Show Business

TAKE FOUR

Interior: Day

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Me, Ashok Banjara, product of the finest public school in independent India, winner of its English Elocution Prize, best-dressed undergraduate at St. Francis’ College, drinker of eighteen-year-old Macallan, standing up on a rickety platform in churidar and kurta, declaiming the virtues of the Prime Minister’s party in chaste Hindi to a rural throng that look like they couldn’t even afford the proverbial twenty-five paise for their cinema seats. But it is me, it’s my mouth that’s moving in political recitation, it’s my arms that are gesticulating under the shawl that’s draped toga-style over my khadi kurta, it’s my voice calling for social justice, rural development, and votes. Me, Ashok Banjara, political campaigner and aspiring member of Parliament. Now there’s an unlikely turnabout. I carefully enunciate the idiomatic muhavrein that a Bollywood lyricist has scripted for me, I fling my right hand skyward and pause for acclaim; and as the acclaim comes, I tell myself, you can’t be serious, old son — or can you?

It’s all happened so suddenly. OK, I can’t pretend the thought hadn’t entirely occurred to me. After all, it’s in my genes. I am my father’s son, even if I’ve tried to deny it all my life. And I’ve never really been able to shake off the underlying desire (again, repeatedly denied) to win his approval. I couldn’t at school, in my choice of job, in my plunge into films; I could, and did, when I picked a wife. Somewhere at the back of my mind lay the thought that I might one day do something that would make him truly proud of me. And politics was the only possibility: it was his world, he’d always wanted me to join him, I’d refused — and now I confronted the wonderful paradox that my nonpolitical fame had actually improved my prospects of being able to enter his world successfully.

But I never really tried to do anything about it. Even when Cyrus, as nonpolitical an adman as ever violated Bombay’s prohibition laws, mentioned it once. “Have you ever thought, man,” he fantasized over his third whiskey one hot, “dry day” evening, “of entering politics?” I looked at him as if he had suggested I put on a loincloth and a tin helmet and do a mythological film. “Really, Cyrus,” my look said.

He reacted instantly to my disdain. “Hey, it’s not such a bad scene, man,” he protested. “Opportunity-wise. I mean, look at these Southie guys, MGR, NTR, you know. Big-time Tamil, Telugu movie stars, and when they entered politics they were, like, unstoppable everywhere their movies played. Now you, man, your movies play everywhere. You’re not a regional actor, like. Only real handicap’s your initials. Kinda inconsiderate of your parents to be so kanjoos at the naming ceremony when they coulda, like, spread themselves around. AB lacks something, ya know? Kinda like a kid trying to remember the alphabet. Call yourself ABR and you could be bloody Prime Minister one day, big guy.”

“AB-yaar, you mean,” I joked. “Me and MGR? Come on, Sponerwalla, I’d look awful in dark glasses and a Gandhi cap.”

Cyrus was easily distracted. “Wonder why they call it, like, a Gandhi cap,” he mused bibulously, turning the melting ice speculatively around in his forbidden liquid, “when the old Mahatma didn’t wear one himself. Or very much else,” he observed irrelevantly, “clothes-wise.”

So we moved on, topic-wise; and Sponerwalla never raised the idea again. But the thought lingered at the back of my mind, in the recesses we subconsciously reserve for the vaguest of our aspirations. I never did find a moment to pull it out of that obscure mental corner, dust it off, and hold it up to close examination. There was too much else to do: Subramanyam kept giving dates, Mehnaz kept clamoring for them, there were too many shootings and parties and interviews and trysts to think about anything else, let alone politics. Which, in any case, was my father’s world and my brother’s, emphatically not mine.

Oh, once in a while the thought slipped in by itself, like a shaft of light through half open blinds, when I was feeling particularly jaded by my fourth interchangeable role of the week or worn out by the insatiability of Mehnaz’s appetite for me. Then I would briefly indulge it, playing with the idea the way I played with one of the triplets’ plastic ducks found unexpectedly in the bath, squeezing the toy idly with soapy fingers till it slipped out of my grasp. Wouldn’t it be great, I would think on these occasions, to abandon everything, the dance sequences and the love scenes, the Masters and the mistress, and surprise Dad with my engagement in his cause? But then I would think of how exactly I’d have to go about getting involved in politics, what it would imply my actually doing, and my half-risen enthusiasm would fade rapidly. I didn’t fancy myself squatting with the slum-dwellers in a dharna against their proposed eviction or leading clamorous demonstrations against petrol prices, like the few politically active Bollywood stars I knew. That wasn’t my scene, man, as even Cyrus would admit. And so the idea would float away as casually as it came, quickly supplanted by the more important bath toys of the real world.

And then suddenly, without my doing anything to plan, it took over my life. I realize now that Cyrus and I weren’t the only people to have had this particular thought, but I’m still a little bewildered by the speed with which it all worked itself out. I was at some function to be felicitated on my thirty-fourth (or possibly forty-third, I’ve lost count) straight silver jubilee film when some joker with a paper flower in his lapel suggests before a microphone that I am the most popular man in India. No political leader, he says, not even the fellow with his name in The Guinness Book of World Records for the globe’s largest electoral plurality, can come close to my popularity anywhere in the country. Someone in the crowd shouts out “Ashokji for Parliament!” and pandemonium breaks loose; soon the assembly have taken up the cry in a chant and will not subside till I stand up with folded hands and promise to consider their demand. This is just to buy some peace, not because I have the slightest interest in following my dear dad’s ponderous footsteps, but startlingly the news is all over the papers the next day: “Banjara thinking of joining politics.” Within a day a bigwig from my father’s party is on the phone: could I come to Delhi, the Prime Minister wants to meet me.

Well, of course I go, and after the inevitably delayed flight I am met at the tarmac and whisked off directly to the prime ministerial presence. Dad is nowhere in sight. Just as well, as it happens, because it turns out they’re offering me his seat.

It’s going to be a tight election, the PM says. The Opposition thinks, rightly, that Dad’s seat is vulnerable, and they are planning to field one of their stalwarts, a recent defector from the ruling party — Pandit Sugriva Sharma, Mr. Turncoat himself, who has changed parties more often than Mehnaz has changed costumes and probably for more money as well. The learned Pandit is a man of much erudition and little scruple who has therefore acquired a reputation for great political principle: each time he quits a party he makes it sound like an act of self-sacrifice in pursuance of a noble cause. In the process he has assembled a handy coalition of interest groups whom he has persuaded at some point or another that he is their ablest defender: slum-dwellers, untouchables, Muslims, and the left. In the present climate, poor old Dad doesn’t stand a chance against him. The party is deeply anxious; defeat would not only mean the loss of a seat that the party has held since Independence, but would also show that the Pandit is more popular than the party he left. That could be fatal for the party — losing this one seat to Pandit Sugriva Sharma might give the Opposition a boost that could well threaten the government nationally. In short, the PM wants him beaten. But how?

Enter, on a white charger, Ashok Banjara: popular, especially among the underprivileged, whose fantasies he embodies; potentially as effective a campaigner as the experienced Pandit, and demonstrably a better speaker; and, as a bonus, heir to the family’s long connection to the constituency. I couldn’t have been more ideal as the choice for assuming my father’s drooping mantle. The PM’s measured eloquence wins the day. I agree before I have entirely realized what I am agreeing to.

On the drive to my father’s, though, just one thought suffuses my mind: at last I am doing what he had wanted me to. For years he has been berating me for having chosen films rather than politics. Now finally I can give him something to be proud of: not just a son who walks in his father’s footsteps, but one who is actually invited to do so by the leading politicians of the country. I can already imagine our reconciliation: I shall bend to touch his feet and ritually seek his blessing, and he will embrace me, tears — who knows? — pouring down his usually stony cheeks.

My brother, Ashwin, opens the door for me. Something is not right: he looks positively funereal. I burst past Ashwin to my father’s study, and find him sitting in his armchair, looking as still as death. Oh, no! I begin to wail inside myself, but he looks up at the interruption and my heart calms down. Thank God you’re alive, Dad, my mind says, thank God you’re alive today.

“Dad, you’ll never believe what’s just happened!” I exclaim.

“I have no choice but to believe it,” my father says heavily, and my excitement freezes like a horse shot in midgallop.

“He knows,” my brother says quietly, blinking behind his glasses. “The Prime Minister’s office just called.”

Now I understand the gloom. “You mean you’ve only just been told they weren’t going to give you the ticket? I’m so sorry, Dad. I naturally assumed you were behind — all this. I had no idea.”

I sit down gently in the chair next to my father’s. Dust rises from it: he has been alone in that room too often. “I’m really sorry about the way they’ve handled this, Dad,” I say. “But the PM seemed in no doubt that you would have lost to Sugriva Sharma. At least they’re not giving your seat to someone else. It’s in the family — and it’s me, your son and heir, doing what you’d always wanted me to do. Aren’t you happy about that?”

“Why are you doing it?” my father asks abruptly.

“Because they asked me to. The Prime Minister asked me to.”

“And why do you think the PM asked you?”

This is hardly the way I had expected the conversation to go, but I humor him. “Because I can win.”

“Correct.” My father’s face shows no signs of pleasure at my answer. “And why do you want to win?”

I stare at him nonplussed, unable to comprehend the question.

“I can understand the party’s motives,” says my father. “I can’t understand yours.”

“But Dad, you’ve been telling me for years I was wasting my time in films! Here’s a chance now to put my years in films to good use, in an area you wanted me to!” My voice is rising.

“I can see that, Ashok, I’m not a fool. But why do you want to do it? The party wants to retain the seat. Why do you want to win it?”

I am again wordless with incomprehension. My father tries a different tack.

“What will you do with your victory? What will you do once you’ve won?”

I get what he’s driving at. After all, I’ve seen Robert Redford in The Candidate. “I’ll do,” I say firmly, “what the party and the government want me to do.”

“What do you believe in?” My father is relentless today.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve just been adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate of the country’s ruling party,” my father snaps. “What are your beliefs? What do you believe in?”

I try a conciliatory tone. “Come on, give me a break, Dad,” I say. “I believe in what you believe in.”

“And what’s that?”

“Oh, you know, democracy, nonalignment, socialism.”

“I don’t believe in socialism. I’ve tried to tell you that for fifteen years. If I did, or was prepared to pretend I did, I’d still have the party ticket today.”

“Well, whether you believe in it or not,” I snap back, “the party does. It’s part of the officially adopted platform you would have been sworn to uphold if you had been a candidate.”

“So you believe what the party tells you to believe.”

