Raju pulled her head off the pillow and took her hand to her mouth. To stick her two fingers in her throat to make the spittle rise, like when she would rinse her mouth in the mornings.
His hands were on hers. ‘Naaa…’ he ordered.
‘I can’t breathe’, she gasped. Her voice was broken, like when she had got that pneumonia fever.
‘It will be alright, it’s not anything,’ his thin fingers held onto hers. He was so close. She noticed a badami nut-coloured mark on the side of his lip…she hadn’t seen it before. Had it been there? Why had she not seen it? Had it come to him just now, like how she felt, that she was changed? Like she was in someone else’s body. His mouth was moving. Saheb was saying something to her.
‘Rajbala…do you remember, anything?’
She remembered. How she had felt her body float in the air before everything went dark. The rope…it wasn’t there anymore.
Her heart leaped. She had been right. Saheb had only tested her. He had saved her, pulled off the rope and laid her on the bed. Sat beside her until she was awake again. Again, Saheb was speaking…he was smiling.
‘I am pleased, Rajbala, you have done well,’ his smile froze. ‘But how far can you go from here? I had told you. It will not be easy, if you are to be mine.’
He had not said, my heroine…only ‘mine’…What did Saheb mean? What did he want of her?
She tried to sit up. ‘Water…’ she whispered.
He held the glass to her eager lips. ‘Drink, but not too much.’
He pulled the glass from her even as she felt the first seep wet her parched throat.
‘Atma sambaran, Rajbala…self-control,’ he instructed. ‘Remember, you are not just any studio girl. If you are to be a true artiste, you must rise above your own needs… see beyond the pain, and hunger and thirst,’ his voice trailed off.
She had understood.
Nishith Babu had said to her, ‘Ma, work is sadhona… devotion, like a puja, and for that you must be ready to give up anything, accept pain and sorrow. It will get you closer to your end, your lakshya.’
She had not understood then, what he had meant. But today, she knew it. It was for a purpose, for true art, and not just any other song and dance. And for that Saheb wanted her to be ready. To make her able to bear the pain and the sorrow like Nishith Babu had said. How she must have troubled him, the poor old man. If only she had understood his words then.
Her lakshya, she knew it. Saheb…she and him together, to show the world where they could take their art. How much they could bear, and give up for it.
In the studio para they would say he could teach even a dead tree or a log of wood to act. Those girls that he had made into stars, what hand did they ever have in it? It was all his doing, Saheb’s. Only, they had to obey him, carry out his every wish. And even in that they failed, the likes of that Menoka.
But she, she would obey him, his every command… his every wish. Give all of herself to him. Because in the end, he would be there always, always close by her. She had nothing to fear, she knew that.
She smiled up at him again. A smile that lit up her face and doused the heaviness in her chest.
He reached out and wiped the tear that rolled down her face.
III
‘I’m at a loss, Mr Mukherjee, I really am.’ Ramola had not touched her plate of fish and vegetables. Only sipped her lemonade. Avinash was eating quietly. And listening.
‘It’s almost like she’s become a different girl, and it’s happened over the last two days or three, when she sent that awful masi of hers to the studio, to say that she had taken ill. But this morning…in my office…’ Ramola stopped to take another sip from her glass.
‘I realised Mr Mukherjee that there was not anything the matter with her, bodily I mean…but more, in the mind, if you know what I mean. She just wasn’t herself.’
Avinash looked up from his roast chicken. ‘You should eat a little bit, before it gets cold.’ Ramola seemed not to hear.
‘You will not believe it, she said that she wanted to touch Nishith Babu’s feet, ask his pardon, for her misdemeanours. Almost like she was speaking the lines from a picture, taught to her, not her own. Like she’s trying to be somebody else. She even tried to touch my feet, when I very firmly told her to pull herself together.’
They were lunching again at the Ritz.
‘I’ll still reserve that table, just in case, you know,’ Ramola had said. She had seemed to know that he would telephone her back to say that he could come after all, after first telling her he couldn’t. She didn’t seem to mind it, his vacillations. Never seemed to notice them even. And for that he was grateful. All she ever seemed to notice these days was the ups and downs of that Rajbala girl!
