Show Business

TAKE ONE

Interior: Day

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Me, Ashok Banjara, product of the finest public school in independent India, secretary of the Shakespeare Society at St. Francis’ College, no less, not to mention son of the Minister of State for Minor Textiles, chasing an aging actress around a papier-mâché tree in an artificial drizzle, lip-synching to the tinny inanities of an aspiring (and highly aspirating) playback-singer. But it is me, it’s my mouth that’s moving in soundless ardor, it’s my feet that are scudding treeward in faithful obeisance to the unlikely choreography of the dance director. Move, step, turn, as sari-clad Abha, yesterday’s heartthrob, old enough to be my mother and just about beginning to show it, nimbly evades my practiced lunge and runs, famous bust outthrust, to the temporary shelter of an improbably leafy branch. I follow, head tilted back, arms outstretched, pretending to sing:

I shall always chase you

To the ends of the earth,

I want to embrace you

From Pahelgaon to Perth,

My love!

My arms encircle her, but, as my fingertips meet, she ducks, dancing, and slips out of my clutches, pirouetting gaily away. Drenched chiffon clings to the pointed cones of her blouse, but she raises one end of the soaked sari pallav to half cover her face, holding the edge across the bridge of her perfect nose in practiced coyness. Her large eyes imprison me, then blink in release. Despite myself, I marvel. She has done this for twenty years; it is my first attempt.

I shall always chase you

From now ‘til my rebirth

And it’s only when I face you

That I feel I know my worth,

My love!

I shall always chase you,

I’ll never feel the dearth|

Of my desire to lace you

Around my —

“Cut!” I am caught in midgesture, midmovement, midword. The playback track screeches to a stop. I freeze, feeling as foolish as I imagine I must look. Abha snaps her irritation, turns away.

“No, no, no!” The dance director is waddling furiously toward me. He is fat and dark, but nothing if not expressive: his hands are trembling, his kohl-lined eyes are trembling, the layers and folds of flesh on his bare torso are trembling. “How many times I am telling you! Like this!” Hands, feet, and trunk describe arabesques of motion. “Not this!” He does a passable imitation of a stiff-necked paraplegic having a seizure. The technicians laugh. I smile nervously, looking furtively at my costar. Abha stands apart from us, hands on hips in a posture of fury. But am I imagining it, or is there something softer around her eyes as she looks at me?

I open hapless hands to the dance director, palms facing him in a gesture of concession. “OK, OK, Masterji. Sorry.”

“Sorry? Is my good name you will be ruining. What all is this, they will be saying. Gopi Master has forgotten what is dance.” His pectorals quiver in indignation. “For you maybe doesn’t matter. You are bachcha. I am having fifteen years in this business. What they will say about me, hanh?”

I shrug my embarrassment. I thought I’d done what I had been told to do, but that doesn’t seem the right thing to say. Gopi Master stamps his feet, one oily ringlet of black hair falling over a flashing red eye. He tosses his curls and strides off.

“OK, OK.” This is the director, Mohanlal. Mohanlal looks like a lower divisional clerk. He wears a fraying white cotton shirt, black trousers, thick glasses, and a perpetually harassed expression. Right now it is even more harassed than usual. I am evolving a Mohanlal Scale of High Anxiety, ranging from the pained visage with which he embarks on any second take (one on the scale) to the extreme angst that furrows his face when the producer-sahib visits and wants to know why the film isn’t finished yet (ten). My terpsichorean incompetence has him up to about five, but he is teetering on the edge of six. I try to look earnest and willing.

“OK,” says Mohanlal for the third time. “Let’s get back to this. Abhaji, I am sorry. Just once more, please, I promise you. Right, Ashokji? We’ll get it right this time.”

“Right,” I respond, without confidence.

“OK, clear the stage.” Mohanlal’s instructions emerge in the mildest tone, and one of the producer’s sidekicks, standing beyond the arc lights, claps his hands like a manual relay station to reinforce them. The clapper boy holds his board up for the start of the take. I grin at Abha, hoping for sympathy. She averts her gaze.

“Lights! Camera! Action!”

Ah, the magic of those words! I suppose that’s what brought me into this business in the first place. Years of amateur theater, from college productions of Charley ^}s Aunt and The Importance of Being Earnest to postdegree forays into Pinter and Beckett, had given me an irrevocable taste for greasepaint and footlights. Except, of course, that there was no money in it, and not much recognition either — unless you count the occasional notice in the Hindustan Times, sandwiched between a dance recital and an account of a Rotary Club speech. I spent months rehearsing foreign plays after work with other similarly afflicted ex-collegians and four evenings at a stretch putting them on for audiences of a few hundred Anglophile Delhiites, all for no reward other than a mildly bibulous cast party at which ignorant well-wishers poured pretentious praise into my rum. After half a dozen of these productions I decided I had had enough. But I couldn’t stop wanting to act, and when I discovered that I could no longer face going to the office without the prospect of rehearsals afterward, I realized what I had to do. I had to take the advice of my classmate Tool Dwivedi, as avid a cinephile as ever queued in dirty chappals and torn kurta for black market tickets to the latest releases. I had to go into films.

“Only real world there is, yaar,” Tool had said between lengthy drags on his chillum, before disappearing to Benares to study Hindu philosophy. I had not heard from him since, but his enthusiasm lingered. I decided to act on his idea.

“But it’s all so artificial,” Malini had protested when I told her of my plans. Malini was an afterwork thespian too — an account executive in an advertising firm in whom I was moderately interested.

“Artificial?” I asked incredulously. “What do you mean, artificial? Isn’t all acting artificial?”

“You know, all that running around trees, chasing heroines. Singing songs as you waltz through parks. You know what I mean.”

“That isn’t artificial, that’s mass entertainment.” She raised her untrimmed eyebrows and I decided to let her have it. “You want artificial, I’ll tell you what’s artificial. What we’re doing is artificial. Here, in Delhi, putting on English plays written for English actors, in a language the majority of our fellow Indians don’t even understand. What’s more artificial than that?”

“Are you telling me,” Malini bridled, “that our work in the theater, in the theater, is artificial, and what you want to do in” — she uttered the phrase with distaste — “Bombay films, is not?”

She was beginning to get angry, and this was a bad sign: I had had hopes of a farewell kiss, if not more. But I was in too deep now to pull back. “Yes,” I said firmly. “We’re an irrelevant minority performing for an irrelevant minority in a language and a medium that guarantee both irrelevance and minorityhood. I mean, how many people watch the English-language theater in this country? And how many of those watch us?”

“Numbers? Is that all that matters to you?” Malini was scathing. “We’re reaching a far more important audience here, a far more aware audience. We’re in the front line of what’s happening in world theater. We’re doing plays that have taken Broadway and the West End by storm.”

“Yeah, ten years ago,” I retorted. “Look, Malini, English-language theater in India has no place to go but in circles, and you know it. The same old plays rehashed for the same ignorant crowd. Who cares? Films are for real.”

“Hindi films? Real? Give me a break.” She got up then; she was always fond of matching movements to words, to the despair of our directors. “Look, Ashok, if you want to go off and make a fool of yourself in Bombay, do what you like. But don’t give me this kind of crap about it, OK?”

That was my cue, and for the sake of fond farewells I should have taken it and recanted, if only to mutter “nevertheless it does move” under my breath. But no, I had to stand up for my choice, didn’t I? “It’s not crap,” I asserted. “Hindi films are real, much more real in India than anything we’re doing. They even constitute a profession, an industry, which is more than anyone can say for us, for Chrissake. And if all goes reasonably well,” I added hastily, because Malini seemed either about to explode or exit, “the film business will bring in some real money.” One hit, I thought, one hit, and I’d be raking in more than I could hope to earn in several years in the Hindustanized multinational I had predictably joined after college. Without tax deductions at source either. Wage payers in movieland were notoriously less finicky about the tax laws than the paisa-pinching accountants who remunerated me for marketing detergents.

“And if all doesn’t go reasonably well?” Malini was angrier than she needed to be. It suddenly struck me that the woman cared. And I’d never noticed it before. “You’re chucking up a good job, decent prospects, a pleasant enough life here and serious theater to knock on the doors of the manufacturers of mass escapism. What happens if they don’t answer?”

“They will,” I said defiantly.

“Drop me a postcard when they do.” And she walked out, slamming the door behind her. Theatrical, that’s what she was, in a word. Theatrical. I didn’t try to go after her. There would be no going back to theater.

So here I am, in Bombay, filmi capital of India, shooting my first starring role at S. T. Studios, which has seen many a hero cavort his way to cinematic immortality. And in Choubey Productions’ Musafir, alongside the legendary Abha Patel, who has had a fair stab at cinematic immortality herself. Me, Ashok Banjara, sharing celluloid with the star whose bust, vividly painted by a proletarian social-realist on a cinema billboard, once caused a celebrated traffic jam. The magic words “Lights! Camera! Action!” are ringing in my ears, the bulbs are beaming in my face and likewise Abha, if only in her screen persona. So why am I so desperately unhappy?

Of course I shouldn’t be. After all, I’ve scored one in the eye of the dreaded Radha Sabnis, alias Cheetah of “Cheetah’s Chatter” in Showbiz magazine and author of the one and only reference to me in the filmi print media to date. That wasn’t too long ago, and every line is burned into my memory.

Darlings, Cheetah has been asking herself for weeks who is that tall, not-too-dark and none-too-handsome type who has been hanging around all the filmi parties of late? From his hungry expression and anxiety to please, I thought he might be a new caterer. Not an actor, surely? But yes, my dears, surprises will never cease in Bollywood. Actor he is, or rather wants to be. One glance at him, and Dharmendra and Rajesh Khanna can continue to sleep soundly: this soulful type with the looks of a garage mechanic isn’t going very far. Hardly surprising, then, that producers aren’t exactly falling over themselves to sign him. But then why, Cheetah asks herself, does he keep getting invited to the fun soirees of filmland? Simple reason, darlings: he’s a minister’s son. Our mystery man turns out to be none other than Anil, elder son of the Minister of State for Minor Textiles, Kulbhushan Banjara. Our canny filmwallahs seem to have adopted the maxim, if you don’t need him, at least feed him — no point offending a minister, after all. Who says our filmi crowd are out of touch with modern Indian realities, eh? Grrrowl!

Anil, indeed. The witch couldn’t even get my name right.

But here I am, anyway, Cheetah’s grrowls notwithstanding.

And in the teeth, I might add, of familial opposition, indeed disbelief. My father’s jaw actually dropped when I told him; even at home I couldn’t escape the theatrical. My younger brother, Ashwin, who had grown up attached to my shirttails like a surplus shadow, should have been pleased that he would now have a filmi hero to worship instead of a mere Brother Who Could Do No Wrong. None of it: he just looked at me, large eyes limpid in disappointment, as if I’d been fooling around with his girlfriend (which, in point of fact, I had, though he didn’t know it). “Films, Ashok-bhai?” he asked incredulously. “Bombay? You?” And he shook his head slowly, as if wanting to believe I knew what I was doing, but failing in the attempt to convince himself. Only my mother, as usual, was nonjudgmental. But all she could bring herself to say to me were the standard words of blessing, “jeete raho” (“may you go on living”), which hardly qualified as active encouragement. Pity Tool Dwivedi wasn’t around to buck me up and cheer me on, but then he was contemplating his navel and his dirty toenails somewhere on the banks of the Ganges, beyond the reach of the Franciscan old boy network. In my great adventure I was, it seemed, completely alone.

But alone or not, I’m in the middle of a film set now and there’s no time for existential self-indulgence. The playback song starts again, I lip-synch my melodic vow of eternal pursuit, the rain falls through holed buckets, my feet move as they have been taught, but I am terrified they will trip over each other. I am acutely aware of the ridiculousness of what I am doing, even more aware of the incompetence with which I am doing it. Double embarrassment here, to be doing the ridiculous incompetently. I am so petrified with fear of failure that I do not sense the tickle in my nose until I reach for Abha in midcavort, my back impossibly bent in choreographical adulation, one hand behind my rump like a bureaucrat seeking a discreet bribe, the other stretching up to her chin, lips moving to the playback lyric. I am hardly aware of it as I look into her eyes, my nostrils flaring in desire, and sneeze.

“Cut!”

“Oh, Christ,” I mutter under my breath, reaching for my handkerchief. I am not Christian, but fourteen years of a Catholic education have taught me a fine line in blasphemy.

All hell breaks loose. As I sneeze again, I see Gopi Master, beside himself, launching into a paroxysmal frenzy that could easily be set to music in his next film. I see Abha throwing up her hands and stalking off toward her dressing room. There is the crash of a door: I seem to have this effect on women. I see angry faces, laughing faces, exasperated faces, black and brown and red faces, all animated and contorted in their urgent need for self-expression. I sneeze again, hearing voices raised, announcing how many takes have been taken, recording how many hours have been lost, recalling how overdue the next meal break is. Mohanlal nears me, reproach written in every furrowed line on his brow. His anxiety is eight on the Scale, and climbing.

“Sorry, Mohanlalji,” I sniff. “Couldn’t help it. Must be all this rain. I’m very wet. Achoo.” I dab at my offending proboscis, and my handkerchief turns an alarming color. It’s even more serious than I’d thought! No, I’ve just taken some makeup off.

Mohanlal looks decidedly unsympathetic. “Abhaji is being wet, too,” he says. “So also half the technicians, with perspiration if not with this water. How is it that you are only one who is catching cold?”

I am completely taken aback by this evidence of directorial heartlessness. “It’s hardly my fault, is it, if I — achoo!”

Mohanlal is spared the task of apportioning relative blame for the uncommon cold by the arrival of one of Abha’s chamchas. He is a lower grade of hanger-on in that he doesn’t travel with her, but shows up at the studio to run odd errands and generally gratify her sense of self-importance. Mohanlal turns to him, his anxiousness clearly heading from eight to nine. When Abha sends her sidekick to him, there are obvious grounds for fearing the worst.

“Memsahib not coming,” the chamcha announces importantly, confirming Mohanlal’s apprehensions. “Too tired.”