“How does it matter?” I am really exasperated now, and I’m shouting. “When has any of this ever mattered to anybody? Does anyone vote because of what a politician believes? Does he then conduct himself in office according to what he believes? The name of the game, Dad, is winning elections. That’s what the party has taken me on board to do, and I thought you’d at least be happy about it, for Chrissake.”

“Why should I be happy? For nearly twenty years now I have been urging you to join me, to take an interest in my work, to involve yourself in the constituency. You have done none of these things, you have not heeded a single request. Now, when you do, it is at the behest of my enemies in the party — and it is at my expense.”

“Dad, they would have taken the ticket away from you anyway. I heard the way they talked about your chances.”

“You don’t understand a thing, do you?” My father’s voice is already hoarse, his face tired and weak. I realize with a shock that he has become what I had never thought of him as becoming — an old man. “It was I who told the PM I would not be a candidate at these elections against Pandit Sugriva Sharma. I know precisely the reasons why I am vulnerable, foremost among them my age and the sense that I have exhausted my capacity to do anything for the constituency. Especially since it is clear they will never make me a full minister. But I also told the PM who should get the ticket in my place. And till a few minutes ago, I thought the party had concurred with my judgment.”

“Who?” I stand up from the chair and demand belligerently. “Who would you rather have had the ticket than me, your own son?”

“My own son,” he says, and I realize he is not echoing my question but answering it. “Your brother. He has worked long and hard to deserve this opportunity. He has involved himself in the problems of my constituents. He knows the names of hundreds of them, their difficulties, their hopes. He has walked the roads and tramped through the fields; he knows each village by sight. The people recognize him, trust him, and love him — and he does not suffer from my handicaps of age, unrealized ambitions, and unfashionable beliefs. Pandit Sugriva Sharma would not have beaten him.”

I turn around to look at my brother, who stands near the doorway, looking deprived. Christ, I’d had no idea what was going on. “All the more reason,” I say quickly, “why I need you to be my campaign manager, Ashwin. I can’t win without you.” I walk up to him and look him in the eye. “Ashwin — will you help me?”

His eyes drop behind his spectacles. “Of course, Ashok-bhai,” he mumbles.

I turn to my father, who is sitting hollowly in his chair, embittered in defeat. I realize he is waiting for me to ask him the same question. He will then, graciously but grudgingly, extend to me his blessings.

I look at him, slouched sullenly in his chair, his face set in that look of disapprobation I have seen on his face all my life, and decide I am not going to give him the satisfaction.

“You’ll never be able to stop disapproving of me, will you, Dad?” I ask.

Then I walk out of the study, and out — as far as I can help it — of his life.

I am tired. The speeches are all right; that’s like acting a particularly undemanding part. It’s the trudging through the countryside that kills me. In the chappals that are part of my nationalist attire, my feet take a pounding from the hard, unrelenting soil, from the slushy muck of the fields, from the grimy dust in the streets. Once in a while some villager runs up with a lota and washes my feet in ritual welcome. But before the water dries, I am off again, and wet feet seem to suffer much more the depredations of rural pedestrian travel. I am getting increasingly anxious to shake the dust of the Hindi heartland off my toes.

As I walk through villages, trailing behind me the curious crowd of idlers, party workers, and fans (many, alas, too young to vote), as I smile and engage in the rituals of campaigning — talking, questioning, ducking into thatched huts to solicit the peasantry, sitting on charpoys with hookah-puffing farmers to seek their wisdom, standing on the back of the flatbed Tempo to harangue the bazaar through a megaphone — I cannot escape the unworthy suspicion that Ashwin is deliberately putting me through this punishing schedule to get back at me. But when I ask if all this is really necessary, he has a reasonable answer: with an opponent like the Pandit, I can’t leave anything to chance. I need to make myself known to the voters as someone who is not just jetting in from Bombay and expecting to win on my stardom alone.

Maya has come down to help and she is a great hit, wearing simple cotton saris and greeting the women with great respect, not just with folded hands but, in the case of the maternal figures, with an attempt to touch their feet (she rarely has to go through with the whole gesture because the toothless old ladies lift her up in, well, touched gratitude). I watch her in action, ever the dutiful housewife, and realize once more what an asset she is as a wife. To think, for instance, of Mehnaz in this role, with her exquisitely painted face and nails, her silks and her urban chatter, is inconceivable: she would lose me ten votes for every one her glamour obtained. Whereas Maya is, as always in public, perfect in the role.

The fact that she abandoned her brief filmi comeback after the disastrous Dil Ek Qila has only helped. Rural voters don’t think too highly of young actresses, though they like to watch them: in their lexicon the term actress equals something between “brazen hussy” and “fallen woman.” They see Maya, though, as a wife and mother; she doesn’t look or behave like an actress and the few who know she was one also know she gave it up to be the wife and mother she now so plainly is. So she is welcomed into their homes, where she asks knowledgeably about babies’ colic and the availability of sugar. Between her and me, we’ve sewn up the female vote in the constituency, and, as everywhere in India, men are merely a minority. When Maya goes back to Bombay to rejoin the kids, promising to return in a week’s time for the concluding stages of the campaign, I am feeling extremely confident.

Ashwin is not.

Much against my better judgment I have agreed, at his request, to attend a strategy session with the main campaign workers one night. It has been a particularly exhausting day, and I am not fully attentive as he introduces a number of disquieting trends and a larger number of unquiet party men in terms that fail to register clearly in my bleary consciousness. To my uninitiated mind, earnest Rams merge with voluble Shyams, caste calculations fuse confusingly with the arithmetic of the campaign accounts. As the conversation wears on, though, my confidence fades. The details may still be fuzzy in my mind, but the overall picture is depressingly clear.

The consensus of the professionals seems to be that the Pandit has too many groups committed to him: the Brahmins because he is a Brahmin, the minorities because he is known as a champion of the minorities, the poor because he can always blame the party in power for their poverty. The latest blow is that, after a national deal between their parties, the official Communist party candidate has just withdrawn in his favor. The traditional mistrust of the outsider is also being assiduously cultivated by Sugriva Sharma’s campaigners. Although we are both first-time contenders in this constituency, the Pandit is a former Chief Minister in this same state, and he can trace his roots — as he never fails to remind his audiences in the broad local dialect — to the hills a hundred kilometers away. Whereas I don’t look or sound like a local, and I haven’t a fraction of his political experience to offer. The Pandit, I learn, has taken to referring to me patronizingly as “the boy,” a term that is gaining circulation; his sidekicks more disparagingly call me naachnewala, the fellow who dances. The Rams and Shyams shift uneasily in their steel folding chairs, shaking their heads grimly and drowning their despair in endless cups of oversugared tea.

I cannot believe this. “What about my crowds?” I ask. “What about the way people follow me about? What about Maya?”

“We can’t afford to read too much into all that,” Ashwin says. “It might just be the Madurai effect.”

“The what?”

“The Madurai effect. Sorry, political shorthand.” Is it my imagination, or does Ashwin seem to revel in reminding me of my ignorance at every opportunity? “In the 1967 elections, the biggest crowd in the history of Indian elections turned up at Madurai to listen to Mrs. Gandhi, the new Prime Minister, campaign for the local Congress candidate. They stayed four hours in the heat and applauded her to a man. When the voting actually took place, the Congress candidate lost his deposit.”

“In other words,” I interpret the lesson, “they came out of curiosity, not out of support?”

“Exactly,” Ashwin nods. “In our country, elections are a popular tamasha every five years, a spectacle, an entertainment for the bored masses. People will gather to watch an unusual candidate in much the same spirit as they might stand around to watch a monkey-man performing tricks.” I look at him sharply, but the simile seems to have been chosen at random. I don’t know how faithfully Ashwin has watched my films. In fact, I realize with a twinge of guilt, I don’t know very much about Ashwin at all. I spent very little time with him after going to college and entering my own world. I have no real image of my brother since the days we played cricket outside the house as schoolboys. I recall with a fond smile that I used to bully him into long spells of bowling.

“So what do you think we should do?”

“Keep at it,” Ashwin replies shortly. “That’s all we can do. There are no public opinion polls, no way we can really be certain if Sugriva Sharma has the votes he thinks he does. It’s always possible that the endorsements of the leaders of each of these communities and factions may not, in this case, translate into votes at the booths. That’s one hope: your appeal as a film star may reach deeper into people’s personal voting intentions than their leaders’ instructions. And then there’s the idea of Ganeshji’s here. I think we should pursue that.”

“What idea was that?” As usual, I seem to have missed something. I look at Ganeshji, the idea man Ashwin indicates, a dark and pudgy campaign worker with more oil in his hair than you need to run a Jeep. He has been chain-smoking beedis throughout the conference; any suggestions he may have made were occluded by struggling to emerge from behind a smelly miasma of fumes, which were occasionally cleared by a gust of air from his rasping cough. Really, it’s not always my fault I don’t catch what’s going on.

Ashwin is patient with me. “As Ganeshji points out,” he says, with a perfunctory nod to the innovative smoker, who beams in creative pride, “the Pandit is taking his own community for granted — the Brahmins and the rather sizable ‘Hindu vote’ that, in this constituency, comes with them. That may yet prove a tactical mistake, because there are quite a few Brahmins who probably consider Sugriva Sharma something of a traitor to their caste. We must step up our appeals to that community and to the Hindu-inclined element generally. There’s one particular suggestion Ganeshji has that we can act on tomorrow.”

The thought of tomorrow is already exhausting me. “What’s that?”

“There’s a local sage here, a sort of guru who runs an ashram on the banks of the river. He has only been in the district for eight or nine years, but he’s already something of a legend. People are beginning to come from all over the country and even from abroad to listen to him. The villagers hold him in awe, the Brahmins particularly, since he is said to know more about the scriptures than the priests at the temple. You should pay him a visit.”

I groan. “Now I’ve got to get the blessings of a godman?”

“We don’t know whether he’ll bless you,” Ashwin says, “but even if he just sees you, it could have a positive effect. Every little bit counts, Ashok.”

Of course I agree; not that I have a choice. Plans are duly made for a pilgrimage to the ashram in the morning. Apparently the Guru’s fame has spread so far and wide that he is attracting a growing number of foreigners, some of whom are acquiring prominence in his entourage. This has inevitably fueled the usual resentments, and the Guru has had to keep his local and expatriate followers apart as much as possible. For both linguistic and factional reasons, therefore, he has taken to holding two public sessions a day, one in English and one in Hindi.

“I suppose you’d like me to go to the Hindi one,” I say brightly. “To be seen to be there by the local yokels.”

“Wrong,” says Ashwin. “I think you ought to go to the English one. If things go wrong there, the damage can more easily be contained than if you suffer some sort of public indignity in front of your own electorate.”