He looked again at her plate. She had picked up a piece of cucumber and was nibbling on it.
‘I feel rather awful saying this you know, Mr Mukherjee, but, could she…you know how they say it, could she be under some…well, influence, you know, spells and such things, the kind of things that these classes tend to practice sometimes?’
Avinash looked up, not hiding his amusement. ‘Tuktak, you mean ma’am? Black magic…tantric vidya?’ his eyes twinkled.
Ramola looked away.
‘You may laugh, Mr Mukherjee, perhaps I might have done so myself, if someone else had said it to me. But she has been so very odd, it’s hard to not notice.’
‘Perhaps she really has changed, for the good, I mean,’ Avinash hazarded. ‘Girl of her class, possibly never had anyone telling her the right things, before you, that is,’ he smiled.
Ramola shook her head doubtfully.
‘Well, you know, it just seemed so false…like…like she was trying too hard, to be somebody she really isn’t. Very unlike her.’ She sighed. ‘I would much rather she be her old self, all blunt and direct, insolent often…’
‘How is the last bit coming along?’ Avinash was getting a little bit tired of this going on and on about Rajbala.
‘Oh yes…that too. We were not able to shoot the last song…her throat…she kept swallowing, like she had something stuck in there, couldn’t keep her breath. Said she’d gotten a fishbone stuck in the night. As I was saying, I really couldn’t tell what she’s been up to. What, Mr Mukherjee, if…if she was given something…you know, something that could make her weak? Who could know anything? I did not one bit like the looks of that aunt of hers, not her real aunt of course…one does hear about some odd goings-on sometimes.’
‘Why do you think of her so much…this Rajbala?’ His eyes made her look away.
She broke off a piece of the fried fish and put it in her mouth. Then looked up again.
‘She is so young, I could have had a girl like that, you know…if…if it had been given to me, perhaps if I had wished for it. But I never did. I always imagined it to be burdensome. Even Shankar. Bharat Talkies was our life. And I had him, but now…’ She smiled, ‘it does not seem quite so very burdensome, to have such things to think of…in one’s life…’
‘No, it does not…not anymore’, Avinash thought as he cuddled Manimala in the dark. He was smiling. He had bought puti maach for Mani, on his way home.
‘You would make a good father, I think…I hope that you do not mind me saying so,’ she had said. He had wanted to tell her, about Manimala. How she would know his mind, like the back of her tiny paws, his sadness and joys. Run over to him when he needed somebody. And how he would worry about her, and fret and fume when she played truant. Did Mani know that he worried? He wished he could know what she really said to him sometimes, when she purred against him. But then, did it really matter all that much? To know and be certain, to fathom it all entirely? Would Rajbala ever know that Ramola cared, in the way that she did care? Ramola herself did not care to show it too much, not to the girl, anyway. Was it a powerlessness…a fault… like a failing, to love like that? A love that could not be shown or returned in any measure of certainty, not even so well understood, always. Or did that
very same love sometimes become a joy and a force…a gift…a kind of rapture and agony that paled away the certainties.
IV
Kamala’s eyeballs jumped about uneasily against their redness. It never did agree with her…spirits, even in her theatre days. She had not drunk in years. But today, at her soi’s den, where her soi Padma was queen, she had not said no.
‘Want to vomit?’ Padma asked from where she was lounging, beside the oil lantern. Kamala shook her head. Not yet, today she was going to drink till she could take it no more, she didn’t want to be in her senses.
‘Soi re, do something. I don’t like it…’ Kamala said again. Her own voice sounded so far away, did soi hear her even? Kamala blinked and looked again at Padma. Padma was smearing the lime on a fresh leaf of pan.
‘Want one?’ Padma asked. Kamala shook her head. Padma smeared more lime, settled the supari pieces and dokta leaves, then carefully folded and stuffed the pellet in her mouth.