“Wh-a-at?” The director is up to nine now. “What do you mean?”

The sidekick switches to Hindi. “Abhaji says she is not coming back today for any more shooting. She is very tired after all those takes.” He looks meaningfully at me.

“But she can’t do this to me!” Mohanlal begins, quite literally, to tear out his hair, his long fingers running through the thinning strands like refugees fleeing in despair, taking with them what they can. “We’re behind schedule as it is.”

“That,” said the chamcha pointedly, “is not her fault.”

Mohanlal turns to me, murder in his ineffectual eyes. “This is your doing,” he breathes in a furious bleat, switching back to Hinglish for my benefit. “You are not being able to dance, you are not being able to move, you are not being able to do one song picturization right. No wonder Abhaji has had enough.” He reaches out for the chamcha, who is sidling away from this sordid domestic scene. “Where is she?” He returns to Hindi. “I’ll go and talk to her.”

“It won’t do any good,” the sidekick replies, with a knowing shake of the head. “And it might just have the opposite effect.” Mohanlal nods wearily. Abha’s rages are legendary: she is efficient and professional and even occasionally pleasant, but once her temper is aroused, flames leap from her tongue, singeing wigs at sixty paces.

“OK.” Mohanlal’s favorite two syllables emerge reluctantly, like air from a deflating radial. “We’ll take a break now,” he tells the technicians, who have begun to throng around us in the manner of the traditional Hindi movie crowd scene. He says this with a groan, a man at the end of his tether.

“Look,” I suggest helpfully in conciliatory Hindi, “while you all take a break, why don’t I try and have an extra rehearsal with Gopi Master?”

“Because he’d kill you, that’s all,” Mohanlal says with a sudden passion. “Which mightn’t be such a bad idea. Where is he?” He looks around, and spots the dance master in a corner, face buried in his hands in a mournful sulk of great intensity.

“Just trying to be helpful, that’s all,” I say, backing off. “You’re right, I don’t think we should disturb him. Maybe I could use a rest after all.”

“Rest?” Mohanlal is almost screaming. “If I were the producer, I’d give you permanent rest.” He must be upset; he has never spoken to me like this before. I will have to redraw the Scale. By the standards of everything that has gone before, this is practically an eleven.

But high anxiety has suddenly metamorphosed in my director into aggression. “You are not going to rest, Mr. Hero,” Mohanlal adds, jabbing his forefinger into my chest to punctuate his return to English. “I am telling you what you are going to do. You are going to get Abhaji back here. Is your fault she is not here, isn’t it, is your fault this picture is not having shooting now, is all your fault. So you get it going again. You were wanting to be filmi hero?” he demands rhetorically, taking me by the upper arm and propelling me toward Abha’s dressing room. “I am giving you your big chance. Enter the tigress’s den and bring her out. I am not caring if you are in her jaws and bleeding when she comes out, but you get her here.”

He might have put it a little less colorfully, I think, as I shuffle to the door. My diffident knock elicits no response. I try again.

“What is it?”

“Abhaji, it’s me. Ashok.”

“What do you want? I’m changing.”

“Just to talk, Abhaji. When you’ve changed.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going home.”

“I know, Abhaji. But I must talk to you. I need your advice.”

“Advice?” She laughs, but the tone seems to soften. “I can think of other words for what you need.”

“Please?”

There is a pause behind the closed door. Then the famously girlish voice, still undulled by age, responds, “All right, give me a minute while I get dry.”

“Take your time,” I agree, looking back at Mohanlal to make sure my progress thus far has been noted. He catches my glance, snorts, and looks away. Around him reigns the amiable anarchy of a studio set during a break: a confusion of wires, a diffusion of lights, a profusion of grips moving reflectors, stools, and power boxes. Not to mention a steady infusion of teacups, lubricating both activity and idleness. In a corner, oblivious to the clatter and the clutter, sits Gopi Master, palms on temples, red-eyed in mourning. Red- and black-eyed, actually, because emotion has smudged his kohl. I turn hastily back to Abha’s dressing room and knock again.

The door opens and a mousy little face peers out. It is Celestine, Abha’s dresser, a girl who contrives to be even smaller than her famously petite mistress. She has undoubtedly been chosen for that, as well as for her bridgeless snub nose, frightened black eyes, and downy lip, all of which give the star nothing to worry about in her mirror while being dressed. What the hell, we all need reassurance; there’s nothing better than being able to employ it.

“Memsahib says you can come in now,” Celestine whispers, respectfully or conspiratorially, I am not sure. I step in, and she closes the door behind me. Abha is seated at the dressing table, her head tilted as she tries to insert a gold teardrop into a perfect earlobe. She has changed out of the wet sari she was acting in into a splendid churidar-kameez in blue silk. She is looking pleased with the result, as well she might. My eyes linger on her exquisite face, seen so many times larger than life on so many movie screens in my childhood, on the sweep of black hair that flows to one side with the tilt of her head, on the creamy feet half slipped into tiny high-heeled black sandals. And inevitably — for in Agra you can’t help noticing the Taj — at the most famous bust in India, iconically displayed on so many cinema posters across the country, rising taut and firm against the silk of her kameez. For years her breasts had been Abha’s trademark, like Monroe’s legs or Bardot’s derriere, though, unlike these actresses, she was never called upon to reveal as much of her assets. Indian screenplays did not require it, and even if they did, our Indian censors would not permit it. Nudity is a commonplace in our countryside, of course, where many women cannot afford much to wear, but it is banned on our screens; whereas fisticuffs and homicide, which are illegal, are energetically portrayed. I must get someone to explain it to me sometime.

No time for idle musings on the senses of our censors, though, as I take my eyes off Abha’s peaks to contend with Abha’s pique. She has finished with the earring and is returning my gaze, her expression an unspoken question.

“You’re beautiful,” I find myself saying.

She is now less angry than amused. “You haven’t come here to flatter me,” she replies, but it is obvious she is pleased.

“No, I mean it,” I protest sincerely, my eyes straying to the bottle of hair dye she has left inadvertently on the table. “No one would believe you’re thirty-five “

“Thirty-six,” she corrects me. Even if she joined the movies straight after school, she must be at least forty-two.

“I don’t believe it,” I retort, striving to keep ambiguity out of my tone. “It seems just yesterday I saw you in Patthar aur Phool.” In a television rerun, I am tempted to add, but don’t.

“So what do you want?” she asks, half smiling, waiting.

“There’s much drama going on there,” I laugh, with a gesture beyond the door. “I’ve never seen Mohanlal so upset. Anger made him really articulate.”

“Did he send you to me?” she asks, pleasantly enough.

“Yes,” I respond in all innocence. “He —”

“You can tell that cowardly son of a chaprassi he should have the balls to face me himself,” she blazes. “Go on, go and tell him that.”

“I will, in just a minute,” I concur hastily, cursing my tactical clumsiness. “But I didn’t come here only for Mohanlal. I need to talk to you, Abhaji.”

“What about?” The situation is still retrievable. She is slowly decelerating from her tigress mode.

I haven’t a clue what to say next, so I shift from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. My glance lingers on Celestine, who is standing dubiously against the wall like a mouse evaluating a cheese of uncertain provenance. Abha thinks she understands the reason for my silence. She gestures with a tilt of her head, and the dresser scurries noiselessly away.

“Don’t come back till I call you,” Abha orders, and the door clicks behind me. We are alone: the first time I have been with Abha without an audience, an entire crew looking on.

“Thank you,” I say. She nods, slightly impatient. I must think of something to say. I speak without thinking: “Abhaji, I know I’m making a mess of things out there. I’m truly sorry.”

Her face lightens visibly. “Sorry? In all my years in Hindi films, I’ve never heard an actor use that word. Even when it was in the script.” She pats the bed, the only other piece of furniture in the dressing room. “I knew you were a decent boy. Come and sit here.” Wordlessly, I obey.

She looks at me, smiling. “I accept your apology.”

“You must be sick and tired of my incompetence,” I say. “I don’t blame you for walking off like that.”

There is a bright light in her eyes, and it doesn’t come from a reflector. “Oh, I didn’t walk off just because of you,” she says. “I’d had enough of that pair of idiots. When it’s obvious you can’t do something, when something isn’t working, do they try and change it? No, Gopi Master has to have his precious steps just the way he wants them, which is just the way he can do them, and that spineless Mohanlal, all he can do is to ask you to try it again. So we do take after take, I wear myself out, you get more and more worried and more and more self-conscious, and that mollusk, that invertebrate, just says ‘one more take, we’ll get it right now, won’t we?’ Calls himself a director! He couldn’t direct air out of a balloon.”

I cannot believe my ears. So it isn’t just my fault after all! Abha’s words are lifting an incredible weight off my padded shoulders. I feel almost exhilarated. “Abhaji, so what should I do? You know this is my first film. I really want it to work. But the way Mohanlal makes me feel, I wonder why he allowed me to be cast in the first place.”

Abha gives me a sidelong look. “Now you disappoint me. I thought you were going to speak honestly with me. None of this false innocent talk. As if you don’t know the reason.”

I am genuinely taken aback by her words. “What do you mean?” I ask. “I know I hung around the producer’s house so much he finally had to sign me. But he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think I really fitted the role. He told me so himself.”

Abha sighs. She stands up and walks the two paces to where I sit on the bed. “You really are an innocent, aren’t you?” she asks. The question seems to need no reply. “You mean you really don’t know.” This time it is a statement, not a question. I look up at her, shake my head.

“Who is your father?”

“I thought you were going to say that,” I respond hotly. “OK, so he’s a minister. But he hasn’t lifted a finger to help me. Never has, never will. Hates me being in films. You’ve got it wrong, I tell you. He didn’t get me the role, wouldn’t get me the role. And in any case, no one signs you just because you’re a minister’s son. My father isn’t even that important a minister. Who’d risk an entire film just to please him?”

“I’ll tell you.” She stands over me, hand on hip. “Who is the producer?”

This is silly, but I am looking up at her, seeing her face, her bright eyes, through the fabulous twin cones above my forehead, and I feel compelled to respond. “Jagannath Choubey,” I reply.

“And who is Jagannath Choubey?”

“A rich man. A producer.” She impatiently shakes her head at my replies. “An industrialist.”

“Right. What industry?”

“I don’t know. Factories of some sort.”

“What sort?”

“Clothing, I think.”

“Another word for clothing?”

My eyes widen. “Textiles?”

“Got it. And what does a textile magnate need when he wants to make more money out of textiles?” I do not answer. I am too busy looking into the abyss. “Licenses for expansion. Who approves licenses? The minister holding the relevant portfolio. In this case, minor textiles. Last question: who is the Minister for Minor Textiles?”

I groan.

“You really hadn’t realized, had you?” Her voice is soft, speculative. Her hand touches my head, rumples my hair. “Poor boy.”

I am devastated. I feel an emptiness widening inside me, pushing out all confidence, all pride. I don’t know what to say.

Suddenly, she is sitting beside me. She puts a hand to my face, turns it toward her. “Don’t be too depressed. Everybody has to get their start somehow. Your way is better than most. You don’t know what some people have to do to get their first big roles. You’re lucky — you haven’t had to do anything.”

I push her hand away and get up. I am that emptiness now; nothing else matters.

“Where are you going?”

“To Mohanlal, to quit. I can’t do this anymore.”

She stands up too. “Don’t be silly.”

“Look, the only thing that kept me going from one disastrous take to another was the belief that at least the producer had thought me good enough for this role, really suited to it. We’ve been shooting for weeks, Mohanlal is obviously not happy, nothing is going right, the film is way behind schedule, and now you have just removed the one remaining prop that commits me to this madness. Malini was right: films just aren’t my scene. I’ve got to get out” I make for the door.

Her voice stops me like the lash of a lasso. “Don’t you dare!”

I turn around, surprise raising my eyebrows. She is standing near the bed, both hands on hips now, and her eyes are blazing. “Now you listen to me, Ashok Banjara. You said you wanted some advice, and you’re going to get it. You can wallow as much as you like in your sea of self-pity, but you’re not going to get everyone else to drown in it. If you walk out now, this picture is finished. It will be impossible to salvage. Exposed film will be canned, losses written off, contract labor fired. You will be feeling sorry for yourself, and you will go back to your Malini and weep on her shoulder and tell her how right she was. You’ve got nothing to lose; your career doesn’t even exist yet. But the rest of us, Ashok Banjara, we have a lot more to lose.” She hasn’t moved an inch during all this, and I am riveted by the steel of her tongue, held by the magnets of her eyes. Her voice drops a register. “This is my first starrer in two years. They’ve been saying I’m past it, too old to play the heroine. They’re offering me ‘parallel’ roles now: they think ‘parallel’ is a politer word than ‘supporting.’ Six months ago Moolchand Malik asked me to play Rajesh Khanna’s mother in his next film. I’ve got something to prove to these people. If you walk out on this film now, you’ll destroy what might be my last chance. I’m not going to let you.”

“B-but,” I stutter. I’ve already forgotten how I sparked this outburst, or why. “But it was you who walked out, not me,” I conclude lamely.

“I walked off, I didn’t walk out,” comes her riposte. “I’d had enough of that maggot Mohanlal — for today. I’m too tired, Ashok. It all takes too much out of me. I’ve even swallowed my tranquilizer pill.” It couldn’t have begun to take effect, I think; Abha has been anything but tranquil. “I’d have been back tomorrow, and it would have done him some good to worry about me for a change. I’ve been too kind; he was beginning to take me for granted. Let them not forget I’m not some starlet they’ve elevated from the casting couch. But you have no business to throw in the towel. Come here.”

I’m not used to women taking that tone with me, but there’s something about Abha that eliminates all resistance. I obey.

“Sit down.” A firm hand on my shoulder pushes me onto the bed. Just as well. When I’m standing close to Abha I’m inconveniently conscious of how much smaller she is than I am. Having to look up at her magnificent superstructure redresses the balance.