There is some discussion, but the party hacks all come down on Ashwin’s side. It has been a long time since I’ve found myself in a collective enterprise where I can’t always get my own way.

The visit to the Guru settled, my sturdy supporters file out, leaving behind their beedi stubs and tea glasses and scraps of paper, the residue of political cogitation in India. Ashwin’s eyes are closing behind his glasses. I feel the time has come to tell him how much I appreciate what he is doing.

“Ash,” I say, recalling a nickname I haven’t used since our school days, “I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you are doing.” And since that doesn’t sound fraternal enough, I gratuitously add, “So all those days I spent playing cricket with you in the backyard are finally paying off for me, hanh?”

He stares at me for a long time, as if debating in his mind whether to say something or not. His better instincts lose the debate. “Ashok,” he says at last, looking me directly in the eye, “you know what my most abiding recollection is of playing cricket with you, my elder brother, role model, and hero? It was you, five years older than me, deciding to bat first, making me bowl for what seemed like hours in the hot sun, and then, just before it became my turn to bat, hitting the ball into the neighbor’s estate so you wouldn’t have to bowl to me. It happened,” he adds levelly as he sees me about to react, “more than once.”

What can you say to a thing like that? I had no idea that my brother had stored up these petty resentments. But my tongue has done enough damage already. I choose to be sensible; for once I say nothing.

The Guru sits cross-legged on a raised dais, his posterior resting on a mattress covered with a dingy white sheet, his back leaning against a pair of lumpy bolsters. He is dressed in a white robe of uncertain provenance, part Arab djellaba and part costumier’s fantasy fromHadrian VII. His balding head is decorated by a cap of even obscurer antecedents, a velvet circle that might have been an Orthodox Jew’s shower cap. The lack of hair on his scalp is more than amply compensated for by the rest of his face, which drips with a lush gray beard that flows in immaculately groomed profusion down his chest. Rings gleam on his fingers, enlightenment in his dark eyes. These are at last open: they have been closed for the last half hour as the Guru meditated, arms stretched out and thumbs tucked into fingers, while Ashwin and I and a host of saffron-clad devotees (themselves, like their master’s attire, of varying and unplaceable origins) sat on the floor and waited reverentially.

The Guru surveys the assemblage, gently lifts a berobed haunch, and breaks wind. An echo seems to follow, but it is only the devotees letting out a collective sigh.

“So, who have we here today?” he asks, casting his gleam in our direction.

“Sir, zese peepul ’ave come to pay zeir rhespects,” says a Frenchwoman in saffron who seems to be the Guru’s principal assistant. “Chri Ashok Banzhara, ’oo his a film hactor from Bombay, and ’is brozer. Chri Banzhara,” she adds disapprovingly, “his also a political candidate in ze helections ’ere.” Some curious heads turn in my direction.

The sage’s beady eyes light up, their black pupils luminescent with interest. “Ah, friends from the cinema world,” he announces. “A most interesting domain, and how like our religion, is it not?” He seems to expect no answer, and I wonder if it is now my turn to make social chitchat. As I prepare to rise to my feet to greet him, I feel Ashwin’s restraining hand. “Wait till after the discourse,” he whispers. That’s right, of course: the Guru has to address the assembled faithful, as he does at this hour every morning, and then we might find it possible to present ourselves. It is said that the Guru chooses the subjects for his sermons upon opening his eyes after meditation. That certainly seems to be the case today.

“Indian cinema has many remarkable affinities to Indian religion,” he intones to my astonishment, gazing into the distance as if at some great TelePrompTer in the sky. “Hinduism, as I have explained before, is agglomerative and eclectic: it embraces and absorbs the beliefs and practices of other faiths and rival movements. It coopts native dissenters — Buddha, Mahavira — and plagiarizes foreign heresies, finding the Protestant work ethic, for instance, in the karma-yoga of the Bhagavad Gita. The Hindi film is much the same: it borrows its formulas from Hollywood, its music from Liverpool, and its plot lines from every bad film that Hong Kong has ever produced. The moment an Indian director, a Mrinal Sen or a Benegal, makes a well-regarded serious film, he is promptly seduced into the industry before he can constitute a threat to it from outside — rather as Buddhism and Jainism were reabsorbed into Hinduism in our country. But the underlying philosophical premise is even more absolute. For just as the Hindu notion of time runs cyclically, repeating itself endlessly, so also Hindi cinema consists of endlessly repeated variations on a few basic themes. The Indian film is the idealized representation of the Indian attitude to the world.”

“Outrageous nonsense,” I whisper to Ashwin. He shushes me with a warning finger to his pursed lips. The Frenchwoman looks disapprovingly back toward us. I notice that she is uncommonly pretty and that under her thin cotton robe she is braless.

“I have described to you in an earlier discourse the challenge that Hindu philosophy offers to the notion of a duality between God and man, between the Creator and His creations. In the Upanishads, the ultimate goal of the believer is the realization of his Oneness with the Absolute. All of us, all of you, are one with God; God is within you, and you are within Him, or It.

“Aha, you might say, then how is God portrayed in so many different forms, as blue-skinned Krishna, as bow-carrying Rama, as elephant-tusked Ganapati, even as female, in the forms of so many divine goddesses? There is a simple answer. The Supreme Being, the essential First Cause of our creation, is visualized in a variety of forms because of our weakness — our inability to worship the divine without personifying it. It is our avidya, our ignorance, that prevents us from grasping the essence of divinity, hence the need to depict the First Principle in forms more comprehensible to humans. This became particularly important in spreading religious belief to the masses, the ordinary people who wanted to worship specific divine qualities such as the ability to make rain, the power to destroy evil, the conferring of good fortune. Instead of bestowing all these functions on one Supreme Being, Hinduism ascribes different names to different manifestations of God, each with his or her own characteristics, duties, and, shall we say, heavenly talents, all just to make divinity more accessible. Thus we have Sarasvati the goddess of learning, Kali the goddess of destruction, Rama the warrior-king of righteousness and justice, and so on.

“Now is this not also what the Hindi film does? In all Hindi films there is only one theme: the triumph of good over evil. The actual nature of the evil, the precise characteristics of the agent of good, may vary from film to film. The circumstances may also change, as do the stories in our Puranas. The songs vary, as do our religious bhajans. But there is no duality between the actor and the heroes he portrays. He is all of them, and all of them are manifestations of the Essential Hero. Therein lies the subconscious appeal of the Hindi film to the Indian imagination and the appeal, along with it, of the Hindi film hero.”

I can scarcely believe how raptly the devotees are taking in this twaddle. Some of them have their eyes closed, in order, I assume, to better experience the ecstasy of the Guru’s words. Other eyes are wide open, as if to admit as much as possible of the sage’s radiance. “This can help us,” Ashwin whispers into my ear, and when the Frenchwoman looks back, I sense a softer expression on her face, and I hope it is because she is beginning to identify me with her Guru’s Essential Hero.

“And what about the heroine, do I hear you ask?” There is unctuous laughter, I am not sure why. “I shall tell you. Do you know why Brahma, the divine Creator in the Hindu trinity, is always depicted with four heads? There is a story that goes back to the time when he created woman — yes, the female human. He carved her out of his own body, not from a spare rib; you see, we are a vegetarian people.” (More appreciative laughter. The devotees obviously found this rib-tickling.) “Now in those days Brahma had only one head, that’s all he had need of at the time. But he admired his own creation, this First Woman, so much, and looked at her so ardently, that she felt obliged to hide in embarrassment from his desire. This she tried to do by running away from his line of vision, but if Brahma could create a woman, he could certainly create an extra pair of eyes. So in order to be able to see her wherever she hid, he grew a head on each side, another one behind, and even one on top, to complement his original single head. Is this not like the ubiquitous camera of the Hindi film?

“But to return to Brahma. Inevitably the woman could not escape him, and she succumbed to his desire. Out of this consummation came the birth of our original ancestors, the founders of the human race. Wait a minute, I hear the accountants among you saying, That story gives Brahma five heads — why is he portrayed only with four? Well, there is a postscript to the story. The other members of the divine trinity did not entirely approve of Brahma being able to look up into the heavens as well as keeping an eye on earth. So Siva, a god of action if ever there was one, took his sword and cut off the top head, leaving Brahma with four. Like the Hindi filmmaker, Brahma can look around and beneath him, but not rest his gaze on higher things.”

The devotees nod, while I wonder what on earth any of this has to do with his main point. Or indeed whether he has a main point at all.

“But I digress. We have talked about the creation of woman, but not about her role as heroine. Here I must turn a little to Vedanta; I hope my foreign brothers and sisters will be patient with me. The universe is made from, and made up of, two simultaneous Causes, or principles — a spiritual Cause called purusha, the male principle, and a nonspiritual Cause called prakriti, nature, seen as female. I am sorry, dear ladies, that you are not seen as spiritual: perhaps too many of our ancient philosophers were men. But the mutual interdependence of these two principles is fundamental — the male principle cannot create anything without the female nor can prakriti produce the natural universe without purusha. Now what is this prakriti, this female principle? It is made up of three gunas, three basic qualities: the shining; the dark, or passive; and the dynamic. This is the tradition from which the Hindi film heroine is unconsciously drawn. She shines, she is resplendent, she is fair (and this is important, because it is said that the goddess Parvati, criticized by her husband, Siva, for her dark complexion, had to perform austerities and penances in the forest before Brahma granted her the fair skin for which she is now famed. No Indian actress can succeed without reminding audiences of the postpenance Parvati.) She is also passive, the object of the hero’s adoration and the villain’s lust. But these two gunas remain in uneasy equilibrium; it is the third, her dynamism, that unsettles this equilibrium and makes the Indian film heroine a heroine.”

This is going right over my head, a direction in which no real Hindi film heroine has yet traveled. I shift my weight uncomfortably from one thigh to the other and try to admire the curve of the Frenchwoman’s unhaltered breast, which pushes against her saffron shift like prakriti looking for a purusha.

“You would be right, my dears, in tracing the modern Hindi film to the epics and myths of our ancient times,” the Guru goes on. “Each character fulfills the role assigned to him or her in the film as each of us fulfills the role assigned to us by our destiny on this earth, our dharma. The Hindi film hero’s dharma is to be a hero, the villain’s is to be a villain. It is the same, after all, in the Mahabharata, whose personages act out their roles without being able to deviate in the slightest from the script of destiny. Their dharma determines their character, and their character determines their destiny; yet even this dharma is the result of their actions in their past lives. There is nothing they can do about it: they do what they do because they are who they are, and they are who they are because they have done what they did. This is a concept you can apply in toto to the Hindi film hero.