‘You seeing these meye-cheles, these girls first time today or what? That you’ve got shivers up your back. Or, has my soi forgotten our theatre days, what goings-on we saw before our own eyes?’ Padma smirked through a mouthful of red spittle. ‘Only that day I gave more money, na? Then what?’ She lowered her voice, ‘He will give more…Saheb.’
Kamala rubbed her eyes. Padma’s face looked like a thala in the lamp’s glow, the big one in which she would serve Raju her meals. She liked it, cooking for that girl, even though she had grumbled about it so many times. Even though that ungrateful little beiman treated her like a jhi, a servant. When she ate her face would glow, and Kamala would watch proudly from behind the door as Raju would devour her luchis or singara-kachuris. She still needed looking after, that girl.
‘Na didi, it’s not the money. Seen the girl from when she was so big…’ Kamala showed two hands high. ‘Been with her since that mother of hers died, from seven days of fever. She never took to me, that one, never trusted this Kamala. But I grew her up, like she was my own. Now if some evil comes on her, you say, how will I show my face?’ Kamala pointed skyward, ‘What jawab will I give…what will I say, when I go up there?’
‘Thaam saali, shut your mouth you slut.’ Padma was still resting her back on her pillow, but her eyes flamed like two balls of fire. ‘Up there, who said, you and I are going up there? Up there is for the rich, those bloodsucking babus, not us, old magis. And what if she was your own? Wouldn’t you still put her in the line, feed off her? Didn’t I put my own one in the line? Ran away with that pimp of a musalman sarangi player, rubbed this Padma’s nose in the dirt. Came back with that paap, that sin growing inside her stomach, six months it was. And that saala hature quack, bled her to death. But I said to myself, better this than that sin seeing the light of day. Tell me, did this Padma give it all up for that and go to the jungle? Then what, saali? In this line of ours no one is your own, even the fruit of your own womb will sell you and eat your flesh…and you saali slut, eating my head over that girl of yours.’
Tears were streaming down Kamala’s face. ‘Pig meat, didi…he makes her eat it,’ she spluttered.
‘What?’ Padma wrinkled her brows in disbelief. ‘Pig meat? Just now you said, she’s not eating, didi.’
Kamala wiped her face with the end of her sari. ‘Not what I make. She used to order me, kachuri today, singara tomorrow…and now…nothing. Picks at what I give her, half of it left on the thala.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Eats what he sends now, then sometimes vomits in the kal-ghar…I know it.’
‘He who?’ Padma’s gentle buzz from the dokta was fast clearing.
‘Your Saheb re…sends her boiled meat, back with her in his car, every two or three days. Makes her eat it…ma go, one glance of it made my vomit come.’
‘How do you know, that it’s…pig meat?’ Padma demanded.
‘How will I know? She told me herself, the girl…said it’s from the Cheena para. Said, artiste like me cannot have so much baach-bichar, be so finicky. Am I some Brahmin’s girl or what?’ Kamala rubbed her eyes. ‘Saw so many artistes in my stage days, soi re, never heard such things in my whole life. She’s changed now, that girl. Before she would hide such things from me, now she openly talks, like it is some great punya or something, some blessing from somewhere.’
Padma had slipped back into her languor. ‘What’s to you…pig meat or dog meat, tell me that?’
Kamala shook her head. ‘Na re, I heard they mix things in the meat, those Cheena afeem-khors, makes people lose their heads. Before, anything I asked she would shout the house down, raise her hands even, and now, she tells without me asking even. Like…like she wants to tell the whole world…’ Kamala’s voice was a whisper, ‘…about him. Sings to herself…and her eyes shining, but all sunk, didi, her eyes sunk inside her head. I am afraid. Say didi, nothing will happen to her?’
‘Listen, look at me’, Padma leaned forward, her eyes bright. ‘Those girls that Saheb takes, they go…fast.’ She flipped her fingers skyward. ‘What? Heads go all funny first, then the girls, they go. One or two went where, God himself knows, but they give golden eggs, Saheb’s girls.’ Padma chuckled in delight. ‘Better if the girl goes, for good! Saheb knows how then to keep this Padma quiet. Arre, then we two sois, we will loot with our two hands. And, say, will it stop with this one slut? Doesn’t this Padma have more of them in hand? Think of it…one girl, and then another and another, faster they go to hell, the better. Amra duti soi, khai dai ar gai, we the two sois, we eat, drink and sing.’ Padma rolled in glee against her pan-stained pillow as she sang her impromptu song.