“So you want to quit because you’ve just discovered they gave you the part for the wrong reasons, and because you don’t think you’re up to what they’re asking you to do. Forget the first thing: most reasons are wrong reasons in this business. Someone gets a part by sleeping with the producer. In the end what matters is that she has the part, the film is made, perhaps it’s a hit, and then she’s getting offers for lots of other parts she doesn’t have to earn on her back. If this film succeeds for you, no one will ask who your father is. One day, Ashok Banjara, he’ll be known only as your father. Right?”

I nod humbly. And dumbly.

“Next, you don’t think you can do what they want you to do. So you think you’ll never make it as an actor. Wrong. Tomorrow you go to the producer, who wants to impress your father so much, and you tell him the film is going down the tubes unless he listens to you. Tell him you can’t do Gopi Master’s moves. You’re too tall, your legs are too long, your back is too straight, whatever. Our two duets can easily be rechoreographed with me doing the dancing around you, while you stand and tilt your head and move your arms — yes, you do that rather well, Ashok Banjara. Then tell him your strengths are being underutilized by that unimaginative twit Mohanlal. Don’t look at me like that — don’t you know what your own strengths are? For God’s sake, child, it’s obvious. What are the things you can do? You’ve got long legs, you can leap and jump. Fight scenes, chase scenes, stunt scenes. Tell him to put in lots of these.”

I am awestruck. “But will he do all this for me? I mean, change everything? Overrule Mohanlal?”

“Mohanlal’s not Jean-Luc Godard,” she retorts. “He’s an employee, he’ll do as he’s told. And Jagannath Choubey wants to see his film finished, using the talent he’s already got to the best of their ability. He has a lot of money tied up in this film, after all. Not to mention a lot of hopes involving his star’s father.”

“I’ll see him in the morning,” I vow. “Abhaji, I don’t know how to thank you. I came in here to plead with you to come back to the set, and instead you’ve shown me the light. I’ll never forget this, Abhaji. Tell me what I can do for you. Anything at all.”

She laughs. It is a relaxed laugh, as if somebody has just called “cut” and she has switched off her overdrive. “If you really want to do something for me …”

“Yes? Just name it.”

“You’ve got nice long fingers. Massage my back for me, it’s hurting a bit after that last dance routine.”

“You bet.” Massage her back? I’d have paid for the privilege. “Er — should I say something to Mohanlal?”

“What for?”

“Well, he must be waiting for us.”

“Let him wait. It’ll be good for his soul.”

“And what if someone walks in? While I’m massaging you?”

“Let’s see who dares to walk into Abha Patel’s dressing room without permission,” she says fiercely, adding colloquially, “Mohanlal’s dad won’t do it.”

“OK,” I concede, borrowing Mohanlal’s copyright on the word. “Shall we start?”

“Use this cream,” she says, handing me a bottle. Her fingers move to the silver buttons of her kameez. My heart picks up tempo, like the music director’s favorite bongo. “Turn around,” she commands. My heart reenters adagio. I hear the gentle rustle of silk being slipped off and imagine a lover’s notepaper emerging from a fragrant envelope.

“I’m ready now,” she says in a low voice. I turn.

She is lying on the dressing room bed, on her front. The kameez is the only garment she has taken off: she has folded it onto the solitary chair. Her face is turned toward me, one cheek on the pillow, but her eyes are closed.

Bottle of cream in hand, I sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. I smear some of the cream on her back. The broad strap of her brassiere impedes my hand.

“Are you sure you want to keep this on?” I ask, my voice thickening.

“Yes,” she replies shortly. “Let it be.”

So much for the romance of the moment. I rub the cream into her skin, which is soft, smooth, devoid of lines: a young woman’s.

“Does Celestine do this for you usually?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says languorously. “But Celestine has short, stubby fingers. Not like yours.” And as I stroke her shoulder blades, she moans in pleasure. The moans are soft, low: the tranquilizer must be working at last.

“Where was it hurting, Abhaji?” I ask a little later. “I’ll rub a little more there.”

Her voice is sleepy, the words almost a drawl. “Everywhere,” she whispers. “Just go on. I’m very tired …”

I go on. So she really did want a massage: this was no camouflaged seduction. And I could imagine how tired she must have been, after all that cavorting in the wet, all those takes. And she isn’t all that young anymore. My fingers press and smooth and knead, tracing waves and semicircles and military steps on her flesh. She breathes evenly, her small soft back rising and falling as my fingers coax the fatigue out of them. I realize she is asleep.

Damn! Here I am, sent to bring Abha out to film, and all I have succeeded in doing is putting her to sleep. I am annoyed with myself and even slightly with her. Perversely, to release my annoyance, I unhook her bra. It has left a pale discolored swath across her back. She must hardly ever take it off.

I continue stroking her back, the whole of it this time, and find myself unable to resist the obvious temptation. Here I am, a normal, red-blooded sexually deprived twenty-five-year-old Indian male, in intimate proximity to the most famous bosom in India, with only an unhooked bra between me and a vision of paradise. And she is asleep, knocked out; she need never even know.

Gently, I take her by the shoulder and turn her slightly. She does not awake. Emboldened, I turn her onto her back. She breathes sweetly, her nostrils widening slightly at each intake of air. I look at her for a moment: her face is still exquisite, but her skin is beginning to sag, folds are lining her neck, crow’s-feet are tiptoeing around her eyes. Abha Patel has built her career on looking cute, but to be cute you have to be young. Her looks are incompatible with middle age, and middle age is creeping up on her like the villain’s accomplice waylaying the filmi hero. Except that in the movies the hero could always escape the trap.

She looks so peaceful in sleep. No animal magnetism here, just a woman in repose. Tired, chemically promoted repose, at that. But what a woman.

What a woman. My eyes travel down her neck to the disarranged bra and narrow in puzzlement. I breathe more quickly, my heart pounding like the bongos on the playback track. My fingers, with a will of their own, reach for the cups and lift the brassiere gently off her torso.

I stare in shock. For an instant, the air stops coming into my lungs. My fingers lose their will. The bra drops back into place. My hands are shaking as I turn Abha back and rehook her bra.

I can’t believe what I have just seen: breasts so shriveled and empty they are like pockets of desiccated skin, their tips drooping in dismay. Abha’s bosom is that of a ninety-year-old. The most famous bust in India is a pair of falsies.

My breathing is still uneven as I get up to leave. She sleeps on, a tranquilized smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She must be dreaming, as millions of her countrymen do in the cinema theaters of our nation. Except that they dream with their eyes open.

Exterior: Day

GODAMBO

The small plane appears at a distance against a clear blue sky. Water shimmers below, the sunlight making patterns of molten gold on the surface of the waves. As the noise of its engines becomes louder, the plane weaves unsteadily. The sound of fist landing on flesh is heard. Dishoom!

Interior: a fight is in progress. The pilot lies sprawled across the controls, a vivid red stain across his white-uniformed back. A bald villain is slugging our hero, Ashok. Ashok ducks, kicks. The villain clutches his stomach, the plane bucks, Ashok pushes the pilot aside and seizes the controls. Exterior: the plane dips, straightens itself out. Interior: the villain approaches Ashok from behind, his lips parted in a gruesome snarl. As he raises both hands to bring them down on our hero, Ashok lowers his head and in one sudden jerk smashes it backward into the villains face. Baldy grunts, clutching a bleeding nose. Ashok half rises, one hand still firmly on the plane’s controls, and with scarcely a backward glance sends his free elbow crashing into the villain’s solar plexus. Baldy doubles over and falls. Ashok, grim determination on his face, keeps the plane steady. Below, the water continues to shimmer.

The villain, lying on the floor of the cockpit, spots his gun under the pilot’s seat. His eyes glint. The gun glints. Ashok, at the controls, has his back to him. Slowly, Baldy inches forward, his bloody hand stretching out toward the gun. Close-up: Ashok, alert eyes scanning the horizon, look of grim determination still on face. Back to villain, inching steadily closer to weapon. Ashok, seemingly oblivious, looks at altimeter, fuel gauge, and assorted other indicators. Baldy s hand nears the weapon. He almost has it! Just as his fingers touch the gun metal, Ashok’s foot lands crushingly on his hand. The villain grimaces, yowling in pain. Ashok kicks away the gun, which flies to the door of the plane. The villain gets up, stumbles toward it. He reaches the gun; the plane lurches, the villain trips, falls against the door. His free hand, seeking support, grabs the first thing it can. Alas, it is the handle of the door, which flies open. Villain and gun follow each other into the void.

Long shot, in slow motion, of Baldy plummeting unceremoniously to his wet fate, punctuated by a long, plaintive, despairing scream. A resounding splash is heard; a small fountain mushrooms upward. Shark fins appear ominously in the water. Ashok smiles grimly, brings the aircraft under control. Once again, the plane is seen against the clear blue sky, but now its flying steadily and purposefully, like its pilot. The water still shimmers.

The credits appear on the screen. The sound track swells with the theme song:

I am the long arm of the law,

I’ll always show villains the door

By day or by night

I’ll handle any fight

And put all the bad men on the floor!

I am the long arm of the law,

I’ll never flinch from blood and gore,

Rapists and muggers,

Car thieves and smugglers,

Will always get it on the jaw!

I am the long arm of the law,

No one is quicker on the draw,

Injustice and corruption, Forces

of disruption, Will be the losers in this war!

Ashok taxis to a stop. A police Jeep is waiting on the tarmac. A uniformed officer with a thin mustache and fat jowls asks anxiously, “What happened? Where’s the villain?”

“He had an urgent appointment,” Ashok replies, “with destiny.”

Inside the police station more details emerge. “You were right, sir,” Ashok tells his senior officer, the ramrod-straight Iftikhar, the only filmi cop whose waistline is as thin as his mustache. “The smugglers have become even more daring. They have taken to using small private planes now.” Ashok had hidden on board with the gold biscuits, been discovered, and in the ensuing altercation Baldy had shot his own pilot by mistake. As Iftikhar regrets that neither villain is available for questioning, policemen enter with the boxes recovered from the aircraft, closely packed with the precious yellow metal. The gold glints like sunlight on shimmering water.

“Shabash,” says Iftikhar. It is his favorite word of congratulation: he has uttered it, in precisely that tone of rectitude and recognition, in more than two hundred films. Ashok acknowledges the accolade with a manly nod. “But there is much more to do. We must nab the mastermind of this operation — the dreaded Godambo.”

Interior: a huge, cavernous hall. Two nervous men walk across a marbled floor. The sound of their shoes on the marble is the only intrusion in the silence. Then the music builds: at first slow, then with mounting tempo, danger in every note. The men pass massive pillars, eerily lit in red and gold, and cast apprehensive glances at the black-clad commandos standing at attention beside each pillar, submachine guns at the ready. Each has a springing animal stitched on a badge on his sleeve, onto which is embroidered the words “Black Cheetah” in gold thread. In the center of the hall ripples a large pool flanked by ornamental fountains whose waters are also illuminated in red and gold. Gradually emerging into view beyond the pool, an imposing figure sits on a jeweled throne. He has a large domed and hairless head: not even a mustache breaks the expanse of solid flesh. He is attired in black, red, and gold; a cape flows behind him, and his feet are encased in gold maharajah shoes, their very points sharp with menace. On his lap is a baby cheetah — a live one this time — which he strokes incessantly.

The men come to a halt at the pool and look across at their master. In the water a fin appears, swirling rapidly, and disappears again. The men swallow, exchanging tense glances.

“Well?” The voice from the throne is deep and gravelly, the voice of a major villain.

The men shift uneasily from foot to foot.

“Where is my maal?” the powerful voice asks. In close-up, the villain scratches the cheetah’s neck.

“Sir — mighty Godambo, we don’t have it,” says the thinner of the two men.

“And how can that be? Who dares to deny mighty Godambo his goods?”

“Sir, the plane did not land. The police have captured it.”

“What?!” Godambo’s voice is raised in fury. The cheetah, its hairs standing on end, sits up on his lap. “You imbeciles have allowed my plane to fall into the hands of the police? Where is the agent who was on board?”

“He is dead, mighty Godambo,” the thinner man confesses. (The other man has no lines: it is cheaper that way.) “We believe that this is all the work of that CID inspector, Ashok. He has been on our trail for some time.”

“Fools! How dare you allow a mere CID inspector to come in the way of the plans of mighty Godambo!” The voice drops to a whisper, a gravelly one, but a whisper nonetheless. “We will deal with this Inspector Ashok,” he adds, each syllable dripping with menace. Pause. “You,” he commands the men, “may go now.”

Relief floods the pair’s nervous faces. “Thank you, mighty Godambo,” the thinner one stutters.

They bow, turn to leave. Godambo’s brocaded arm reaches out to a button on the armrest of his throne. He jabs his thumb on it, an eloquent gesture of dismissal.

Abruptly, the floor opens up in front of the departing men. They fall in with a short scream, quickly cut short by a glug.

The shark fin appears once more in the pool, circles, dives.

Godambo presses another button in a console beside him. A giant screen emerges: the two men are seen falling vertically into the water, their hair flowing upward, hands thrashing in despair. A dark shadow swims into the screen, lunges straight for them. Close-up: the thinner man’s eyes and mouth widen in a silent scream. The shark attacks again. Godambo watches impassively, then switches off the screen.

The water on the surface of the pool turns red.

“Fools,” he says. “For Godambo, failure is betrayal. And the punishment for betrayal is?”

The Black Cheetahs standing at attention reply in a chorus: “Death!”

“Death.” Godambo nods approvingly. He continues stroking the cheetah on his lap.

Inspector Ashok comes home to his widowed mother. Amma is of average height, with a round, curiously unlined face and a round, curiously unlined figure. She is draped in the colorlessness of chronic bereavement: white sari, white long-sleeved blouse, white pallav covering most of the white hair on her head. Her expression is both kind and long-suffering: Amma has been the hero’s widowed mother in so many films that she can no longer imagine herself in a colored sari. (Indeed, she can no longer imagine herself married, and so felt obliged to part from her inoffensive offscreen husband because it was too disorienting to come home to him after a day on the set.)