“A prime example of this species is now sitting among us. He has come to seek the benefits of my wisdom, and this pleases me. So for his sake, I shall conclude this discourse with a story from the Mahabharata — not, alas, a story like the delectable episode of Brahma and his lady — but the story of an argument, a debate, shall we say, among the five Pandava brothers, the ’heroes,’ if you must, of the great epic. The topic they were debating was a typically Hindu question of hierarchies. Which, they argued, was the highest of human pursuits — kama, pleasure; artha, wealth; or dharma, righteousness? Their uncle and counselor, Vidura, thought the matter was self-evident: the answer was obviously dharma. Arjuna, the most intelligent of the Pandavas, was not so sure: he put artha first, regarding pleasure and righteousness as merely two adjuncts of wealth. (He would obviously have made a very successful merchant-banker today.) Bhima, the glutton and strong man, disagreed. In his view, the satisfaction of desire, in other words kama, was obviously man’s first duty, since without the desire to achieve, any achievement would be impossible. The twin brothers, Nakula and Sahadeva, wanted it both ways: man, they declared, should go for all three — first pursue righteousness, then wealth, and lastly, pleasure. (I am beginning to think they had a point there, but not necessarily in that order.) Finally, the oldest brother, Yudhisthira, paragon of virtue, surveyed the options and sadly rejected all of them. The only thing for a man to do, he concluded, was to sidestep the debate altogether and submit himself to Fate.

“I will not draw the lessons from this argument for you. It is yours to interpret as you see fit. But today we have with us a man who has sampled kama, accumulated artha, and seeks to fulfill a dharma of service to the people. He has my benediction.”

And with that the Guru closes his eyes and resumes his posture of meditation. The devotees rise silently and begin to shuffle out soundlessly on bare feet.

I stand up, delighted by the unexpectedly positive conclusion to the Guru’s rambling discourse, but uncertain what happens next. Ashwin, satisfied, is already heading for the door. I stop the Frenchwoman as she walks toward it.

“Don’t I get to see him now?” I ask. “Privately?”

“Can’t you see? Ze Guru his meditating,” she replies.

“But I’ve come all this way just to talk to him,” I say.

“What you ’ave to say, ze Guru already knows,” she declares sententiously. “Ze Guru alone decides hif’e needs to talk to you.”

Ashwin beckons. He doesn’t want me to make a fuss.

“Wait.” The Frenchwoman looks at her master. The Guru has opened one eye owlishly and is raising a hand. Slowly, he points at me and beckons. When Ashwin and the devotee try to follow me, he stops them with upraised palm. A long finger opens out and points exclusively to me. It folds back, a peremptory summons. I ought to feel insulted, but I find myself enjoying the privilege. “Private audience,” I say, shrugging at the Frenchwoman. She folds her hands to the Guru and walks out with Ashwin, shutting the door. I am alone with the man of God.

As I walk toward him, I see that he is laughing. Great waves of silent mirth convulse him in his cross-legged pose, so that his be-robed body literally quakes on the mattress. Strands of gray beard disappear into his closed mouth, his sparkling eyes dance with merriment, his hands helplessly hold his sides. I don’t see what is so funny, unless, while he was meditating, some higher consciousness cracked a joke on the astral plane.

“AB!” the Guru says at last. “So you really didn’t recognize me!”

Incredulous, I advance closer to the august presence, trying to visualize a face behind the beard. “Tool!” I exclaim. “What on earth are you doing behind all that shrubbery?”

“Shh,” Atul (“Tool”) Dwivedi, fellow Fransiscan and Coffee House habitue of collegiate notoriety, raises a long-nailed finger to his lips. “Not so loud, or you’ll have the entire ashram down on us.” He pats a place next to him on the mattress. “Try and look reverential, in case anyone looks in,” he says. “God, it’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, god,” I respond irreverently. “How did all this happen? Didn’t you go off to BHU to study philosophy or something? No one’s heard a thing out of you since.”

“I did go to the Benares Hindu University,” Tool confirms, his eyes now droll rather than divine. “To study philosophy. And — other things.”

“And what happened to your hair? And this beard — almost white already?”

“Don’t you remember my father? Premature baldness runs in the family. And the things I have thought about over the years,” Tool says, “have grayed me. But we’re not young anymore, Ashok, you and I. You must be over forty.”

“Forty-one next week.” I had not really imagined that that disqualified me from thinking of myself as young. Tool has sobered me.

“How do you stay like this? You must have a picture in the attic.” We had both seen The Picture of Dorian Gray in preference to reading the book.

“Fifty pictures,” I joke. “Almost all of them hits.”

“Yes, I’ve been reading about you.” Tool adopts the distant gaze of his scriptural discourse and quotes from memory. “Darlings, national politics will never be the same again, at least not for our ruling party. Cheetah has learned that a funny thing happened on the way to the quorum: the Prime Minister has decided to offer a party ticket to Bollywood’s reigning box office monarch, your very own Ashok Banjara. Of course, it can only be the kind of coincidence so beloved of our scriptwriters that the constituency from which the PM wants to make this MCP an MP has belonged for goodness knows how many years to the Banjara Daddy! Who would ever suggest that our hero hasn’t got everything on his own merit? Not Cheetah, my little cubs. After all, with so much talk these days of more women candidates being nominated, our Hungry Not-So-Young Man could make an excellent Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, eh? Grrrowl!” The Guru’s eyes twinkle at my evident astonishment. “So you see, I’ve been expecting your visit.”

“I can’t believe you read that stuff, let alone know it by heart,” I say.

“But I used to be a filmi fanatic in college! How quickly you forget,” Tool reproaches me. “Besides, theology can be trying. A Guru must have his little pleasures.”

“Time for kama, hanh?” I joke. “By the way, thanks for the endorsement.”

“My pleasure,” he responds, and I imagine the weak pun is intended. That’s how we all were at St. Francis’. “But it wasn’t entirely unmotivated. I need your help.”

“You? Mine? I thought you had it made here. Women, prestige, adulation — what more could any Franciscan want?”

The Guru scratches his bottom through the robe. “I’ll answer that philosophically some other time,” he replies. “But the short answer is, I’m getting rather tired of the rural life. Too many mosquitoes and not enough electricity. I’m thinking of making a move.”

“And what can I do to help?”

“Well, I need your advice, and some contacts,” the spiritual guide says matter-of-factly. “What would you say to my trying to set myself up in Bombay, as a sort of resident Guru to the stars?”

“Why not? I admired your patter this morning.”

“That’s nothing.” The Guru waved a dismissive hand, as if swatting one of his troublesome mosquitoes. “Bollywood doesn’t want abstruse comparisons between cinema and advaita. What it wants is a philosophy to justify itself by.”

“Go on.” I am intrigued.

“Your cinema world is full of mendacity, imitation, corruption, exploitation, and adultery,” he says in the briskly bored tone of a schoolteacher taking a roll call. “It’s endemic, it’s ingrained, it’s part of reality. In fact, all these things are part of the daily assumptions of the Hindi film industry and of those involved with it.”

“And you think you can change that,” I suggest helpfully. “Reform it. Reintroduce spiritual values.”

“On the contrary,” Tool retorts. “It can’t be changed. No one wants to change it, and the system wouldn’t work any other way. After all, despite these things, or more probably because of them, India now has the world’s largest film industry. And it’s one that flourishes with great efficiency and financial viability in the face of some appalling infrastructural, logistical, and technical drawbacks. It’s little short of a miracle that it works as well as it does. Not even a godman wants to mess with a miracle.”

“So what do you want to do there?” I ask, puzzled.

The Guru sighs. “I’ve done my stint of dharma,” he says. “I’ve spent the best years of my life learning, meditating, and now running an ashram. I’ve begun to enjoy a bit of kama at last, especially now that these foreign women have discovered me. The time has come, I think, for artha. I want to live well.”

“Whatever happened to nonattachment?” I ask jocularly.

“Oh, it’s very important,” Tool says. “I want my followers to be completely unattached to their material possessions. The best way of achieving this is, of course, to give it all to the ashram. As for myself, I will own nothing: everything will be in the name of the ashram, for the greater good of its members. But I will have the use of such things as the ashram sees fit to give me, and I intend to have so many that I can afford to be nonattached to any of them.”

This sounds more jesuitical than Vedantic, but I listen keenly as the Guru abandons the digression and returns to my original question. “What I will give Bollywood,” he explains, “is a philosophical framework for its ills. I’m thinking of calling it Hindu Hedonism. Like the sound of that? No? Well, maybe I need to think about that some more. But labels don’t matter, so perhaps I won’t need one. The idea is to let people continue doing all the venal things that they are so successful doing, but to teach them to feel good about them rather than guilty. Done something you feel bad about? You were only fulfilling your dharma. Was it something really terrible? Well, you’ll pay for it in your next life, so continue enjoying this one. Guilt? Guilt is a Western emotion, a Judeo-Christian construct we only feel because we are still the victims of moral colonialism. The very notion of ‘sin’ as some sort of transgression against God’s divine will does not exist in the Hindu soul and should be eradicated from the Indian soil.”

I stare at him in bemusement, unsure whether he is serious. He carries on unperturbed. “Moksha, salvation, is the thing — the idea is not to seek forgiveness for sin and liberation from guilt, but ultimately to escape the entire human condition, to be liberated from space and time and the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. The only sin is violation of your dharma, which means not doing what your situation obliges you to do: Arjuna having moral scruples about killing on the battlefield was in danger of violating his dharma, whereas when he fought and killed he was upholding it — not the kind of thing your Westerner with his Judeo-Christian moral code can easily live with, eh? The Occidental wants to die with no sins in this life to pay for; the Indian should look on death as an opportunity to experience immortality, with the sins of this and previous lives rendered irrelevant.”

The Guru pauses for breath. “Shabash,” I say, feeling like Iftikhar. “And adultery? What do you say to the chap who’s cheated on his wife, lied to her, kept a mistress? What do you say to the mistress?”

Tool looks at me like a lynx at midnight, seeing into my darkness. “Monogamy is a Western imposition,” he says shortly. “It didn’t exist in India before the British came. But that would be too easy.” He sounds sententious again. “The scriptures are full of examples of the noble heroes of our epics sleeping with more than one woman,” he intones. “Krishna is the obvious example — he loved sixteen thousand women, it is reliably recorded, and fathered, less reliably, eighty thousand sons. His greatest consort, his affair with whom is immortalized in painting and sculpture and dance all over India, was a married woman, Radha. Deception was therefore essential, though it was easier for a god than for other adulterers; once when Krishna spotted Radha’s husband shadowing her to one of their nocturnal trysts, he adopted the form of Kali, so that the spying cuckold saw his wife busy in adoration of his own favorite deity!”

