred thoughts racing through his mind.