“Amma!” says Ashok. “Ashok!” says Amma. A heartfelt exchange of domestic pleasantries follows. Mother asks son to wash his mouth and hands quickly because she has made him carrot halwa. Son, obeying dutifully, inquires about mother’s welfare. Mother responds with her quotidian expression of maternal anxiety about the risks taken by her beta. Tearfully she invokes the fate of the father (whose garlanded framed photograph on the peacock-green wall, focused upon in a lingering close-up, reveals him to have been a police officer as well, complete with pencil-line mustache). Ashok, stirred more by the photo than by his mother’s entreaties, puts down his gajar ka halwa long enough to pledge to fulfill his father’s incomplete mission in life: to bring evildoers to justice and to marry off his daughter.

Enter on cue Maya, the daughter in question. She is sixteen and pigtailed and winsomely carries a stack of schoolbooks. Ashok beams with fraternal pride and asks after her studies. More pleasantries are exchanged. To complete the picture of familial unity and bliss, the trio bursts into song:

(Refrain):

We’re one small happy family,

We live and love together.

We’re one small happy family,

In sunshine and bad weather.

THE MOTHER:

We’re one small happy family,

Together we stand and fall.

We’re one small happy family,

All for each and each for all.

(Refrain, sung by trio)

ASHOK:

We’re one small happy family,

United, good and strong.

We’re one small happy family,

So nothing can go wrong.

(Refrain, sung by trio)

MAYA:

We’re one small happy family,

Looked after by our mother.

We’re one small happy family,

Protected by my brother.

(Refrain, sung by trio)

(Adoring glances are cast at each person as each is mentioned. As they sing the refrain, they link hands and dance around a red plastic sofa. They are, it is clear, one small happy family.)

“Agent Abha. Agent Pranay.” The gravelly voice, the cheetah, the pool (its surface again clean): we are back in the headquarters of the evil Godambo.

“Yes, boss.” The two step forward.

Abha is petite, pretty; she is in a designer version of the black commando outfit, with black suede boots and a gold lame chemise over her polo-neck top. But even the talents of the costumier cannot detract from her principal feature: she is built like an hourglass, but an Arab hourglass, perhaps, made by a timekeeper with sand to spare. Pranay is bigger, more strongly built, altogether more proportionate. But even the villagers in the twenty-five-paisa seats can see that he is dissolute; his narrow eyes are flecked with red, as is his narrow mouth, which is busily engaged in chewing paan. He sports a thick drooping black mustache, and for no apparent reason carries a whip in his right hand, with which he periodically and arhythmically smacks his left palm.

“I want you to get this Inspector Ashok for me. Agent Abha, you will seek him out. I want you first to find out how much Ashok knows about our operation. Then bring him to me, alive. I want to talk to him.” Godambo laughs gutturally, as if the gravel in his throat had been scattered by a passing vehicle. The cheetah, startled, raises its head. Godambo strokes its back. “Pranay, I want you to help Abha. You know what to do.”

Pranay chews some more and strikes his palm with the whip, wincing involuntarily. “Yes, boss.”

“Good,” says Godambo and laughs again. “I want to meet this Ashok. I want to see who is this inspector who dares to thwart the plans of mighty Godambo.”

“We will take care of it, Godambo,” says Abha.

“Good. And what is the penalty for those who dare to thwart Godambo’s plans?”

The commandos answer in chorus: “Death.”

Godambo laughs. “Death,” he echoes approvingly. The cheetah blinks.

Scene: a nightclub, of the kind found only in Hindi films. A large stage, bedecked with gilt and a dazzling mosaic of multicolored mirrors, faces a valley of white-clothed tables. Seated at these, their expressions bedecked with guilt, is an indeterminate collection of diners, also white-clothed, none of whom look as if they can afford a place like this. (Indeed, they can’t; they are all extras, or “Junior Artistes” as the trade prefers they be called, roped in at seventy rupees a day.) They seem remarkably uninterested in the food before them; that is because they are under strict instructions from the executive producer not to consume it. (Their own, somewhat more frugal, repast awaits them in the studio canteen after the shift.) Along one bottle-lined wall is a bar, also surprisingly untenanted: not even a bartender is visible. The reason will soon be apparent — the bar is meant only to serve as a backdrop for our hero, who will lean against it but not drink (one can never be too sure about how well alcohol will go down with our rural moralists). The lights dim; a single spotlight appears on the stage, illuminating a man with a narrow, red-stained mouth and a drooping mustache. Yes, it is none other than Pranay, except that his whip has been replaced by a pair of drumsticks. He is the percussionist of the evening, and apparently the master of ceremonies as well.

“Laddies and genurrmen,” he slurs into the mike before him, “the one and only — Abha!”

A roll of drums. The spotlight moves away from him, casting rainbow patterns on the mirror mosaic. As the music builds, red and gold rectangles of stage glass part to admit the star. Hips swiveling in a sheathlike gown slit at the calves, fake diamonds sparkling at her throat and wrists, wireless mike in exquisite hand, Abha twists onto the stage. She smiles at the audience just as Ashok walks in. He is in a tuxedo, complete with black bow tie; not the standard off-duty garb of your average police officer, but the cinema-loving villagers don’t know that. (Nor, for that matter, will they ask what on earth an honest middle-class cop is doing in a place like this. The Indian film industry is built on their ignorance and on their willing suspension of disbelief.)

Our hero looks at the girl on the stage, the girl on the stage looks at him, the camera looks at her looking at him, the camera looks at him, too. He leans against the bar, his face framed by a fuzzy background of bottles. The girl swings into song:

Baby don’t leave me —

You’ve got to believe me,

I love you!

Baby don’t leave me —

Tell me you believe me,

That I love you …

Her hips twist improbably; her mikeless hand, five fingers spread, traces a vivid diagonal across her torso from thigh upward, stopping only at the natural obstruction above. She tosses shoulder-length hair and croons:

I’m the kind of woman who takes a lot of loving,

And to get it I may do some shoving,

I know I’ve been bad

But it makes me sad

To think you don’t want me anymore.

Pranay joins her in the chorus:

Baby don’t leave me —

You’ve got to believe me,

I love you!

Baby don’t leave me —

Tell me you believe me,

That I love you …

Ashok smiles impassively. The girl is looking at him as she continues:

You’re the kind of man I want to cling to,

You’re the only man I want to sing to,

I’ll put all my charms

Into your arms

Don’t tell me you don’t want me anymore.

Pranay looks at her, looks at Ashok, then smashes the cymbals attached to his drum set as he joins in:

Baby don’t leave me —

You’ve got to believe me,

I love you!

Baby don’t leave me —

Tell me you believe me, That

I love you …

Ashok is nodding to the music now, his smile as anodyne as the indeterminable contents of the blurred bottles behind him. Abha, knees bent and leaning backward, vigorously shakes her twin assets, like a camel removing extra drops of water after a dip in an oasis. She sings on:

For you I’ll do just anything,

I want to hold you and wear your ring,

I need to kiss you

Can’t bear to miss you

Don’t say you don’t want me anymore.

Pranay, looking at her, smashes his drumstick into the palm of his hand out of sheer force of habit. His pain is drowned in the chorus:

Baby don’t leave me —

You’ve got to believe me,

I love you!

Baby don’t leave me —

Tell me you believe me, That

I love you …

The Junior Artistes, plates comprehensively neglected, break into thunderous and synchronized applause.

Exterior: later that night. Ashok steps out of the nightclub. He stands on the stoop, pulls out a cigarette, places it in his mouth. (Smoking does not trouble the rural moralists.) A match flares: his manly profile is lit up as he bends to light the weed.

Suddenly he hears sounds. A woman’s voice, raised: “Let me go!” His head cocked, he listens. Then he shakes out the match and steps determinedly into the shadows.

Abha is trying to pull herself away from Pranay, who is tugging at her arm. “Let me go!” she snaps-pleads, outraged virtue combining with panic in her voice. “No,” he snarls, and the audience can almost smell the whiskey on his breath. “You’re coming with me tonight.”

Ashok emerges from the shadows. “Let the lady go,” he says, his voice calm, strong, tough (after three attempts in the dubbing studio).

“Huh?” Pranay turns bloodshot eyes on the intruder. “And who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” He pulls a grimacing Abha closer.

“Never mind who I am,” replies Ashok in the same tone of voice. “I don’t like repeating myself. Let the lady go.”

Pranay scowls. “Try and make me,” he says, spitting to one side. He has Abha in his clutches now, leaving only one hand free. Abha struggles (but not too hard).

“As you like.” Ashok resignedly slips off his tuxedo jacket, hangs it on the broken branch of a convenient tree. Then, while Pranay is still regarding this process in surprise, he moves forward in a quicksilver maneuver, socks the villain in the solar plexus, wrenches one arm around and liberates Abha. Before Pranay can recover, Ashok has gently moved Abha out of harm’s way. The villain’s fist comes flying at him; Ashok steps deftly aside, catches Pranay’s wrist, and brings him crashing to the ground. The villain shakes his head, staggers to his feet, charges our hero. But without his whip Pranay is not half the man we have seen at Godambo’s. Ashok administers a swift lesson in elementary fisticuffs, and Pranay bites the dust. Quite literally: some of the dust gets into his mouth, and he lies there, coughing.

“Get lost,” Ashok amiably tells the sprawled villain, as an anxious Abha cowers and hovers behind him. “Or I might really get angry.” Pranay takes the advice and, with one backward glance, stumbles away into the night, still coughing.

“Oh, thank you,” breathes a grateful Abha. “You saved my life.”

“It was nothing,” Ashok responds modestly. “Let me take you home.”

“Thank you,” she agrees huskily. “It’s only a short walk from here, but I’d feel so much safer with you.”

They walk. He tells her she sang very well. She tells him he fought very well. He asks her how she became a singer. “Majboori” she says, a catch in her voice: compulsion. She had no choice. She had wanted nothing more than to finish her studies and lead a normal life, marry someone chosen by her parents, start a family. But her father fell into the hands of bad men. He drank, he gambled, he ran up debts. Her mother wept and told him there was no money for their daughter’s school fees, but he would not listen. One day the bad men came and asked for the money. Her father had nothing to give. The men ransacked the house, opened drawers, smashed mirrors, overturned tables, beat her father. But they found nothing of value. “What about your daughter?” asked their leader, an evil man with a narrow red-stained mouth and a drooping mustache. “We hear she can sing. Well, she can sing for the money.” Despite her mothers tearful protests, her father agreed. They dragged her away. This was several months ago. She had been singing for them ever since.

“What if you stop? Refuse to go on?” Ashok asks, as the studio stars twinkle overhead, casting slivers of light on the teardrop that trembles on her cheek. “They will kill me.” She shivers. “Or my parents. They said they would burn down my parents’ house if I even thought of—” Her voice chokes.

Ashok puts an arm around her, delicately wipes the tear off her cheek with his long fingers. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll look after you.” She smiles, nestles closer to him. For some reason they are walking by the beach now. Moonbeams play with her hair and shine on her pearly smile, as he introduces himself with the theme song:

I am the long arm of the law,

I’ll always show villains the door

By day or by night

I’ll handle any fight

And put all the bad men on the floor!

As the song continues, the scene keeps changing to depict their evolving courtship. In one verse they are by the beach; in the next, running through a park; in a third, swaying on his motorcycle. Through each change of costume and locale, the song goes on:

I am the long arm of the law,

You needn’t ask for any more,

No one will hurt you, Nothing can

dirt you, You are what I’m fighting for!

I am the long arm of the law,

No villain will touch you with his paw,

They’ll fall helter-skelter

When I give you shelter,

For they know what I’ve got in store!

I am the long arm of the law,

My skills are the very ones you saw,

Oh, damsel in distress, Justice is my

mistress, And my heart beats for

you at the core!

There are six different shots of Abha running into Ashok’s arms in six different parts of town and being clasped in six different tight embraces. When the last note fades away, the camera catches them thus and lingers on Abha’s face, the side that is not pressed into the hero’s chest. She is smiling: but is it the smile of a woman in love, or of a villainess in victory?

Interior: Godambo’s cavern. The cheetah is being scratched, the villainous palm is being struck, the fin is swirling in the pool — we are back in familiar territory.

“Are you making progress, Abha?” The gravel seems to have been troweled on today.

“Yes, mighty Godambo.” Abha’s eyes are lowered, so it is difficult to read her expression. She has changed from her range of respectable attire in the song — saris, salwar-kameez — back into her black-and-gold uniform. “He suspects nothing.”

“But what have you found out? How much does he know?”

“I am still trying to win his confidence, mighty Godambo. I haven’t been able to ask him that yet.”

“It is taking a lot of time,” Godambo says. “Pranay here is becoming impatient, aren’t you, Pranay?”

Pranay, chewing, grunts affirmatively, bringing the whipstock gingerly down on his palm. He sports a pair of vivid bruises, designed to win the makeup man a Filmfare award.

“Poor Pranay had to put up with a lot that night at the club,” Godambo chuckles evilly, “just to bring you and Ashok together. He’s itching to get his own back now, aren’t you, Pranay?”

Pranay chews and grunts even more vigorously. This time the whip handle falls into his palm with a satisfying thwack. Abha winces, but says nothing.

“You’re not becoming too fond of this Inspector Ashok yourself, are you, Abha?” Godambo asks conversationally. The cheetah sits up. “Because if any such thought should cross your mind, you know what will happen to your parents, don’t you? And to their sad little house?” The cheetah stands up on all fours on Godambo’s lap. “Or indeed to you?”

A look of pain, like a fleeting shadow, crosses Abha’s face. “I know where my duty lies, mighty Godambo,” she says. The gold lame chemise quivers with suppressed emotion.

“Just as well,” responds the domed head on the throne. “But to be safe, I shall ask Pranay here to keep a closer eye on you. Don’t want you making any silly mistakes over this Inspector Ashok.” He looks at her meaningfully; she averts her gaze at first, looking down, then brings her chin up to return his stare, a strong, confident expression on her face. “Not that I don’t trust you, Abha. You’re an intelligent girl. You know what’s good for you. And if you don’t” — he raises his voice to address the pillar-posted commandos — “we all know what the punishment for betrayal is, don’t we?”