“Krishna was a god,” I demur. “His rules were different. What about humans?”

“Arjuna embarked on one of the great erotic sagas of our history, traveling the length and breadth of India to expand his mind and expend his body. Even righteous Yudhisthira had at least three wives, and no one’s really counting. In fact, it is difficult to think of one hero from our Puranas, of one man who remained faithful to a single woman. My own contribution to national integration is that I have had congress with at least one woman from each of the twenty-two states and six Union Territories, including the Andamans — but then they went and annexed Sikkim.” He sighed. “So much to do. But I digress. The precedents are considerable, yes, even human ones. But,” he adds, anticipating my objection, “the postcolonial laws, regrettably, have enshrined this barbarism, what the cheerful Cheetah calls the monotony of monogamy, so lying and cheating become mandatory. Not to worry: the Puranas have an answer for that too. As Krishna explains to Yudhisthira in the Mahabharata:

In the matter of truth and deception,

There’s room for many an exception;

It’s all right to lie

In dharma, provi —

— Ded it’s in areas enjoined since Inception:

the protection of cows;

the fulfillment of vows;

defending either a marriage

or a Brahmin’s carriage;

but the most merit is earned,

where women are concerned.

In these cases above, be ambivalent,

For our theology’s quite polyvalent;

In every season

There can be a good reason

For a lie and Truth to be equivalent.

“You made that up,” I accuse him admiringly.

“The verse, yes, but every idea in it is gospel,” he swears. “Look it up. But in any case, AB, the Indian people never judged their gods by mortal standards. That’s why Krishna was worshiped for acting in ways his followers wouldn’t dream of tolerating in their own lives. Adultery, gluttony, theft, all came easily to the favorite deity of the Indian middle classes. But we’re not judgmental about our gods.” He smiled, more wickedly than wisely. “It’s much the same with you movie stars. You make the modern myths, so the same double standard applies to you. Your fans adore you for doing things they’d find shocking if their neighbors did them.” He looks at me searchingly. “So how do you like my Hindu hedonism? Will it play at the Prithvi?”

“They’ll lap it up,” I agree. “Especially the actresses.”

“Ah, the actresses.” A purply-pink tongue emerges from the midst of his graying foliage and licks a pair of dry mauve lips that briefly come into view. “I intend to explore with them the belief of the Alvar school twelve centuries ago that the soul, in its longing for God, must make itself female in order to receive divine penetration. The soul of an actress, I shall explain, starts off with a considerable advantage in this respect.”

“And you, I take it, will provide the divine penetration?”

“A mere mortal substitute, old soul. In anticipation of the sublimity of the spiritual process to follow.”

I shake my head in admiration. “You’ve come a long way, Tool, since the days when we used to chat up the co-eds by saying that we would live up to the ideals of St. Francis, who was kind to birds.”

“Who used to caress the birds.” Tool Dwivedi corrects me, shaking his head in turn. “You’ve obviously come a longer way, Ashok, if you started off being kind to them. But tell me, what can you do for me?”

“I’ll happily introduce you to my friends and producers,” I respond without hesitation.

“Good, but not directly,” the Guru says. “I don’t want too many awkward questions arising about our connection. St. Francis’ College is not a good background for a Hindu holy man who wants to be taken seriously in the West. Officially, I grew up on the mountainside at Rishikesh and the riverside in Benares.” The beard parts again in a smile.

“And I’m not sure,” he adds, sounding anything but unsure, “that it’ll do either of us any good to be publicly associated with each other. No, Ashok, I want to keep you up my sleeve. In fact, I don’t mind at all if you conspicuously keep your distance from me. Could be useful later on. But give me a few names and unlisted phone numbers. Tell me a few inside stories. Help me know in advance what’s likely to be bothering some of these people. Straying husbands. Suicide attempts. Family secrets. There’s nothing more impressive than surprising a prospective disciple with some startling piece of information you couldn’t possibly have had in the normal course of things.”

“You need Radha Sabnis, not me,” I reply. “But sure, I can give you some of that stuff. Just tell me when, and how.”

“We shall arrange an even more private audience in due course to exchange that information,” the Guru chortles. “In the meantime, tell me how I can help you.”

“You can repeat your endorsement in your Hindi session,” I suggest. “And —”

“Consider it done,” he cuts in. “They are probably already exchanging amazed whispers about your having the longest audience the Guru has ever granted. But I shall find a way of making it more explicit for the villagers.”

“Thanks. And in Bollywood you can help take someone off my hands who is getting just a little too awkward for me right now. She’s ripe for a religious experience. It’s just what she needs to take her mind off me.”

“I understand fully,” says the Guru. “I shall expect Ms. Elahi’s private phone number from you shortly.”

I shake my head again, in wonder and relief. This guy could end up solving all my problems.

Exterior: Day

MECHANIC

SYNOPSIS

Ashok is an automobile mechanic in Bombay, working in a garage repairing the big cars of the powerful (and the powerful cars of the big). One of the garages clients is an important politician, Pranay, whose pretty but spoiled daughter Mehnaz regularly drives in to get her red sports car serviced. Ashok’s attitude to her is an uneasy compound of gender attraction and class incivility. But one day (with smartly choreographed dishoom-dishoom), he rescues her from assailants — and turns down the cash reward her father offers him. Mehnaz is smitten, Pranay resentful.

Ashok lives in a slum where, as the theme song makes clear, he is the popular solver of everyone’s problems:

(ASHOK DANCES AROUND A CAR, WRENCH IN HAND)

I’m just a good mechanic

If your car breaks down, don’t panic —

I’ll fix it;

If your engine starts to sputter

Or your oil flows in the gutter

Don’t allow your heart to flutter,

I’ll fix it.

(IN HIS SLUM, REPAIRING A CHILD’S BICYCLE, PATCHING A LEAKY ROOF)

I’m just a good mechanic

If you have a problem, don’t panic —

I’ll fix it;

If your rickshaw needs repair,

If your roof lets in the air,

Don’t worry, don’t despair,

I’ll fix it.

But the slum is to be razed to make way for a development, and Pranay, the local legislator, is in league with the developers. Mehnaz, now Ashok’s devoted admirer, is present when Ashok leads a demonstration against the demolitions. She follows him on a protest march to her father’s house. Pranay is outraged, but she refuses to reenter his home until he agrees to receive the protesters as well. He does so with ill grace, but after a bitter quarrel in which Pranay rejects their demands, Ashok storms out, Mehnaz by his side. Pranay’s hired goons give chase, but they fail to restore either their boss’s daughter or his dignity, and Ashok, aided by his slum friends (principally by his sidekick, the comedian Ashwin), routs them in style.

That night Mehnaz, newly homeless, has to share Ashok’s slum hut, and finds it difficult to stay on her side of the thin cotton sheet he has strung up as a partition. As the sound track pants in rhythm with the hero’s heartbeat, Mehnaz softly sings:

Don’t go too far —

It frightens me.

Don’t come too near —

It frightens me.

Don’t go too far, don’t come too near,

Be like a star, shine on my fear,

Enlighten me.

Don’t go too far —

It frightens me.

Don’t come too near —

It frightens me.

I want you in, I want you out,

If you go or come, I want to shout,

It’s night in me.

[At this point the film skips and jumps, scratches and crosses of light appearing in the upper corners of the frames. The censors have added to their archives of forbidden pleasures, leaving their symbol — an isosceles triangle, the inverse of the national symbol for contraception — on the certificate that precedes the movie.]

The next morning the inhabitants of the slum, Ashok, Ashwin, and Mehnaz at their head, block the bulldozers with their own bodies. Destruction and development are briefly held at bay. But then Ashok is arrested by a corrupt policeman, Kalia, and though a court soon sets him free, he loses his job and home (to the tune of a lugubrious version of the title song).

But all is not gloom and despair. Mehnaz (who, it turns out, is only Pranay’s adopted daughter) and Ashok have a simple slum wedding. This takes place in a suspiciously spotless temple that only a studio could have devised. Their exchange of garlands is blessed by Ashwin and assorted extras.

When the audience returns from intermission, it is election time. The Indian public is to enjoy its five-year privilege of choosing the agents of the country’s recurring misrule. Ashok is to challenge Pranay in his own constituency.

The election campaign has all the effervescence of a Bollywood cabaret. Montage: Pranay’s men declaim his virtues from loudspeaker-equipped vehicles and distribute rupee notes to the truckedin crowds at his rallies; Ashok’s neighbors accost individuals in the street with palm-folded sincerity. Pranay has glossy posters and gigantic hoardings of himself expensively displayed on every convenient site (and some inconvenient ones), while little urchins with charcoal scrawl Ashok’s electoral symbol — what else but a simple wrench? — on every available wall, sometimes ripping down a picture of his rival to make space.

At the height of the race, Pranay challenges Ashok to a public debate at a sports stadium. Pranay confidently predicts that Ashok will not accept the challenge. Ashok, the villain declares, is scared, knowing his ignorance makes him a very poor match indeed for Pranay’s greater experience. Despite his misgivings Ashok has no choice but to accept the challenge. Pranay declares that his rival really has no intention of turning up for the debate. If Ashok does not come to the stadium, Pranay says, it will confirm once and for all that he is not up to the job.

On the day of the debate, with the campaign reaching its climax, Ashok is abducted by Pranay ’s thugs. The villains scheme is to demonstrate Ashok’s cowardice before tens of thousands of people. Our hero is left tied to the back of a chair in an old warehouse, a gag across his mouth.

At the stadium, where huge red banners advertise Pranay’s challenge to his rival, people are filing in. “Where could Ashok be?” Ashwin asks Mehnaz. “This is not like him at all.”

She suspects foul play and tells Ashwin about the warehouse where her father hides smuggled goods. As the sidekick sets out to rescue the hero, Mehnaz, rapidly transformed by colorful folk attire and accompanied by a half dozen pretty women from the slum, keeps the restive crowd entertained with an impromptu harvest dance. The song to which they undulate went to Number One in the Binaca Geet Mala, Radio Ceylon’s hit parade, for six long weeks:

Our message is the message of the earth}

Hope for those who’re wretched from their birth,

We want to give a break

To the little folks who make

Chapati, not cake

And have everything at stake

To prove they are humans of great worth!

Rise and shine with a smile of joy and mirth!

As the women sing and sway, clicking little sticks together and kicking up their legs, Ashok struggles with his bonds, but he cannot free himself. Ashwin arrives at the warehouse and finds it guarded by a solitary chowkidar. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the man’s foot; when the hapless extra looks down, Ashwin knocks him out. “The oldest trick in the script,” the comedian sighs, before smashing a window and leaping in to free Ashok.