Kamala knew it, then and there. That she had to go… to them.
V
Raju raised her tear-streaked face. To look into his eyes. She looked again at the old pink Benarasi that he had laid out before her. And the camera, settled on three legs, and gaping…set and ready like in the studio, all ready to take her pictures. She shook her head again. No, she would not to do it, not for him, not for all the world.
She had left it all so far behind. She didn’t think anyone knew anymore. Kamala Masi had herself said, gone to rot all of them. Those companies had gone hawa, disappeared, after the talkies came, so little of what was before had stayed. As it was, those bioscope pictures, they would run for only a few minutes, and so little light in them…half-light and half-darkness, taken anyhow, just any way at all. Once, they had put a red sari like a ghomta on her head, to hide her face only till below her neck, like the veil on a bride, and then, nothing…all khali, naked, her chest down…the sari trailing behind her, all the way down from her hidden face as she had walked, turned and twirled, feeling as if snakes were crawling on her bare body. Even as they had made a bioscope picture of her. ‘That face, best not seen,’ the man at the camera had smirked. She did not even look like this Rajbala then. Skin and bones…skeleton-like, no breasts, her head crawling with lice. There had been other girls, girls like her. Who was to know it was her, this Rajbala of today, if ever they saw those pictures?
But she had been wrong. Someone had known something of them, those her first bioscope pictures. They had stayed somewhere, all of this time, and now, he knew, Saheb knew…and he was testing her, again… another test…but why this? She bit her lip. She would give herself to him, give him her everything, but not like this. Not how it was with her, then. Why ever did he press her so? What was in them…those naked bioscope pictures of hers that he wanted it of her, now again?
‘Rajbala,’ his hand was on her head.
She bit her lip harder. She would not look at him.
He was running his hand through her hair, gently loosening the top of her plait.
‘Rajbala,’ again he called her name. This time closer, his face was by hers.
‘Will you disobey me, my wish…like Menoka did… Rajbala?’
She shook her head, tears welling up again in her eyes.
‘What then?’ His voice was so gentle, it made her want to throw herself on his chest. Would he understand, if she did
tell him? How they had been, those days of nakedness and hunger. Her mother’s eyes when she had told her about her ‘acto’, what they would make her do in front of the camera. Still, Ma had danced to Kamala Masi’s tunes, she and Ma, giving up her shame… forever…and not even knowing it for what is was, then.
‘What shame before me?’ She started. Could he see the inside of her heart, know her fears? ‘Will you not give me your all, Rajbala? Or is it too much for me to ask of you?’ His breath came heavy against her neck. Like he had run up all of those stairs, from the stone-laid hallway below, to this room with the bed and the big almirahs. ‘Only for my eyes, Rajbala…I give you my word. No person shall set their eyes on them, ever…these pictures.’
‘But why…why?’ Her tears choked her words.
‘Why what, Rajbala?’ Sharply he drew back his hand. ‘Are you to be just any studio girl? Are you not fated for greatness, Rajbala? And for that, you must give up the shell that holds you, that morok of ordinariness. You must shed your old skin. What is your shame if not your chain? You must let go of it…be free, like in your first days when you would go before the bioscope camera. I know it all. You must go back to her, Rajbala, that girl who did not know shame. Let yourself become one with the skies and the winds, so that the real skin that covers your blood and flesh may show itself. You must free yourself of these worldly chains like the heavenly beings, apsaras and yakshinis, that lived a thousand lives, beyond life and death.’
‘You…you saw those pictures?’ For one brief instant her anger blazed in her eyes. ‘Or, is it somebody else? Who is it? Who told you?’
‘I know Rajbala. What is told to me…and also what is hidden.’
‘And others also? Madam?’ Her heart jumped. Madam, she never would understand, how could she? Madam would not ever see her face again, if she knew.
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