The expected answer comes, full-throated, uncompromising. “Death!”

“Death,” echoes Godambo in confirmation. The cheetah closes its eyes.

“Amma, I have brought someone to meet you.”

“Arré, Ashok, home so early? And who have …” Amma bustles out of the kitchen into the main room with its parrot-green wall and stops short beneath the freshly garlanded photograph of her late and much-lamented husband. She takes in the sight of Abha, demurely clad in a cotton sari, and her eyes widen with surprise and pleasure.

“Ma, this is Abha.” Ashok cannot keep the pride out of these simple words, even in the rerecording studio. The heroine-gangster’s moll steps forward, hand outstretched, and bends to touch the old lady’s feet.

A happy scene follows. Kind words are spoken, embarrassed smiles concealed, shy glances exchanged. Pigtailed Maya enters and, in defiance of all the established patterns of sibling behavior, takes an instant liking to her brother’s flame. As Amma produces tea and snacks, the younger women commune in a shared filmi sisterhood. Maya admires the way Abha wears her hair; Abha tells her it is easy to do. Maya giggles a request, and Abha smilingly accompanies her to her room to oblige. In a moment they are back, with Maya’s hair done just like Abha’s. There is much laughter, but soon it is time for the visitor to leave.

“I’ve always wanted to have a sister,” Maya says artlessly. “Please come back soon.”

A troubled look shadows Abha’s face. “I’d like to come back soon,” she says. She turns away, biting her lip, so that no one can see the tears that have suddenly welled up in her eyes.

It is evening, and Abha is standing alone at some unidentified spot. She sings a slow, high-pitched, haunting lament:

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

Just like an unwelcome love-letter.

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

And I fear I will never be better.

How cruel is life,

To bring such strife,

And make me weep and mope;

To have the word “wife”

Strike like a knife

Instead of lighting hope.

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

I love this precious man.

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

For I must fulfill the plan.

His every smile

His sense of style

Lights up my wretched heart.

But all the while

With shameful guile

I’ve been playing my part.

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

My mind quivers with this thought.

I am torn in two,

I am torn in two,

Between the must and the ought.

As the last high note fades into the sound track, it is replaced by the roar of the hero’s motorcycle coming down the road. “Abha, why are you looking so sad?” Ashok asks. “Come on, I’ll take you for a spin and cheer you up.”

“No, thanks, Ashok, I don’t really feel like it today. I’m worried about you.”

“About me?” asks Ashok. “Why?”

“Your police work. It must be so dangerous. Just today there was an article in the paper about the ‘most wanted man in India,’ Godambo, and how many people he has killed. What would happen if they assigned you to a case like that, to tackle someone like this horrible killer?”

“Nothing,” he responds cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’ll let you into a secret, I am handling the Godambo case. And nothing has happened to me. I shall have that villain behind bars soon enough, and they will give me such a promotion I will be able to afford to marry you.”

“Hush,” she says. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you might tempt Providence.” She averts her face, swallows, resumes. “Have you — come into contact with this Godambo yet?”

“No. If I had, that would be the end of the story,” Ashok boasts. “I have successfully stopped some of his operations, but no one knows where to find the great Godambo himself. Once I can track him down to his hideout, Godambo will be mine.”

“Don’t do it!” Abha exclaims, then puts her hand to her mouth. “I mean, it might be terribly dangerous. Do you have any leads?”

“Not one,” Ashok admits. “I was hoping Godambo would show his hand after we intercepted one of his planes a few weeks ago. But he has been lying low. I must have frightened the fellow.” He laughs at Abha’s troubled expression. “For Gods sake, stop looking so worried,” he says. “Remember:

I am the long arm of the law,

No one is quicker on the draw,

Injustice and corruption,

Forces of disruption,

Will be the losers in this war!”

She runs into his arms. “ Hold me, Ashok. Hold me so tight I can imagine you’ll never leave me.”

“But I’ll never leave you,” he says, holding her. She does not reply, and he strokes her hair. There is a worried expression on his own face.

Interior: lights, throne, pool, cheetah, gravel — the scene is set.

“Yes, Abha? What have you to report?”

Abha is no longer in civvies, but wears a glorious red-and-black pantsuit emblazoned with a gold cheetah springing across her chest. She is clearly in an emotional state because the decorative animal stirs visibly, as if scenting a threat in the jungle. “Sir, you don’t need to worry about Inspector Ashok,” she says, a ripple moving through her sartorial animal.

“Oh? And why is that?” The voice is smooth now, as if the gravel has been macadamized. Godambo looks remarkably content for a man who has had no costume change in four scenes.

“He doesn’t know how to find you. He told me himself he has no leads.” Abha’s tone is eager, relief mingling with anxiety in her voice. “You are safe, mighty Godambo.”

“Safe?” the hairless head on the throne shakes derisively. “I, Godambo, do not seek to be safe, like some street corner pickpocket! I seek to eliminate all threats to myself. Must I cower like a fat merchant before a tax man, and try to keep out of Mr. Inspector Ashok’s way? No, Abha. Now that I know he cannot surprise us here, I must surprise him instead. I will bring Muhammad to the mountain.” He laughs, a deep laugh this time, like gravel being shoveled into a pit. “In a way of my choosing. You have done a good job, Abha. I think you deserve a rest. For the next part of my plan, I have a more — passive part in mind for you.”

Godambo claps his hands; Pranay emerges, complete with paan and whip, and stands before his master. “Take her with you. You have followed her closely. You know exactly where to go?” Pranay chews, nods. “Go then.” Godambo laughs.

“Mighty Godambo —” Abha is distraught.

“Yes?”

“I am not feeling well. May I be excused from any further part in this — this plan?”

“You may not. Why my dear, you are a very necessary part of my plan.” Godambo’s expression is almost avuncular. Then it changes. “You are not” — he leans forward, propping one elbow on a knee — “you are not refusing an order, are you?”

Abha’s voice is very small. “No, Godambo.”

“Good. Because refusal is disobedience, you know. And the penalty for disobedience is —”

A hundred black-clad voices oblige him. “Death!”

“Death,” Godambo confirms and laughs again. His cheetah, unlike Abha’s, continues to sleep.

The black Ambassador car draws up outside Ashok’s house. A window is rolled down to reveal Abha in the backseat, her eyes imprisoned behind dark glasses. Inside the car, Pranay is holding a knife against her side. “Go on,” he says. “Call her.”

“No,” she breathes.

“Godambo was right to warn me you’d gone soft on him,” Pranay snarls. “Right now two of our Black Cheetah commandos are in your parents’ home. They arejust waiting for the signal to act.”

“No!”

“Yes. So if you want to see your parents again, do as you’re told. Call her.”

Abha stifles a sob. “Maya,” she cries out in a choked voice.

“Louder. Clearer. Or else …” Pranay places the metal of the knife on the bared flesh of her midriff, between sari and blouse.

Abha obliges. “Maya!”

There is an answering squeal of recognition, and Sweet Sixteen, back in pigtails, comes running out of the house. She reaches the car; Abha starts to warn her; Pranay savagely pushes Abha aside. The sound of a motorcycle is heard. The car door is flung open. Pranay leaps out, grabs Maya. She screams. Abha’s face, frozen in horror and indecision, is visible in the window. The motorcycle enters the street. Ashok sees all three, shouts “Stop!” Pranay leers at him, bundles a screaming Maya into the car. He raises a fist: “Godambo zindabad!” he proclaims, disappearing into the car. The Ambassador drives away in a squeal of tires.

Ashok sets off in hot pursuit on his motorcycle.

Chase sequence: the Ambassador roars through the crowded streets, up Marine Drive, heads to the sea. The motorcycle follows, weaving in and out of traffic. The car runs a red light; Ashok mounts a sidewalk to chase it, scattering pedestrians, hawkers, and peanuts from a moomphali-wallah’s basket. Twice, when Ashok seems to be gaining on the abductors, Pranay leans out and fires a shot from a revolver. Ashok ducks, veers, stays upright but loses ground. As the chase continues, Maya is seen struggling with Pranay inside the car. Pranay slaps her aside and barks to Abha, “Keep her quiet if you know what’s good for you.” Abha restrains Maya and is rewarded with a look from the young girl that feelingly combines bewilderment and a dawning sense of betrayal.

The car turns off the road, onto a dirt track. It seems to be heading straight for a hillside by the sea, going too fast to avoid crashing into it. Ashok shouts out “Stop!” and slows down himself. The car continues to drive straight on. Just when a crash seems inevitable, the hillside opens up, a huge steel door sliding aside to reveal an entrance for the car. Ashok curses, accelerates. The Ambassador has disappeared inside. The steel door begins to slide back, closing the entrance. The motorcycle roars toward it. The gap narrows. Close-up: Ashok’s face, grimly determined, teeth visibly clenched, as he strains every sinew to force his motorbike through the gap in time. The steel door is closing: with a fuel-burning roar, the motorcycle bursts through just as the door clangs shut.

Barely has the applause in the twenty-five-paisa seats died down when the audience and Ashok are both drawn up short. For there is a barrier across the road, guarded by two enormous, half-naked wrestler-types, each wielding a sizable sword. The fatter of the twopahelwans pats his belly, grunts, and moves threateningly toward our hero, sword at the ready. His partner proceeds to do the same. Ashok looks at both of them, begins to dismount. The guards nod to each other in impassive anticipation. Then, suddenly, Ashok swings back into the saddle of the motorcycle, revs up his engine, and makes for a point between the two men. They raise their swords. Ashok roars in, and in a remarkable feat of action (the credit for which stunt man and editor would later dispute), simultaneously he kicks one wrestler in the vitals with an extended left leg and hits another in the gut with an upthrust right fist, while ducking to drive the motorcycle between the raised sword-arms. The two flabby toughs collapse in a heap, and our hero takes his motorcycle crashing through the barrier.

But once more the applause of the twenty-five-paisa wallahs is doomed to die down. For as Ashok rides on in the ill-lit hill tunnel, slowing down to look for the errant Ambassador, a rustle is heard, soon drowned on the sound track by the violins of violence. He looks up in surprise as a gigantic net falls on him, enmeshing him in its chains and bringing hero and motorcycle spinning to the ground.

A light is flashed into his eyes and Ashok blinks, dazzled. Pranay is standing above him, whip triumphantly in hand. “Welcome, Inspector Ashok,” the vile villain snarls through red-stained lips. “Mighty Godambo is waiting to meet you.”

Ashok is dragged through the cavern by two heavies in black, his hands tied behind him. The audience sees it all again as if for the first time: the marble floor, the eerily illuminated pillars, the Black Cheetahs, the fountain-flanked pool with its darting floating fin, and finally the jeweled throne. On this the bald caped figure sits comfortably, but the pet cheetah is at his feet. It has grown too big for his lap since the film’s shooting began.

“So you are Inspector Ashok,” the principal villain says gutturally. “Thank you for paying us a visit.”

“Where is my sister, kameenay?” our hero asks disrespectfully.

“Your sister.” Godambo does not seem unduly put out. “Let me show you.” He leans back and presses a button on the console beside him. The giant screen again emerges. This time it shows a barred cell, within which Maya weeps, tugging vainly at the bars with handcuffed hands.

Ashok, enraged, struggles to cast off his captors. Godambo laughs. “Why have you brought me here, villain?” our hero asks.

Godambo seems to enjoy this hugely. “Why have we brought him here, he wants to know. But you came here yourself! Uninvited, I might add.”

“What do you want with my sister, you castoff from an asylum?”

“Silence!” This is Pranay, accompanying his admonition with a crack of the whip. “No one abuses the mighty Godambo.”

“It doesn’t matter, Pranay,” interjects the most-wanted man in India. “We will tell him what he wants to know. Or perhaps he would prefer to hear it from more familiar lips.” The ghost of a smile haunts his impassive, hairless face. He claps his hands. “Agent Abha.”

Abha steps forward reluctantly. She is in her most recent Godambo uniform, complete with springing cheetah. Ashok’s eyes widen in betrayed realization.

“You know each other, I believe?” Godambo asks.

Outrage and contempt blaze from Ashok’s eyes. “I even took you home to meet my mother,” he says accusingly, the very thought drenching his voice in self-reproach.

“Forgive me, Ashok,” she pleads. “I had no choice.”

“No choice! Do you still expect me to believe those lies about your miserable parents?”

“They’re not lies —.” But she is silenced by a minatory wave of Pranay’s whip.

“Can you deny you were working for these thugs all along? Even when we went out together?”

She is silent; she cannot deny it. Ashok looks away bitterly.

“Enough of this love-shove talk,” Pranay snaps. “Tell him.”

Abha pulls herself together, but the strain shows on her face. “Ashok, mighty Godambo wants you to give up your pursuit of him. And he invites you to join his organization.”

“Never!”

“Ashok, if you don’t do as he says, he will — kill Maya.”

On the screen the concealed camera zooms in on Maya, hands tightly gripping the bars of her cell, tears streaking her pretty face, pigtail dangling by one wet cheek. Ashok grits his teeth, straining to shake off his shackles. He is restrained by the black-clad commandos and a menacing crack of Pranay s whip.

“What kind of man are you, Godambo, to fight your battles through an innocent young girl?” he rails. “Come and face me in hand-to-hand combat, and we will see.”

Godambo stiffens in his throne. The hairless visage registers offense. “Don’t ever, and I mean ever, speak to me like that again,” he growls, crunching gravel under every syllable. “What makes you think you are worthy of hand-to-hand combat with mighty Godambo? I could crush you like an ant with one hand tied behind my back, Inspector Ashok, but I won’t bother. I have made you an exceedingly generous offer. I can see you need some time to think about it. Very well.” He laughs, but there is no amusement on his face. “I shall accommodate you with your sister. But if you want her to see another sunset, Inspector Ashok, you will give me the answer I want by dawn tomorrow.”