In the stadium the dance comes to an end.

“We’ll never make it,” Ashok pants; it’s too far to run, the bus is too slow, and they can’t afford a taxi. They step out into the middle of the road, forcing a black and yellow auto-rickshaw to screech to a stop, its driver shouting imprecations. Ashok and Ashwin leap in. “To the stadium, quick!” they exclaim. “It’s a matter of life and death!” The three-wheeler’s scooter engine bursts loudly into life and they careen down the street.

At the stadium, Pranay declares that his opponent has conceded his unfitness by his absence. As Mehnaz tries to contain the restlessness of the crowd, the camera cuts back and forth between the mounting tension at the stadium and the hero’s desperate dash to get there in time.

A traffic jam! The auto-rickshaw phut-phuts to a halt before a confusion of trucks, cars, cycles, and bullock carts, horns (and horned creatures) bleating. But the driver now knows his passengers’ cause; the auto-rickshaw mounts the curb, scattering hawkers and passersby, and races exhilaratingly down the sidewalk, its driver tooting a warning with repeated squeezes of the rubber bulb that serves as his only siren.

Scene shift: goaded by a triumphant Pranay, sections of the crowd start chanting, “We want Ashok, we want Ashok.” Pranay smiles hugely as the chants intensify and the crowd begins to rise to its feet. “Enough is enough,” declares Pranay. “I cannot be expected to wait forever for someone who does not want to face the real issues in this election. I suggest we give Ashok a count of ten, and then cancel this meeting.” Mehnaz gasps in dismay, but can do nothing. “All together now,” says Pranay, and the crowd joins him in shouting, “Ten!”

The auto-rickshaw squeezes between two buses, as Ashwin comically presses himself into Ashok’s side in fear.

“Nine!”

The auto-rickshaw brakes to avoid a beggar child, spilling Ashwin in the process. As he clambers back on, Ashok throws the child all the coins in his pocket.

“Eight!”

The auto-rickshaw weaves to avoid a car and grazes a fire hydrant, which gushes forth brown water. A family of parched pavement-dwellers gratefully stretches out their hands toward the liquid.

“Seven!”

Inspector Kalia is in the act of accepting a bribe from a shady character sporting an underworld mustache, trademark stubble, and dirty white bandanna when he sees the auto-rickshaw bearing down on them. With a scream he and his accomplice move aside just in time, in opposite directions. The villain promptly flees, bribe unpaid. Kalia calls after him in vain, then pursues the auto-rickshaw.

“Six!”

The auto-rickshaw causes a car to brake sharply, sending a sheet of canvas floating from the car roof into the air. The canvas lands on a poor woman with two babies who is huddling against a wall and covers them like a blanket. The woman looks up at the auto-rickshaw in gratitude.

“Five!” Pranay’s smile has become triumphant; Mehnaz is in despair. The faces of Ashok’s supporters reveal both puzzlement and anxiety.

“Stop!” Kalia shouts from his police Jeep, drawing alongside the auto-rickshaw. Our heroes grin at him and roar on. Kalia is shaking a fist at Ashok when the three-wheeler turns sharply left, and Kalia and his Jeep, caught unawares, continue straight on, plunging into the sea with a splash. The crooked cop surfaces spluttering, seaweed replacing the habitual betel leaf in his mouth.

“Four!”

The scooter reaches the stadium. “Here, sahib?” asks the driver. “No,” says Ashok, “drive in!”

“Three!”

Ashwin hastily reties the gag on Ashok and loosely knots the ropes on the hero’s wrist. The auto-rickshaw bursts through the entrance, past a startled gate attendant, and phut-phuts down the center aisle of the stadium. The crowd turns in amazement. Mehnaz’s eyes light up in hope.

“Two!” Pranay shouts, but he is the only one still counting.

The auto-rickshaw squeals to a stop in front of the stage. Ashwin clambers out, helping a bound and gagged Ashok into view. Ashok raises his tied wrists in the air. The crowd erupts.

“One,” Pranay says feebly, looking around him wild-eyed. Ashok ascends the stage and stands before the mike. A delighted Mehnaz, beckoned by Ashwin, comes up and unties the gag. “Brothers and sisters, this is how they tried to silence me!” announces Ashok as Mehnaz waves the gag with a flourish. “But they cannot silence the voice of the people!” The crowd roars its enthusiastic approval. “This man” — Ashok points at Pranay — “thought he could humble me in your eyes by preventing my voice from being heard by all of you today. I was tied and gagged and thrown into a godown. But the people do not go down so easily.” There is good-natured laughter mixed with sounds of outrage toward Pranay. “It is this crook, this smuggler, this kidnapper, this razer of your homes, who claims to represent you today and asks for your votes. What answer will you give him?”

The crowd roars its reply with one voice, which is echoed in the pounding of angry feet swarming toward the stage. His eyes widening in panic, Pranay screams a futile plea for mercy, then turns and flees, the throng at his heels. A long shot shows him running into the distance, the cries of his pursuers fading into the dust kicked up by their feet.

The final shot: a kurta-clad Ashok, newly elected, is being garlanded in triumph. He folds his palms in a namaste, then raises them above his head in a gesture to the crowd. “The people’s court has given its verdict,” he declares. “Together, we shall march on to a new dawn.”

The camera pans to a poster of Ashok’s election symbol, the wrench, behind him, and the theme song returns to the sound track:

I’m just a good mechanic

If your car breaks down, don’t panic —

I’ll fix it?.

And the screen fills with the portentous words THIS IS NOT THE END, ONLY THE BEGINNING.

The camera lingers in close-up on Ashok’s garlanded face, the adulatory crowd, and the words on the screen before the picture fades to the strains of the national anthem and the lights come up in the cinema hall.

Monologue: Night

ASHWIN BANJARA

Maya tells me she hasn’t been able to speak a word to you so far in the hospital. She just sits here and looks at you, she says, till the thoughts well up in a surge that drowns the words. “There was so much I wanted to say to him earlier, and couldn’t,” she told me today. “What is the point of trying to find the words now?”

Of course I tell her how useful it might be to you, how it might help to bring you back to normal, and she just smiles sadly. I don’t suppose the “normal you” gave her much joy, did you? No, that’s cruel — and I don’t want to be cruel to you. Not now.

It’s strange about Maya, that you should have married someone like her. I suppose everyone at home keeps telling you that. I pictured you with someone beautiful and brittle and glamorously Westernized, like smuggled bone china. Instead she’s stainless steel, Ashok-bhai, like the thalis Ma used to serve dinner on when we were little. Always there, clean, safe, durable.

I don’t think you know how close I’ve become to her, Ashok-bhai. Closer, certainly, than I am to you. It’s not as if she tells me her secrets or anything like that. Maya wouldn’t; if she has secrets, they’d remain secret. And she has too much pride and too much loyalty to you to discuss her feelings about you with me. What she said just now was as revealing as she has ever been.

And yet what companionship there is in her silences! When I am with her I feel instantly secure, caught up in her strength, her determination, her fierce sense of what is hers to protect. I become part of her defenses, not a stranger to them. With us there is so much that need not be spoken. Especially in relation to you. We understand each other instinctively because we are both your — no, forget it.

What was I going to say — “victims”? That wouldn’t be fair. Let’s just say we both have gone through certain experiences with you, as brother, as wife, that have defined us and helped us define each other. Experiences of which you, the catalyst, are blissfully unaware. That’s the incredible thing about you, Ashok-bhai: you sail through life with such grand style, the breeze in your hair and the surface of the water all placid, without the slightest idea of the churning of the currents beneath, the torment of the smaller fish, the fate of the creatures caught up in your propellers. In fact, you wouldn’t even notice if it was seaweed you were cutting up in your swath, or sardines, or dolphins bleating for help. OK, OK, I’m getting carried away. But I have not met another human being as completely unconscious of the effect he has on people as you. It must be wonderful, that perfect self-absorption, that remarkable degree of self-contentment. I, who find myself constantly anxious about what others might think of me, envy you in this as well, as in so many things.

But, to be fair, you demand so little of people. Perhaps because you never see what you can demand of them; you have no idea of the potential of any human being, not even their potential to give. So you see people in specific little frames, playing a part in a particular situation — fulfilling your needs in bed, directing you in a film, helping you win an election — and you are completely indifferent to them outside those frames. If someone encroaches upon your life in a way that’s beyond the role you’ve subconsciously assigned him or her, you don’t know how to handle that person, any more than if an actor had walked in front of the camera and spoken someone else’s lines. Everyone has a place in your screenplay, but that place is well defined. When they have played their part, you have no use for them, at least not until their part comes up again.

Once at a party in Delhi I met a girl called Malini who said she knew you before you joined the movies. Rather nice girl, really — she’s involved in some sort of street theater movement, bringing culture to the masses, but not pretentious at all about it, very committed in fact. She gave me the impression that she’d been close to you; she said wryly that she’d tried to dissuade you from going to Bombay because she was afraid you wouldn’t make it there. (She laughed about that so charmingly that I caught a glimpse of the kind of person she must be — passionately caring but modest — and I marveled at your luck in finding them every time.) It was clear, as much from what she didn’t say as what she did, that you meant a lot to her — and that you had at least given her the impression at one time that she meant a lot to you.

Anyway, you know what she said? Mildly, not complaining, but with a tone of regret that I thought masked some stronger feeling. She said that once you left Delhi you made not the slightest effort to contact her ever again. She said she was so sure you would that she kept making excuses for you — that you were having a very rough time in the early days, that you were waiting to be a success before you got back in touch, et cetera. Of course, you didn’t write or call, and she realized, as so many before and since have realized, that she wasn’t as important to you as she thought she’d been. But it took some time for this to sink in — how much we all like to deceive ourselves, Ashok-bhai, about you!

She decided to take the initiative herself. At first she had no idea how or where to contact you, and then you had a couple of hits and your Bombay address started popping up in the magazines, at least the name of your bungalow and the rough area it was in. So she wrote to you — a simple, direct, personal letter saying how happy she was about your success, bringing you up to date on her own life, and expressing hope that you could meet on. your next visit to Delhi. She got in return, three months later, a printed postcard with your picture on the back, a standard fan mail response typed on the other side, and an autograph she knew wasn’t really yours — because she has your real signature, you see, on the program or brochure of a play you had done together. You can imagine how she felt. I could: she didn’t have to tell me, and to her credit, she didn’t even try.