Ashok’s eyes blaze defiance at this ultimatum, but the dialogue writer’s imagination has failed him, and he remains silent. A snap of Godambo’s fingers, a dismissive gesture, and Ashok is dragged away. But not without casting a bitter parting glance at his erstwhile lady love.

Abha looks away, and this time there are no dark glasses to conceal the despair in her reddening eyes.

Interior: Godambo’s dungeons. In the dimly lit cell, Ashok consoles the tearful Maya. She nestles against his chest, and he embraces her as far as the knots on his wrists will allow: elbows and forearms resting on her shoulders, unfree hands clasped behind her head. He looks into her eyes and sings:

We’re one small happy family,

We live and love together.

We’re one small happy family,

In sunshine and bad weather.

We’re one small happy family,

United, good and strong.

We’re one small happy family,

So nothing can go wrong.

Maya’s response is to burst into a fresh torrent of tears.

Outside the cell a Black Cheetah patrols the stone-flagged corridor in hobnailed boots. As Ashok looks up alertly, he hears another pair of footsteps. The commando’s boots pause in their stride.

“Who is — oh, it’s you, Agent Abha.”

“Just checking to see how things are, Ali. All well with the prisoners?”

“They were making a lot of noise, but its quieter now.”

“Could I see them?”

“I’m afraid not, Agent Abha. You know I can’t let you in. Strict orders from mighty Godambo himself. No one may disturb the prisoners.”

“I won’t disturb them.”

“Sorry, Agent Abha. I have my orders.”

“Good. I was just checking to make sure you were following them. Hey — what’s that?”

“What?” The guard whips around, submachine gun at the ready. In a flash Abha brings the butt of her own revolver down on the back of his head. He sinks soundlessly to his knees. She eases him to the floor. Looking around quickly, she pulls his bunch of keys off the belt loop from which they are conveniently dangling and opens the barred gate of Ashok and Maya’s cell.

“Come on,” she whispers urgently to the astonished prisoners.

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” Ashok asks.

“Of course it isn’t,” Abha says in an urgent hiss. “I’m risking my life for this. And the lives of my poor parents. Hurry. If Godambo catches us, it’ll be certain death.”

“What have we got to lose?” Ashok asks rhetorically. He raises his handcuffs. “Do you have the keys for these?”

“I think so.” Abha sifts through the bunch, finds a likely key and inserts it. It turns: Ashok is free. He rubs his sore wrists while Abha liberates Maya. The young girl smiles hopefully at her.

“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Ashok says unnecessarily, taking charge. “Do you know the way out of this place?”

“Yes,” whispers Abha. “But I’m warning you, it’s heavily guarded.”

Ashok sets his jaw. “We’ll see about that,” he snaps, as the three creep out into the corridor.

They advance a few paces. Abha presses herself against a wall and pokes her head round a corner. The coast is clear. She signals, and they run down one more corridor. At the next intersection of pathways, Abha repeats the maneuver. They run — and are drawn up short by the sight of Pranay standing in the middle of the corridor chewing calmly, legs astride, whip at the ready, and a demoniacal gleam of delight in his eyes.

“And where do you think you’re going?” he asks sardonically. The red stains on his lips look like blood.

It all happens very quickly. Abha pulls out her revolver. Pranay’s whip cracks, and the gun clatters harmlessly to the floor. She cries out, holding her hand in pain. He laughs and again cracks his whip. This time it is Ashok who screams. Pranay is enjoying himself. He advances, the whip snaking out repeatedly, with a noise like a pistol shot. Ashok is hit once more, but then dodges, jumps. Pranay is unperturbed; he enjoys the challenge. “Dance, Inspector Ashok!” he snarls with each flick of his weapon. Ashok sidesteps him nimbly. Pranay strikes, the look of arrogant cruelty on his face turning to one of surprise as Ashok catches the cord of the whip in midlash.

Our hero grips the whip and wraps it around his hand, drawing his tormentor toward him. Pranay tugs at the whip handle, but in vain. Ashok pulls him irresistibly closer. As he nears Ashok, Pranay flings the stock of the whip viciously at our hero. Ashok dodges it. Pranay lunges for the gun on the floor. He is about to reach it when the whip strikes him across the hand. He looks stupidly at a red weal rising on the back of it. Now it is Ashok who has the whip. “Dance, villain!” he barks. The whip descends again, and a streak of red appears on the villain’s cheek, competing with the gash of red across his narrow mouth. Pranay dances as the whip swishes repeatedly through the air, catching him on the legs, the arms, the behind. (The moralists in the twenty-five-paisa seats really enjoy this bit. You should hear them laughing and cheering in the aisles.)

Abha picks up the revolver and tosses it to Ashok, who flings the whip aside. “Come on,” he says to the whimpering Pranay. “You lead us out.” Pranay, clutching his arm, hobbles down the corridor with Ashok’s gun pointing at his back. They reach a doorway guarded by two Black Cheetahs. A control panel embedded in the rock next to the doorway glows red. “That’s the way out,” Abha breathes. “The switch is on that panel.”

“Go on,” Ashok orders Pranay with an ungentle dig of the gun into his back. “Tell your goons not to obstruct us, or you’ll end up with more holes than a Calcutta road.”

Pranay hoarsely obliges. “Let them go,” he instructs the commandos. “Open the door.” Reluctantly the Black Cheetahs move toward the control panel.

“Stop!” There is no mistaking the voice. It contains enough gravel to resurface even Calcutta’s roads.

The group spins around. Godambo stands there, huge and hairless, his cape swirling round him. There is no sign of the cheetah. “Don’t touch that panel,” he instructs his commandos.

“B-boss,” Pranay bleats.

“Open that door, or Pranay gets it,” Ashok shouts.

“That incompetent? Who let himself be captured this way?” snarls Godambo. “Shoot him. You’d be doing me a favor.”

The group is frozen in indecision. Godambo advances.

“If they try to move anywhere near the control panel,” he tells his Black Cheetahs, “shoot them. Even if you have to shoot Pranay first.” Pranay winces; his master laughs gutturally. “Drop that gun, Inspector Ashok,” he says. “Nice try, but it’s all over for you.”

Ashok tries to look defiant, but the truth of Godambo’s conclusion is evident. The gun wavers in his hand.

“Let me do it for you, mighty Godambo.” This is Abha! Ashok and Maya stare at her in shock. She pulls the gun out of Ashok’s surprised hand. “You didn’t really think I’d deserted you, did you, mighty Godambo?” she asks as she walks over to him, the gun in her hand.

Godambo laughs with pleasure. “Agent Abha …,” he begins, then stops as the barrel of the revolver presses into his ribs.

“You were saying …?” Abha asks.

(Maya smiles in relief, and the twenty-five-paisa seats erupt in cheers.)

“Don’t be silly, Abha,” Godambo growls. “Think of your parents. Your home.”

“I do,” she replies. “And I’m just trying to make sure you will no longer be in any position to harm them.”

Godambo’s eyes turn round with rage.

“Tell them to drop their guns.” She gestures at the Cheetahs and presses her revolver in more deeply.

“Do what she says,” grunts Godambo.

The black-clad commandos drop their submachine guns. Ashok picks them up, slings one over his shoulder, and holds the other one. “All right, Godambo,” he announces. “You’re coming with us.” He turns toward the switch on the control panel.

Suddenly, with a swing of his cape, Godambo knocks Abha’s hand aside. A swift blow to her wrist and the revolver falls to the ground. Godambo, clutching Abha like a shield, backs away toward the interior. “Now try and shoot me!” he laughs, as Abha flails helplessly in his grip. Ashok raises a gun, realizes it’s hopeless: he would hit Abha. Godambo breaks into a run. Ashok follows. “After him!” shouts Pranay, waving on the disarmed commandos in hot pursuit. Maya, alone and neglected, cowers near the doorway, her hands to her mouth. “ Bhaiya!” she screams in warning. Ashok looks briefly behind him and pauses to release a burst of semiautomatic fire at his pursuers. One of the commandos falls.

Ashok resumes his chase. Godambo is running into his cavernous throne room. This time the pillars are unprotected, but the fountains still play and the pool gleams dully in the neon light. Godambo drags Abha toward his throne. Ashok enters the room and runs across the marbled floor. Pranay and the surviving commando are hot on his heels.

Godambo reaches his throne and stretches a hand toward the armrest.

Abha screams, “Ashok! The floor!”

Godambo jabs a finger on the button. Ashok is still running when the floor opens up beneath him.

He jumps.

In a glorious, fluid leap, immortalized by the camera in poetic slow motion — a leap that would comfortably have won India its first Olympic gold medal in athletics were it reproducible without special effects — Ashok flies over the yawning chasm under his feet, as his weapons fall discarded into the abyss. Ashok’s pursuers are not so fortunate. Pranay and the Black Cheetah, with despairing yells, make their fatal splash. The shark fin dives, and as finale the subsidiary villain is accorded only a few glugs of farewell.

Ashok lands on his feet on the other side of the pool. Godambo presses another button, and a loud siren wails through the complex. Red lights flash and blink along the walls. Doors open, corridors fill with the scudding feet of Black Cheetahs.

“You’re finished now, Inspector Ashok,” Godambo declares emphatically.

As soon as she hears the siren, Maya presses the switch on the control panel. The red indicator on the panel turns to green, and the door slides open. There is the clatter of booted feet from the outside.

“Shabash” says a deep voice. Yes, it is the stern and slim Iftikhar, complete with pencil-line mustache! As a truckload of khaki-uniformed policemen trot into the cavern, assault rifles at the ready, he has a brief word of explanation for Maya. “Your Amma called me,” he says. “We followed Ashok’s motorcycle tracks here, but were unable to get in.”

The policemen take positions and a shoot-out follows, five minutes of meticulously choreographed anarchy. Black Cheetahs emerge on high walkways, spray bullets from their submachine guns, and plunge gorily to their deaths. The celluloid policemen, using weaponry unknown in the armories of their real-life counterparts, shoot indiscriminately, shattering flashing red lights and blasting rock off the rough-hewn walls, but miraculously bring their enemies tumbling down. Grenades are thrown, and little bursts of flame add color to the occasion. The bloodthirsty rural cinemagoers get their twenty-five paise’s worth.

Meanwhile, inside the throne room Godambo curses as his henchmen are clearly getting the worst of the raging battle. Ashok stands poised to attack, but he is weaponless now and Godambo holds Abha tightly.

“This is all your doing, Inspector Ashok,” he snarls.

“I thought you said you could crush me with one hand tied behind your back, Godambo,” Ashok retorts. “But I see you still prefer to shelter behind a woman.”

Godambo’s pride is stung. Uttering an oath, he viciously flings Abha aside. She falls to the floor with a stifled cry. “Abha!” Ashok shouts.

“Don’t worry about me,” the heroine breathes. “Get him.”

Ashok has no time to express concern as Godambo, eyes horribly wide and teeth horrifyingly bared, leaps on him with both hands. They fall to the floor. Godambo’s powerful fingers are at Ashok’s throat. Ashok brings his knee up and into Godambo’s midriff: that relieves the pressure. Both men rise. Fists encounter flesh: dishoom! dishoom! Bodies crash into furniture. A right uppercut from Ashok sends Godambo smashing into the console. A left hook from Godambo puts Ashok head first through the screen. Miraculously unharmed by these calisthenics, the two men expand the locale for their fisticuffs. Godambo leaps over the throne, cape flying. Ashok follows. Godambo reaches a door, kicks Ashok, and opens it. Ashok recovers, follows. The two men are now on an outdoor ledge, overlooking the sea. (Why? Because it would make for a more spectacular climax, that’s why. More demanding viewers may assume Godambo was hoping to escape that way.) More dishoom! dishoom! follows. Both men fall, pick themselves up, hit again.

A growl is heard. A grrrowl, in fact. Abha screams: “Ashok! The cheetah!” Ashok, his hands at Godambo’s throat, looks back in horror. It is Godambo’s pet, now grown almost to full size. The villain’s wide eyes gleam. “Cheetah, come!” he commands. The animal takes in what is happening and growls menacingly. Then, with a single powerful bound, it leaps toward its master and his attacker.

Ashok steps aside.

“No-o-o-o!” cries Godambo, but it is too late. The animal lands squarely on his chest. Godambo reaches out to try to save himself, then with a last gravelly cry of despair, topples in slow motion into the sea. His confused pet follows him.

The camera lingers lovingly on Godambo’s falling torso, the cape swirling around him like a defective parachute. At last he hits the water, with a satisfying splash. The camera stays long enough on the spot to convince the viewer that he does not come up again. Only then does Ashok turn to Abha, a new light in his eyes.

She runs into his arms. He clasps her in their seventh tight embrace.

They are outside now, where a few lugubrious Black Cheetahs are being energetically herded into police vans.

”Shabash, Ashok,” says Iftikhar. Ashok smiles, hugs Abha, and reaches out an arm to Maya. The sound track swells with the theme song, this time sung by the two women:

You are the long arm of the law,

You always show villains the door.

By day or by night

You handle any fight

And put all the bad men on the floor!

They look like one small happy family, smiling for the camera until the words THE END fill up the screen.

[Note: this is an abbreviated version of the story. For reasons of space and stamina, we have omitted one puja, two tearful scenes before Ashok’s father’s photograph, an entire comic subplot featuring a domestic servant in a Gandhi cap and a fat woman in a nightdress, and four songs.]

Monologue: Night

PRANAY

Your first hit. Godambo. Your first big hit, in only your second film. You always had it easy, Ashok. Just had to open your mouth sufficiently to move the silver spoon to one side, and producers scrambled to say yes. Actresses too.

Who’d have believed it? None of us took your chances very seriously, not even when Jagannath Choubey cast you in that first film, Musafir with Abha. OK, Abha’s was still a name to be reckoned with in the industry, but mainly for those with good memories. She wasn’t the hottest property around by any means, no longer ranking beside the likes of Sharmila Tagore and Raakhee as a crowd-puller, but you could have done worse. I mean, you could have ended up with a fresh graduate from the Film Institute, or one of those desperate starlets who’ve done the unimaginable to get a lead role but who’ll never convince anyone, least of all the audience, that she is heroine material. That would have condemned her and you to permanent eclipse. Which, frankly, was what everyone expected. Especially me.

But it worked, or worked well enough to keep you in business. There was that “I shall always chase you” song, which became a hit even before the movie was released, with every street corner mastaan and Eve-teaser in India singing it to accompany and justify their unwelcome pursuits. The film itself didn’t do as badly as the industry thought it would, so by default it was seen as something of a success. Some of us thought you were pretty wooden, frankly, and your dancing was embarrassing. But it was obvious that the experts had got it wrong. None more so than that harridan Radha Sabnis, the dreaded Cheetah of Showbiz:

Darlings, does the name Ashok Banjara ring a bell with you pussycats? [How would it? She’d called you Anil the last time.] That’s right, he’s the long-legged type with the political connections who came with the tablecloth at Bollywood parties. Can you believe it, darlings, this would-be abhineta with the looks of a second-rate garage mechanic actually made it into the passenger seat! Yes, he has a starring role in Jagannath Choubey’s latest masala movie, Musafir, opposite Daddy’s old favorite, Abha Patel. Rumor has it that the evergreen heroine has had more face-lifts than her hero’s had dance lessons. Not very promising, pussycats! Choubey seems to have a maha flop on his hands. And where will that leave his poor twinkling little stars? Banjara, of course, can always go back to light up the corners of the party circuit, but what will poor dear Abha do? Nothing military about the lady, but she should know that dimming stars are like old soldiers — they just fade away. Grrrowl!

Well, it didn’t work out quite like that, did it? Cheetah didn’t chatter too much about you after that. Musafir didn’t lose money; in fact, I believe it made some. And then Choubey went and cast you with Abha again in Godambo, and the rest, as they say, is history. His story. Your story.

Lucky bastard. Never again will you need to play the hero in a movie named after the villain.

What do you know, Ashok Banjara, of what it’s really like to try and make it as an actor in Hindi films? I’ll tell you, I should know. I grew up in the bloody industry. My father was an assistant to a big-name director, but he never graduated beyond being an assistant director. He had work, but never much money. In school I tried to drop names about the stars we knew, but that never impressed the kids for long when it became obvious that there wasn’t any money to go with the glamour. I was always the kid who didn’t throw a birthday party, because quite simply my parents couldn’t afford to pay for one. Ma made rice kheer for dessert, sometimes Papa bought a cheap toy in the bazaar or took me for a pony ride at the Bandstand, and that was the extent of the celebration. In my entire childhood I never had a birthday cake. But I was growing up in a world where every other kid I came in contact with got to choose the flavor of the cake and had his name written on it with icing. That became my great aspiration: to have a birthday cake one day, with my name on it. It took me a while to fulfill that ambition. The moment I could afford it, on my twenty-fourth birthday, I ordered the hugest, most expensive chocolate cake I could find and had “Happy Birthday Pranay” inscribed on it in letters an inch high. There were glazed-icing flowers and marzipan rosebuds and little silver balls you could bite into. I had everything put on it, everything. And then I took it home and ate it all by myself. I hated it. I was sick for days afterward. But I really felt I had achieved something, that I had arrived.

I grew up in a two-room flat in Matunga, you know, in the unfashionable suburbs. Slept on the floor. That wasn’t so bad; the real problem was the bathroom. We shared one filthy bathroom with eight other families on the same floor. Everyone wanted it first thing in the morning, so you had to keep getting up earlier and earlier in order to beat your neighbors to it; otherwise you were bound to be late for school or work. By the time I did my matric I was getting up at 4:30 just to be able to use the bathroom. I’ll never forget what it was like to grope my way in the dark, stand on that slimy floor, and feel some nameless creature slither across my feet just before I switched on the light. To do that every day, day after day, week after week, with no prospect of anything ever changing. What did you know of that, hanh, Ashok Banjara?

Sometimes, thanks to my father’s work, we would be invited to some star’s house for a special occasion — Diwali, or a wedding or something. That was the biggest event in our lives. I would spend every day looking forward to the visit. It didn’t matter if nobody even noticed my existence there, just stepping into a house like Raj Kapoor’s or Sunil Dutt’s made life worth living. At the first opportunity I would go into the bathroom — one of the bathrooms, because they all had so many in their homes — and just stand there, on the marble or mosaic-tile floor, just breathing in the reality of being in a bathroom like that. I would run my stubby hands along the chrome towel racks, caress the porcelain sinks, open the shower just to imagine what it might be like not to have to dip stagnant water out of a plastic bucket each time you had a bath. I would sit on the commode even when I didn’t need to go, unravel the toilet paper — who in Matunga had even heard of toilet paper? — and roll it back again.

And I would wash my ugly and callused hands. Incessantly, obsessively, wash them. I would make repeated visits to every bathroom in the rich guy’s house and wash my hands, running creamy soap over the rough skin, over fingernails I had nervously bitten down to the very edges. I can’t remember very much else of what I did at those places, but I would always come home with the cleanest hands in Bombay, the skin of my palms white-dry and wrinkled with all the water I’d poured on them, fragrant with the delicious, unattainable, unplaceable smell of imported soap.

I hate my hands, Ashok. I hate their shortness, their stubbiness, their roughness, their virtual lack of nails. That’s probably a genetic trait: I come from a long line of insecure, nail-biting failures. Your long fingers, your hard and gleaming nails — what a thing to envy you for, Ashok Banjara. But I do.

None of this means anything to you, does it, Ashok? Hell, why blame you. You’ve never stumbled into a big star’s closet and found the most incredible collection of ties in the world, a real parade of ties, red and black and blue ties, ties with stripes of every known width and color, plain ties and polka-dotted ties, ties with the badge or shield of an exclusive club on them, ties in silk and rayon and polyester and cotton, broad ties and narrow ties, ties with discreet little designs and ties with psychedelic patterns. The most pointless article of clothing in the world, devoid of purpose, an anachronism even in the climates where it’s wearable, a flagrant luxury in our country: what an advertisement for this star’s success, that he could afford to throw away so much money on so many useless foreign ties! You wouldn’t understand what I felt, Ashok Banjara. You’ve never reached up, awestruck, to touch these ties and brought the entire rack down on your head so that you sat swathed in a riot of colors, held down by a dharna of textures, trapped in a gherao of ties. You’ve never bent down to pick them up, one by incredible one, and rearranged them lovingly in that remote stranger’s closet, knowing the distance that stretches between that stranger’s world and your own, even as you touch and feel the dimensions of that distance. You’ve never vowed, Ashok Banjara, that one day you, too, will possess a collection of ties like that, more ties than you will ever find occasion to wear.

What do you know, Ashok Banjara, you for whom a tie was an object of routine daily wear, something you had to put on to go to the office, not a magical symbol of material success?

What do you know of living in some godforsaken matchbox in a decrepit old building and traveling two hours to make it in time for the nine o’clock shift? What do you know of sitting around the Prithvi Café, drinking oversweet cups of tea because you’ve got nothing else to do, and drinking them as slowly as possible because you can’t afford to keep ordering more, and you can’t afford to leave? What do you know of the cut-and-crimp tailors of Linking Road, Bandra, who are the world champions at prolonging the life of your old clothes, lengthening, tightening, reversing, adding, patching them into posterity, and who can imitate any star’s costume for you at a sixth the price? What gives you the right, Ashok Banjara, to be one of us?

You’ve never forgiven me, of course, for knowing Maya before you did. I can understand that. She wasn’t the kind of girl I could have expected to meet, let alone be close to. My woman, my only regular woman, really, during those first years in the industry, was Sunita. I know some people called her my wife, but of course we weren’t married. I mean, who would marry a vamp? Sure I lived with her for a while, but it was a practical arrangement, you know, and I also lived away from her just as much. I don’t want any more of that Pranay-dumped-his-wife stuff being flung at me. Sunita wasn’t my wife. And in the circumstances of her life and work, she couldn’t be anyone’s wife. Really.

I mean, look at her life. Sincerely, would you have married her? OK, not you, Ashok Banjara, Esq., but anyone? She comes out of some Gujarati hick town, Jamnagar or Junagadh or somewhere, the kind of town where the biggest thing around is the cinema theater, it’s the only place of escape. So what does she do when she’s had enough of this backwater? She gets into a train one day with her life’s savings tucked into her cleavage to make it in the only other world she can imagine, the fantasyland of Bollywood. Sunita knows that her only assets are those contained in her blouse, and I’m not referring to the grimy notes she has spent within a week of arriving in the city. So she does the round of the producers’ offices, and she wears out the hook of her one good bra in a succession of sleazy hotels. Soon she is doing the bump and grind vertically too, for a change, as one of the half dozen sidekicks of the principal vamp in some sizzling dance number. She does it well, she has practiced all the moves, and she is known to be willing to oblige the producer anytime he wants a special favor. Nothing unusual about that — hell, they are all equally willing, but they’re not all as worthy of crumpling the producers’ sheets as Sunita is. So she gets her breaks; she rises from the ranks of the secondary vamps till she is doing her own cabaret numbers. Solo, or in duets with a villain. Like me. Yes, that’s how I met her.

She had a heart of gold, Sunita. She took me in, showed me more kindness than I deserved, gave me free run of her flat and her body. She looked on sex as some sort of divine gift to women, a commodity that was easy to offer, cost nothing to give, and brought in great rewards. “It’s not much work and it seems to make them so happy,” she said innocently to me once. “Imagine if some producer wanted me to sweep his floors instead, or clean out his bathroom. Now that would be much more difficult. I’d hate to do that, even for a role. But to give him sex? It’s so easy, and sometimes it’s even fun.”

You think I’m making this up, don’t you? You’ve heard all the stories about how much these women suffer, how they endure the humiliation with teeth clenched and eyes closed, only the thought of their starving babies keeping them on the bed while the raunchy paunchy producer heaves and pants over them. Well, I’m not denying that that does happen, there are some women like that, but for the most part, my friend, they know precisely what they’re doing and why. Sunita did.

Thing is, once people expect it from you it’s kind of difficult to stop. Sunita had been giving herself so readily that the mere fact of my moving in couldn’t change the pattern. There was one producer who cast her in his films on one condition: that after the shooting was over, she would repeat the dance number for him in a private performance, this time without any clothes on. He’d set it all up, playback track, lights and all, and she’d repeat exactly the same moves, choreographed by Gopi Master or Sonia Bibi or whoever, minus her costume. Drove him wild, of course. When he called out “Action!” afterward, it was an announcement of his own intent.

What Sunita didn’t know was that the camera that stood there, supposedly as a prop — something he could look through and imagine himself directing — actually had film in it. Film which he then screened for his intimates. We found out when I walked in on one of the showings, at the producer’s place. Had some sort of errand to run, message to deliver or something, and they let me into his sanctum sanctorum, a bar with mirrored walls and a projection unit. So I walked in and found my wife, sorry I mean the woman I was living with, shaking her bare breasts at me from every reflectable angle and a bunch of old drunks slapping their thighs in delight. I went back and told her, and then I walked out of her life. Well, sort of. I walked out, but not for the last time. Sunita was a girl you kept going back to. Like she said, it didn’t cost you anything.

Anyway, that was the nature of my love life during my first few years in films. Whores at Kamathipura, slatterns from the studios, Sunita. Can’t say there’s much progression there. Till Maya came along.

You barely noticed Maya, of course. You were too full of yourself for that, Ashok. Full of what you thought of as the success of your first film, full of your new hero role in Godambo, full of the attentions of the college girls and new generation lady-journalists who had just begun to flock around you in those days. Girls who wore jeans and T-shirts, and cut their hair shoulder-length, and spoke English; girls you could take to the disco and give smarmy interviews to for the new glossy magazines that were outchattering Cheetah. Maya was small, and simple, even somewhat plain. Her hair was so long she could have sat on it. She wore it in plaits; and she favored salwar-kameez that clearly hadn’t been tailored in a metropolis. She was decidedly unglamorous. She spoke English, but it was a language she’d learned, and she didn’t sparkle with the slang and facile abbreviations of Bombay or Delhi. She was the sisterly type, wasn’t she, the good little girl next door. You took one look, and you ignored her.

I didn’t ignore her. I went up to her on the set. I talked to her. I asked her about her family. Her father was a minor government servant, a railway official I think, then posted in some mofussil town, Bhopal or Bhagalpur or Bhatinda, one of those Bhs. She had no one in Bombay. She didn’t seem the Sunita-style fortune-seeking type, so I wondered what had brought her to moviedom. Incredible: she was a serious stage actress, she had done a Tendulkar play or something in this Bh town, and this guy in the audience came backstage and told her she had to be in the movies. Of course she didn’t take him seriously — who does he think she is? Lana Turner? — but no, he was on the level, he came to see her parents, explained he was something of a talent scout, even named two or three actors he’d discovered this way. And he turned out to be Jagannath Choubey’s brother.

Didn’t think it happened like that, did you? Well, at least you didn’t imagine it then, right? Now, of course, you know the whole story. I suppose.

Actually it wasn’t that uncommon. Not everybody in movies was born into it, like me and all the Kapoors, or lucked into it, like you. Rajesh Khanna actually won a talent contest. First prize was a screen test. He passed with flying colors.

Maya was so seedhi-saadhi, so innocent of any guile. She was the kind of girl any lower-middle-class Indian boy like myself meets all the time, unless he happens to be lower-middle-class in the film world, in which case he only gets to meet starlets and sluts (if that isn’t tautological). The moment I met her I realized I’d been waiting and wanting to meet her. Call it love at first sight. No, Ashok, I guess you won’t want to call it that. Call it anything.

She was sweet. She was trusting. She didn’t respond to me the way other Bombay actresses would, evaluating my unimportance, categorizing me by my role, my accent, my paan-stained mouth. She saw someone older, wiser, someone who knew the ropes, who told her where things were, how things should be done, what — and more important, who — should be avoided. For the first time in my life, Ashok, I began to feel I was more than the secondary villain.