I told her about your Sponerwalla and your Subramanyam, and how her letter probably never even got to you, but what excuses can you make for such a thing? The very fact that you hire and keep a secretary who can do something like that shows how little you care, how unimportant these things are to you. How unimportant people are to you. People don’t really matter to you, Ashok-bhai; they never have. With no exceptions: not Dad, not Ma, not me, not even your kids, and certainly not Maya. Least of all, I’m sure, these Mehnaz Elahis of yours or the Malinis of the past. It wouldn’t surprise me if you ended every relationship the way you ended the one with Malini, without a good-bye. Why bother to take the trouble to say farewell when you don’t really care if the other person fares well or not?

I’m sorry, Ashok-bhai. I suppose everyone who comes in here and talks to you says all sorts of pleasant and cheerful and affectionate things to buck you up and help you reemerge into our world, whereas here I am, needlessly wounding you. And yet who has better right than me, after growing up in your shadow all these years, doing all the things you rejected, and finally watching the biggest prize of my life fall easily into your lap when it was at last within my reach? Don’t get me wrong, Ashok-bhai, I’m not bitter. I’ve never been bitter about you, just accepting. You were there from the day I was born, you were part of my firmament, like the sun and the moon and the stars, and the things you did or that happened to you were as ineffable, as unsusceptible to change, as the movement of the planets. I reacted to you, but I never presumed to think I could do anything about you. You simply were, and I adjusted my life accordingly. So you hit the ball into the neighbor’s when you didn’t feel like bowling to me, and yet a few weeks later there I’d be, bowling to you again. I discovered early that, in relation to you, free will was always an illusion.

Why am I sounding so negative? You know I hero-worshiped you, Ashok-bhai. How could I not have? You were such an admirable figure in my eyes: tall and handsome, good at sports, a very public personality from an early age with your theater and your speech contests and your girls on either arm. I derived so much of my identity from being your brother, it was inevitable that you could do no wrong in my eyes. All this — this criticism came much later, when, after years of being out of your shadow’s reach, I saw you again at close quarters and realized what you were. Saw also that you couldn’t help being what you are, but that didn’t make it any easier to live with.

What a waste your political career was, Ashok-bhai. Why did you do it? Dad understood all along, of course: you stood with no other thought than that you could win. Very useful for the party: by winning in your constituency you helped them deflect the threat of Sugriva Sharma. You served a very specific purpose. But did you think for a minute that they might have another purpose in mind? Did you even think who the “they” were, what the forces were within the party, how the factions stacked up, who had it in for whom, whose interests you might have served by winning, who wanted you out of the way the moment you’d fulfilled your purpose? Did you bother to do any of your homework, make political alliances, pay homage to the mentor you needed, or even acquire an adviser? No, Ashok-bhai. You thought you could go through the political world the way you did the film world, picking up scripts designed for you, doing what came naturally and reaping the benefits. It didn’t work that way, after all, did it? And if you had only asked me, I could have told you it wouldn’t; I would have saved you all the frustration, the humiliation, the waste. And in the process I could have prevented you from destroying Dad’s political legacy and my political hopes.

It was that Swiss bank thing that really pissed me off. Why? Why did you need it? You wandered into politics and assumed the prevailing mores, but just as you did in films, you assumed the worst of them. There are actors in Bollywood who pay their taxes, surely, and there are, even if it sounds like an oxymoron, honest politicians. But you, Ashok-bhai, with your languid eye on the main chance, you would never have sought to be either. How was it that you never learned anything from Dad?

I’m sorry. I’ll change the topic, promise. But what can we talk about, Ashok-bhai? You’re about all we have in common. Politics? No, I’ve said too much already. Films? What do I know about films? I took Dad to see that film you made in the first flush of political enthusiasm, Mechanic. Your first real failure after Dil Ek Qila. There it was, your statement of purpose, your cinematic attempt to promote your political image with the masses. And what crap it was, Ashok-bhai! Dad squirmed in embarrassment throughout, and I, your ex-campaign manager, didn’t know which way to look.

Of course, Dad kept objecting to all the wrong things. A real-life Pranay would never support slum demolitions, he pointed out. In fact, he argued, the slums exist because of the Pranays, who give these areas political protection by making populist speeches about squatters’ rights and who thereby assure themselves of both the votes of the grateful slum-dwellers and the financial support of the mafia dons who really run the slums and who collect extortionate rents for a few square feet of public property. Not only that, no politician would conduct himself in an election year the way your Pranay does: even if he stood to gain from slum demolition, he would surely pretend otherwise rather than lose such an enormous bloc of votes. When the slum delegation goes to him, he would at least promise to “look into it” or “see what I can do” — utter some such time-honored insincerity. But your movie has him behaving with all the overweening arrogance of the Hindi film villain.

“But it’s only a film, Dad!” I whispered. And he would say, “But even in a film, things have got to make sense. Why aren’t there other candidates in this election, in a country with two hundred and fifty-seven registered political parties and no shortage of aspiring Independents? How is it that the field is left to a thug and an upstart?” Or again, at the ridiculous climax, “Which idiot politician would provide an unknown rival with a free platform like that?” Pranay’s strategy in a race like this would obviously be to ignore his rival rather than give him such a major buildup and have to kidnap him — I mean, really, Ashok-bhai, how ridiculous can you get. But again, there you are, Hindi films. Only in Hindi films would a politician choose such a roundabout way to eliminate an ill-equipped rival and then choose to leave him locked up with one decrepit guard at a predictable address. Where do people leave their brains when they go to see this nonsense?

Forget the political stuff for a moment: how about the rest? Can you imagine for a second a real Indian mechanic in a romantic entanglement with a real Mehnaz Elahi? It’s impossible: all these rich girl-poor boy fantasies the Hindi films churn out fly in the face of every single class, caste, and social consideration of the real India. “Just giving the lower classes the wrong ideas,” Dad growled, not entirely in jest. After all, the dramatic rise in what the papers call Eve-teasing, which is really nothing less than the sexual harassment of women in the street, isn’t entirely unconnected with Hindi films. Where else could all these lower-class Romeos have picked up the idea that the well-dressed women they once wouldn’t have dared to look at are suddenly accessible to them?

So, thanks to the kind of roles you play, the lout thinks he’ll get the rich girl just as you do in the movies. Except that in real life, the rich girl won’t look at him, let alone sing duets with him. In real life, there isn’t a lout who looks, talks, or for that matter smells like Ashok Banjara. These louts are a different species, dear brother, and yet you play them as if they were just like us. They aren’t just like us, even if it might suit you to make your living pretending that they are.

There, too, I guess one can say, “It’s only a film.” But even by the standards of your films, Mechanic was a bust, and not just at the box office. If Pranay was going to take the trouble to send thugs to bash up Ashok in the garage the first time, why wouldn’t he send them back to finish the job they didn’t complete? And when Mehnaz goes off to the slum with Ashok — who could believe she doesn’t have other friends to stay with? Maybe even a boyfriend? Why is it necessary to make her an adopted daughter suddenly, toward the end? Some of the great Greek myths are about daughters who betray their fathers because of their love for the resplendent hero: you could have been the Theseus to Pranay’s Minos. But no, our audiences can swallow any amount of improbable crap in the plot, but not the idea that blood can possibly betray blood. No wonder even our Prime Ministers believe the only people in politics they can trust are their sons.

And why, while we’re about it, did your sidekick have to have my name? A comically frightened Sancho Panza-type buffoon who gets Ashok out of trouble — is that what “Ashwin” conjures up in your mind, Ashok-bhai? Don’t tell me you didn’t write the script — you were vain enough to add yourself to the story credits. What would it have cost you to at least change the name of this sidey, for God’s sake?

I know, I know: you didn’t mean to offend me. In fact, you might even have intended, with typical sensitivity, to be paying me a tribute of some sort. Thanks, but no thanks, brother. The only tribute I ever wanted from you was your withdrawal from the seat that was rightfully mine. Instead of which you took it from me and made it impossible for me ever to have it again.

Will you, to whom nothing much matters, ever understand what my political life meant to me? All those years spent in the constituency, all those elections fought, petitions received, complaints heard, problems solved or sympathized with, homes visited, calculations worked out, promises made and largely kept — what were they for? I was building up a life, Ashok-bhai, I was creating a sense of what I was that had nothing to do with you, but would do everything for me. I was doing it first of all for Dad, to help him, and then I realized I was doing it to show him that I could be what he’d hoped you’d be, his true son and heir. And then, slowly, I began doing it for myself. I became not just a son, not just a brother, but Ashwin Banjara, political worker — and almost certain inheritor of the constituency when Dad finally decided he’d had enough. I even spurned all thought of marriage because I wanted nothing to distract me from pursuing my cause and my ambition. Wedded to politics: that’s what I was. With a worm’s-eye view of the political world, crawling toward my own little morsel. Till you swooped down from the heavens and carried it away just as I was reaching out to touch it.

Even then, Ashok-bhai, though not without difficulty, I accepted reality, learned to live with my role. I sort of told myself that being right-hand man to Ashok Banjara was probably just as good a way to matter in national politics. And in due course, with your prominence and your exalted connections, you would ensure I was well looked after — an adjoining constituency, perhaps, or a Rajya Sabha seat, or perhaps even your own when you moved on to bigger and better things. But you destroyed all that, Ashok-bhai, destroyed your career and mine, and now you’ve all but destroyed yourself.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be cruel. I’m dreadfully upset about your accident, you know that, don’t you? I want you to get well soon. The whole nation is praying for your recovery.

Isn’t that incredible? After everything, when all seemed lost, just as you seemed to have embarked on a long and inevitable decline, to become again the focus of national attention through an accident? If you surv? — when you come out of this, Ashok-bhai, you’ll again be the hottest property in the history of Bollywood. There are prayer meetings at street corners, Ashok-bhai; the louts are taking time off from Eve-teasing to pray for your health; little boys are neglecting their homework to ask Heaven to intercede on your behalf. Your old films, even Dil Ek Qila, are being rereleased to bumper crowds. You’re Number One again, Ashok-bhai, not just at the box office but in India’s hearts. Maybe this is when you should have joined politics.

It’s sort of like what happened in Madras, in 1967, when the fading screen hero MGR, swashbuckling star of a hundred Tamil films, was shot, really shot, by the established film villain — and a former mentor — M. R. Radha. He was taken to the hospital and the Tamil-speaking world stopped turning. Men and women wept openly in the streets, commerce came to a standstill as shops closed, crowds of more than half a lakh waited patiently outside the hospital for hourly bulletins as the great man fought for his life. A delegation of rick-shawallahs, who were the epitome of the common man as portrayed by MGR in his films, pulled their vehicles all the way to Madras to be by his bedside. Poor people from the streets came to pay their respects; so did VIPs from their air-conditioned homes. The only difference from what’s happening with you today is that MGR’s fans didn’t pray for his recovery, since, like all members of his anti-Brahmin DMK party, he was a declared atheist. However, some folks who found it hard to shake off their old habits prayed to portraits of MGR himself. You try and figure that one out. On second thought, in your condition, don’t.