And increasingly I became aware that the girl depended on me.

OK, so she had no one else. Except for some distant relatives charged by her parents with keeping an eye on her and whose reaction to the film world was either to gawk or to disapprove. Not much good that could do her. I was far more useful.

Don’t look so triumphant! It was also more than that. Inevitably, our contact extended beyond the studio. We started going out together. I gave her lifts home, to the little flat in Bandra where she’d found paying-guest accommodation. The landlady had a strict no-male-visitors rule, not even for relatives, and you can imagine what she would have thought of me. So I dropped her off, and sometimes, when she had the energy and I had the time, I took her out. Once or twice to the Prithvi Cafe, in fact, just to show her what that was like. I wasn’t yet in the five-star-hotel league in those days, though I did give her lunch at the Sun ’n’ Sand once, where she stared at the pool-side bikinis in shocked disbelief. But most of the time it was walks at the beach, pau-bhaji from a roadside vendor, bhel-puri out of folded leaves while we strolled at the edge of the sand and let the seawater trickle through our toes. Neither of us was famous enough to be recognized, let alone mobbed: we were just another of the lower-middle-class couples thronging Chowpatty, getting sand into our sandals and stars into our eyes. I bought her a paan once, and because she was so hesitant, I put it into her mouth. She blushed and turned away in such confusion that she made me feel I’d propositioned her.

I hadn’t really thought of her that way, you know. There are some women you look at physically, judge them primarily by what you think they’d look like under all those yards of cloth that Indian tradition and Indian tailors conspire to ensure they’re swathed in. Then there are women you can’t possibly think of that way — older relatives, for instance, or some of the asexual buffalo with hairy moles on their chins you run into at Crawford Market, browbeating the butcher. But somewhere in between there are women whom you relate to quite differently, women who are pleasant and attractive, maybe even beautiful, but whose physicality is not the first thing that strikes you about them, perhaps not even the second thing. These are women with a certain other quality, a grace, a gentleness, an inner radiance that surrounds them when they smile, or speak, or move; women you can love, or worship, or hope to marry. I bet you think that’s naive provincial nonsense, don’t you, Ashok? You urban sophisticates know that ultimately all women are reducible to what you want out of them. And it’s always the same thing.

I didn’t buy Maya another paan, but I saw a lot more of her afterward, and I began to think of her — well, differently. A day without her seemed to go on forever; I needed her laughter to shorten the hours. I stopped living with Sunita. I shaved more often for Maya; the trademark stubble on my face became a calendar of her absences. I began reading then, reading seriously, acquiring the vocabulary I’m using today and the ideas I haven’t yet had a chance to use. I didn’t stop chewing paan, but I saw Maya didn’t like me spitting it out in public, so I found more discreet ways to get rid of the red stuff. She changed me, Ashok Banjara. Or perhaps it is truer to say I changed myself for her.

And how did she react to me? What did she feel about me? I bet you’d like to know. Did you ask her, Ashok, or did you dismiss the subject as being of no consequence? She must have told you something about me, surely? After all, I was the only man in her life between her father and you. She must have wanted to speak about me.

But I suppose you didn’t want to hear any of it. Pranay the interlude, an episode best forgotten. Pretend it never happened.

No, I’m sure there is something you wanted to know. I imagined you in those days seething with resentful curiosity about it. How far had we gone? You must have found it difficult to convince yourself that this small-time villain with the red-stained mouth contented himself with walks on the beach. Maya was no schoolgirl, after all, even though she was cast as one. She turned twenty during the shooting of Godambo, didn’t she? I heard the technicians refer to her once as the Virgin Maya, and I couldn’t even blow them up for their irreverence from fear of insulting her by implication. So the Virgin Maya she remained. But after her association with me, you must have wondered, was she still really a virgin? Or was she all maya, mere illusion?

What did she tell you? I can’t believe you didn’t ask. Or was she so offended by the question, you couldn’t insist on the reply? I can imagine her, all hurt pride and tears, as you cast implied aspersions on her moral standards. Well, you must have thought, I can always find out on the night. But then she was a bloody good actress, wasn’t she? And there can be so many reasons for an absence of blood.

So did you really ever feel sure, Ashok Banjara? Could you easily bear to look at me and wonder whether I’d felt your wife between the sheets before you even realized she existed? Oh, I bet that burned you up.

Or maybe not. After all, you were lucky in the things that really mattered. There had been no publicity: in those days neither Maya nor I was important enough for anyone to write about our relationship. There were no gossip-column stories about us, neither of us gave Showbiz interviews in which we could refer to the other as “just good friends,” even the industry didn’t pay us that much attention. After Godambo it might have been different. But by then it was all over between Maya and me.

You won’t believe this, but sex was not the important thing with Maya. No, I’m not going to put you out of your misery and admit to — boast about — having taken her to bed. That might matter to you, but I see no reason to oblige. We were close, very close, as close as I could ever have hoped to be to Maya. How close that was is not for me to tell you, Ashok Banjara. It’s between your wife and you: whatever she told you, whatever she wants you to believe, is fine with me. What mattered to me was something I couldn’t have.

I still remember the evening. It was just after we’d completed Godambo, doing the last bit of dubbing. I waited for her to finish her recording with you and Abha — she and I had so few scenes together, after all — and drove her home. Only I didn’t go home. I stopped the car at Worli, by the sea-face where that expensive hotel has gone up. It wasn’t there then. We stood by the seaside, letting the warm breeze from the Arabian Sea blow specks of spray through our hair. The evening stretched across the horizon like a woman waiting to be embraced. I turned to her, took her in my arms. At first, unresisting in surprise, she allowed herself to be enfolded in them, but she stiffened as I began to speak.

“Maya, I want us to be married. I can’t promise you a big house, or lots of money. But I love you, Maya. I’ll be good to you.”

She pulled herself away, not harshly, but firmly. “Pranay, what are you talking about? What is all this talk of marriage?”

“Why not? You know what you mean to me.”

She looked away then, to the streaks of orange and blue that were the sun’s farewell testaments for the day. When she spoke her voice was steady, but the steadiness came with effort. “You’ve been very good to me, Pranay. Very sweet, and very kind. I’ll never forget that.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I interjected bitterly. “I’m not standing here looking for gratitude.”

“But I am grateful.”

“Is that all? Are you saying that — everything we’ve had doesn’t mean anything more? Don’t you care for me at all?”

“I care for you.” Her voice was low.

“And I care for you! Marry me, Maya — I’ll make you happy.”

“I’m sorry, Pranay.” She looked at me for a moment, and I swear I saw a wetness in her eyes, but she turned away again and spoke without looking at me. “But I just don’t love you, that’s all.”

“Why not?” I wanted to rail. But I was shattered, and hurt, and suddenly very desperate. “It doesn’t matter,” I found myself pleading. “Love will come afterward. It always does. Look at all the arranged marriages that take place in our country. Do you think any of these people love each other? They haven’t even seen each other properly, for God’s sake! Love comes, in its own time. I’ll wait for you to learn to love me. Just like an arranged marriage.”

She looked at me directly, and her eyes were as dry as her tone. “No one,” she said, and not even her voice could sweeten her blunt-ness, “would arrange our marriage, Pranay.”

I gaped at her wide-eyed and understood there was nothing more to say.

I drove her home in silence. As she opened the car door, she turned to me in her seat. “Thank you, Pranay,” she said. And she leaned over and gave me the briefest, saddest kiss I have ever had. On my narrow, paan-stained mouth.

Then she was gone, and the door of my car clicked faintly closed. She had not pushed it hard enough. I sighed. I would have to open and shut it again, only this time much, much harder.

Godambo was a hit. You were a star after your second film. Maya was noticed — by other producers, by you. They wanted her innocence, as you did.

I didn’t do too badly myself out of that film. Offers came for better roles. As a villain, of course, but not just a secondary one. I got scripts in which I survived till the last reel and in the end fell at the hera’s hands, not in some bumbling accident like that stupid floor trap. I played all the parts a villain could hope for. The rapacious moneylender, the seth-sahukar, preying on the womenfolk of the poor hero’s indebted family. The tyrannical landlord, flogging his servants and lusting after his tenants’ wives as he canters through his extensive domains on horseback (all this when zamindari had long been abolished in the world outside the film studio, but the picture was always set in an undefined, vaguely contemporary period). The city gangster, in checked jackets and ill-fitting sharkskin suits, drinking incessantly, blowing smoke rings at a sequined vamp, and generally having a wonderful time until brought to book by an improbably honest cop for some carefully unspecified crime. I played them all, and as my screen credits grew with my bank balance, I put the money I couldn’t legally show the bank into a place of my very own in Juhu. And I watched you and Maya from afar.

Three films, that’s all you gave her. Three films, all opposite you, for the actress who was the brightest, freshest talent in the Hindi cinema of her day. Three films to prove her worth, to capture the heart of the Indian public and to break mine. Three films before you obliged her to “retire” so you could marry her.

And I wasn’t in any of them. Probably just as well, because I’m not sure I would have been able to bear losing her to you every day, on and off the set. To be obliged to succumb to you on screen, and to watch her succumb to you between takes.

I wonder when it all began. I suppose with Ganwaari, just after Godambo, when Maya made the transition from sisterly schoolgirl to girlish heroine and Abha from heroine to supporting actress. The famous film about the village girl (Maya was a natural for that part, wasn’t she?) who wins a competition to come to the city and spend a week watching her favorite movie star (you, who else?) at work. Surprise, surprise, the worldly-wise Hindi film hero is completely won over by the innocent village belle and spurns his cinematic leading lady (Abha, whose rage seemed genuine) to clinch the ganwaari girl at the fade-out. I hated the film, but it was an unexpected success at the box office; it made Maya, and it confirmed you in stardom. Even then, before it was known that your interest in Maya was extending offscreen as well, I saw the movie as symbolic, a portent. And everywhere I went, on street corners, at wedding receptions, in holiday processions, I kept hearing that wretched song from the film:

Is it true? Can it really be?

Is it a dream, or can this be really me?

Standing he-eere, in your embrace …

Is it true? Can it really be?

Could it be a mistake, can you really see?

That your lo-ove shines on my face …

I’m just a little girl from the heart of India,

I know nothing of worldly sin, dear,

I’m just a village girl with stars in her eyes,

And you’ve taken me by — surprise.

Is it true? Can it really be?

Is this life or a Bombay moo-ovie?

That puts my hand in yours …

Is it true? Can it really be?

Are you, my hero, really free?

To give me a joy that endures …

This doesn’t happen in my part of India,

My heart beats so much you can hear the din, dear,

I’m just a village girl who’s never told lies,

And you’ve just made me your — prize.

Is it true? Can it really be? …

It was true, of course. And the song was played everywhere, on transistors and record players, over Muzak systems and public-address loudspeakers, by radio disc jockeys responding to importunate requests from Jhumri Tilaiya, by two hundred-rupee per evening hired bands at every imaginable public festivity. And every time I heard it I kept seeing that scene from the film where she looked up at you holding her, and I saw an adoration in her eyes that no amount of nervous direction from Mohanlal could ever have placed there. And I knew you had won her.

The next couple of movies made a star out of her and a prophet out of me. Maya and her makeup men managed to combine her fresh-faced innocence with just enough expert artifice to make her a convincing heroine, without losing the quality that made audiences like her in the first place. She didn’t have the figure of Abha or Vyjay-antimala, she couldn’t dance like Hema Malini or Saira Banu, but she captivated every cinemagoer in the country. They loved her, Ashok. She was every man’s sister or daughter, every woman’s ideal. And she could act: she was a true professional.

And then during the shooting of that third film, Radha Sabnis broke the news in Showbiz:

Darlings, brace yourself for a shocker from Bollywood! Your Cheetah has learned that Ashok Banjara, the common man’s superstar, the actor whose success gave hope to every garage mechanic in the country, is about to wed! And who is the brave and noble woman prepared to make Saddy Longlegs the happiest ham in Vers ova? That’s the shock, little jungle creatures: it’s none other than the nation’s sweetheart, Maya Kumari! Is it true? Can it really be? I’m afraid it is, darlings. When the bombshell bursts, don’t say Cheetah didn’t warn you! Grrrowl …

I grrowled a few times myself, in between tears of impotent rage. I drank myself silly for a week. And then I went back to Sunita, not for the last time, and pushed her against the wall. I closed my eyes and imagined it was Maya. It didn’t work, and I wept my drunkenness and shame into the sink, not knowing who I hated more, myself or you.

What you did was a crime, Ashok Banjara. You deprived India of its most cherished celluloid daughter, you deprived the Hindi film industry of its finest actress, and you deprived me. You deprived me not of hope, because by then I had none for myself, but of that last vestige of pride left to a man who has not been rejected for someone else. Once she agreed to marry you, having refused to marry me, I could no longer take solace in telling myself she had given me up for her career. Instead, she gave up her career for you.

You made her do it, of course. All those interviews about “I wouldn’t want my wife to feel she needs to work” — disingenuous bastard. And then you got her to tell the press, “I’m giving up films of my own free will because I want to be the ideal wife and daughter-in-law.” Did anyone believe those words weren’t scripted for her, and rather badly at that? “Ideal wife and daughter-in-law”: does anyone ever talk like that, outside the movies? Come on, Ashok, you could have done better. Couldn’t you for once have had the courage of your characterless convictions and simply announced, “No wife of mine is going to be pawed and chased and hugged in public, not even by me. Maya is being instructed to retire from films to preserve my exaggerated sense of self-esteem.” But no, you weren’t capable of that kind of honesty, were you. I know what you’re going to say: how can I blame you — every single Indian actress has “retired” after marriage, from Babita to Mumtaz, from Jaya to Dimple, who only came back to films when her marriage was over. Why these intelligent and resourceful women should all behave as if the acting profession were incompatible with married respectability, I don’t know. But they’ve set the pattern, and that lets the slimy hypocrites like you off the hook.

Even if you’d stopped at that I’d have found it impossible to forgive you. But you then spent the next five years making it much worse.