For six weeks the cinemagoers of Tamil Nadu held their breath. MGR survived; what is more, he conducted his campaign for the Legislative Assembly from his hospital bed. He had been given an unwinnable seat by a party chief jealous of his popularity; he went on to win by the largest majority in the electoral history of the state. What is more, he carried the state for his party as well. Photographs of the bandaged actor were splashed across the papers, with captions of him declaring: “I wanted to come to your homes to seek your votes, but I was prevented from doing so. Now I must ask for your hearts.”

He got them, of course. And their votes as well. Then he went on to split the party, unseat his chief rival, and win a state election at the head of his own version of the DMK, organized entirely around his fan associations. He was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for almost a decade, and such was the magic of his name that he continued to rule the state from a hospital bed, this time after a stroke, though he was so badly crippled he couldn’t even speak. When it was suggested that the people of Tamil Nadu were being ruled by a vegetable, his handlers put him up on a high stage before a massive crowd and ran a brief tape of one of his utterances through the sound system. Another notable first for India: the country that invented the playback singer had now come up with the played-back politician.

So you can do pretty well politically out of this accident, Ashok-bhai. They say the PM is coming to see you. Who knows, perhaps the party’d be willing to rehabilitate you. After all, the massive outpouring of grief must suggest that the people have forgiven your little peccadilloes — if they ever mattered to them. The party isn’t going to treat you as an embarrassment it’s relieved to be rid of when the great Indian public obviously holds you in such regard. This accident could actually be the rebirth of your political life. Think about it! Just uttering the words makes me feel much better. It isn’t all over yet, after all, for us. For you. The moment you can speak and respond, we must start planning your comeback.

I’m sorry about all the things I said earlier. You know how sometimes things look so bleak that one says more than one intends to. But now the political blood is tingling again in my veins. We can show them yet, Ashok-bhai. It’ll be the greatest comeback since Indira Gandhi.

Look at the bright side. Before all this happened, let’s face it, you were heading downhill like an Indian Railways train — faster than anyone would have thought possible on the way up. People were used to you; they were tired of you. The accident, the grave risk to your survival, has been a great shock, the kind of shock that galvanizes the system. It was no longer possible to be bored by you.

Of course, it’s been a shock to everyone, Ashok-bhai. And perhaps most of all to the public, whose property you’ve really been. The girls, your triplets, have taken it all rather well. Rather too well, perhaps: I’ve seen Sheela preening into a hand mirror before walking past the anxious throng into the hospital, Neela puts so much makeup on her dark face that she only looks human under flashbulbs, and Leela seems to emerge from every visit to your room with the air of someone walking out of a movie theater. None of this is more real to her than any other scene you’ve starred in, Ashok-bhai. And why should it be? You’re hardly real yourself: they’ve seen more of you on the screen than in the flesh. You haven’t spent much time with them at home or anywhere else. You even went on family holidays with a servant-maid in tow. You were, you are, a larger-than-life figure to millions, but to the few around you, you weren’t quite as large as life.

Except perhaps for the little one. Little Aashish looks so sad and bewildered by it all, standing there with his short stubby thumb in his mouth and his big black eyes round in incomprehension, nibbling at his nonexistent nails, wondering why everyone is behaving like this. It’s when I see him, your son, that I feel the greatest pain.

Sorry — hearing all this, if indeed you can, many of the things I’ve said must only make you feel worse. But you mustn’t, Ashok-bhai. Just take it as one more incentive to get well again: to win back people; to win back your political place. I’m sure it’ll gladden you to know how spontaneous the outpouring of good wishes is. People have really rallied around after the accident. You won’t believe how kind everyone’s been. Even people who’ve had their problems with you in recent years. Old Jagannath Choubey showed up with an enormous bouquet of flowers. Mohanlal came and fretted anxiously, pulling so much string off his fraying cuffs that I thought he’d unravel his entire shirt before he left. Pranay has been very solicitous, asking Maya how he could help, taking the girls out for an afternoon at the beach, commiserating with Dad and Ma. He’s not really my type, but Dad thinks Pranay’s too good a man to be associated with the Hindi film industry, and he’s a villain! Even canny Sugriva Sharma, fresh from his recapture of what used to be your seat, sent a cable. I have it here somewhere — I’ll read it to you: WISHING MOST SPEEDY RECOVERY STOP INDIA’S HEART BEATS FOR YOU STOP NATION’S SCREENS NEED YOU STOP SUGRIVA SHARMA. He released it to the press, of course, before it even got here: Parliament isn’t the place for you, but the nation’s screens are. Wily bastard.

In fact, Pranay’s really been the best of the lot. I don’t particularly like to admit it, because something about the fellow makes me uncomfortable, but he’s really taken an awful lot of trouble. He’s come every day; he must have had to cancel a shift or two to do it. And I hadn’t imagined you two were so close, though I guess you have done a lot of films together. When the doctor wanted us to talk to you like this it was Pranay who volunteered to try it first. He’s the only one who really seems to be able to console Aashish: in no time the boy climbs onto Pranay’s lap and tugs at his absurd ties and for a moment forgets his bewilderment. One day Pranay rather ostentatiously took off a florid tie and looped it around Aashish’s neck. He was delighted and wouldn’t give it back. “It’s yours, my boy,” Pranay said, “a present.” And I could have sworn I saw tears in his chronically red eyes.

Everyone is overcome by the occasion, Ashok-bhai. Your occasion.

Even that harridan Radha Sabnis. Look what she wrote in the latest Showbiz:

Darlings, isn’t it terrible what has happened to our precious Hungry Young-No-Longer Man? Cheetah hasn’t always been nice about The Banjara, but we all love him, don’t we? I’m praying and waiting for his recovery so that we can celebrate it together in a glass of Pol Roger 1969, his favorite champagne. [Funny, I didn’t even know you had a favorite champagne.] In his meteoric career Ashok Banjara has come to personify the Hindi cinema as we know it — the style, the razzle-dazzle, the energy, the charisma. As they say in the ads for runaway prodigals, come back, Ashok — all is forgiven. We need you, lover-boy. Grrrrowl…

Lover-boy? Well, she might have chosen a more appropriate epithet, but as I said to Pranay, it proves her heart is in the right place. “Who’d have thought she even had a heart?” was his rejoinder. “Perhaps Ashok was one of the very few who dug deep enough to find it.” Odd remark, that, but I suppose he was just trying to be nice about you.

I’ve talked a lot with him myself, actually, somewhat to my own surprise. Not that there’s much choice, when you’re sitting together in the waiting room. Did you know that Pranay’s some sort of closet Commie? Oh, very restrained and reflective and all that, but overflowing with conviction and jargon. “I was not surprised when Ashok entered bourgeois politics,” he said to me, well out of Dad’s hearing, thank God. Bourgeois politics — can you imagine? “After all, every Hindi film hero is ontologically a counterrevolutionary.” He said that, really, “ontologically.” I had to look it up in the dictionary afterward. And I don’t think he’s even been to college. Where do these guys pick this crap up from?

“A counterrevolutionary?” I asked incredulously. “How?” He acquired this terribly intense expression, all beetle brows and outthrust jaw. “Because they serve, unconsciously or otherwise, to dissipate the revolutionary energies of the masses,” he replied. “The frustrations and aspirations that would fuel the masses’ struggle for justice is sidetracked by being focused on the screen success of a movie star. The proletariat’s natural urge to overthrow injustice is vicariously fulfilled in the hero’s defeat of the straw villain — me.” I swear the guy didn’t even smile. “Films in India are truly the opiate of the people; by providing an outlet to their pent-up urges, the Bombay films make them forget the injustice of the oppressive social order. Evil is personalized as the villain, rather than as the system that makes victims, not heroes, of us all. A false solution is found when the villain is vanquished, and the masses go home happy. The ownership and control of the means of production remain unchanged.”

Absurd, of course, but can you believe words like these coming out of the mouth of a Bollywood type? Especially this fellow, with his white shoes and ridiculous ties? And there was more, believe it or not. To make conversation more than anything else, I found myself saying something about the melting of class and caste barriers in Hindi movies, you know, along the lines of what I said to you just now about Mechanic. He objected quite strongly. “It is just the opposite. Romantic love across caste and class lines,” he declared solemnly, “is used to cast a veil over the classic contradictions inherent in these situations. It is an exploitative device to blur the reality of class struggle by promoting an illusion of class mobility. Instead of making the revolutionary youth want to overthrow the landlord, the Hindi film promises him he can marry the landlord’s daughter. The classless cuddle,” he concluded, “is capitalist camouflage.”

“You ought to enter politics yourself,” I suggested half jokingly, only to receive an earful about the bourgeois parliamentary system.

Speaking about the proletariat, though, you know we’ve kept them out of here. I’m afraid a combination of hospital rules, security considerations, and Maya’s preferences have left the great unwashed in the courtyard even as we troop into the intensive care unit for these measured monologues. I can’t imagine Cyrus Sponerwalla is any too happy about that, but then we haven’t let him in yet either. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was that on my way in I spoke to one of the fellows waiting outside. He was, would you believe it, a rick-shawallah, condemned to a short and brutish life pulling human loads far too heavy for him through rough and pitted streets in rain and heat wave alike. He had spent all his savings to take a train from Calcutta to come and watch anxiously for your recovery. Somebody presented him to me and I stopped and talked, not just because I felt I had to, but because I was genuinely curious about what you meant to this man — a man who had, in effect, abandoned his livelihood to be by your bedside, or as close to it as he could get. Why did he like your pictures, I asked him.

He liked the action, he replied in Darbhanga-accented Hindi. Ashokji was a master of action, stunts, fights. He didn’t like pictures without action; if there is no action, he asked, what is there to see?

And this action, what did it represent for him?

The triumph of right over wrong, he said. The victory of dharma. The reassertion of the moral order of the universe. Ashokji was the upholder of Right: for this reason, he was like an avatar of God. The other avatars, Rama, Krishna, maybe even Buddha and Gandhi, are all worshiped, but they lived a long time ago and it was difficult to really identify with any of them. Ashok Banjara, though, lived today: his deeds could be seen on the silver screen for the price of a day’s earnings. And it was as if God had come down to earth to make himself visible to ordinary men. For me, sahib, he said, Ashokji is a god.

I left him, strangely humbled by the purity of his devotion to you, and trudged up the stairs into the hospital. I’m afraid I forgot to ask him his name.