Show Business

TAKE FIVE

Interior: Night

I can’t believe I'm doing this.

Me, Ashok Banjara, superstar of the silver screen, heartthrob of the misty-eyed masses, unchallenged hero of every scene in which I have been called upon to play a part, languishing in the back rows of the House of the People, the Lok Sabha, while cretinous netas in crumpled khadi, their eyes and their waistlines bulging, hold forth inarticulately on the irrelevant. But it is me, its my chin that’s resting on my despairingly cupped palm, it’s my elbow that’s weighing heavily on the polished wood of the parliamentary desk in front of me, it’s my lids that are drooping resignedly over my disbelieving eyes as I take in the spectacle of representative democracy in action and yawn. Ashok Banjara, parliamentary acolyte, ignored and condescended to by people who wouldn’t be cast as second villains in Bollywood: what is life coming to?

I thought they’d at least make me a minister. After all, not only was I better known and more widely recognized than everyone bar the Prime Minister, but I had, after all, conquered the dreaded Sugriva Sharma for them. I thought I’d get to pick my reward — “so what is it to be, Banjara-sahib, Foreign Affairs or Information and Broadcasting?” Perhaps, modestly discounting my extensive travels, I would pronounce myself insufficiently qualified to run the country’s external relations and graciously accept I and B instead, where I could take care of the film industry. I even had a humble speech planned, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to serve.

But none of it. When the Cabinet list was announced, I scoured it in vain for the most famous name in India. “What’s this?” I asked Maya in astonishment. “Where am I?” She thought that the jealous time-servers in the upper echelons of the party had prevailed upon the Prime Minister to name me as only a Minister of State or a deputy minister. “After all, Ashok, you are new to government.” I bridled at this, but she pointed out the names of other friends and allies of the PM (including a genuine political heavyweight) whom the chief also had felt obliged to relegate. So I waited.

But when the second tier of appointments to the Council of Ministers was announced, I did not figure among them either. And the Prime Minister wouldn’t return my calls. “I am leaving message, sir,” Subramanyam assured me. “Yevery time I am leaving message, but they are simply not phoning.” It is an unusual situation for him, and he is even unhappier than I am at this reversal of his standing.

“What did they bring me here for?” I asked Maya incredulously, “if they don’t want to give me anything to do?”

“I suppose,” she suggested ruminatively, “I suppose until they put you in the government, you should do what people in Parliament are supposed to do.”

“Make speeches?”

“You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

Well, there was no need to answer that. So here I am, immaculate in kurta-pajama of the purest white silk, the cynosure of most of the eyes in the visitors’ gallery. But down here in the well of the House they won’t let me get a word in. Whenever I raise my hand someone more senior is recognized ahead of me; by the time the queue thins, the debate is over. Whenever I raise my voice, I am shouted down. Half of the subjects discussed are obscure to the point of absurdity, and my flagging interest is not stirred by having to follow them through the speeches of a bunch of semieducated morons who would sound incomprehensible in any language. The other half of the subjects are hardly discussed at all: either they feature long ministerial monologues after which the party MPs are roused from their slumbers to vote dutifully for the government, or they degenerate into shouting matches with the stalwarts of the Opposition, who make up in volubility what they lack in numbers. Occasionally, both monologue and shouting match are punctuated by noisy walkouts by the other side, the Opposition protesting against a government bill it’s numerically powerless to overturn.

“After all the trouble they took to be elected to Parliament,” I innocently ask a pair of fellow MPs once, “why do they walk out of it so often?” An Opposition MP gives me a lecture on the importance of the symbolic gesture of protest, but the effect is rather ruined by a cynical colleague who asks why walkouts only occur after the exiting MPs have signed the attendance register that ensures their daily fee.

I’m out of place in this world. I clap my hands to applaud the PM; the other MPs thump their desks. I patiently wait for a speaker to finish; the others heckle and jeer and interrupt anything I try to say. I don’t know the difference between a starred question and an unstarred one or how to go about asking either; the others (those who count, anyway) can cite thirty years of precedents and use Robert’s Rules of Order the way a makeup man uses a handkerchief. I’ve been assigned to the Consultative Committee to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, but it’s never convened; the other MPs are bringing officialdom to book in the Public Accounts Committee or wangling foreign trips to inspect the use of Hindi — the national language, after all, not to mention the vehicle of my fame — in India’s diplomatic missions abroad. I can’t cope; and what’s more, I’ve come to realize I don’t care.

I look around me at my fellow-backbenchers in this teak-paneled sanctum of national legislation. Some snore sonorously, undisturbed in the innocence of their ignorance. Others are awake, but equally immune to contamination by ideas. The most knowledgeable are the most powerless: the members of the Opposition, one of whom said to the PM in frustration the other day, “We have the arguments, but you have the votes.” That is the ultimate clincher in parliamentary democracy: the irrefutable logic of numbers. How does the quality of the debate matter, if you can win by the simple issue of a three-line whip? The MPs are herded in to vote: what they do before and after is of little concern to the party bosses. The air around me is heavy with lugubrious inattention. I get up, unnoticed except by teenagers in the gallery whose dupattas rustle in dismay at my departure. I leave and wish I did not have to return.

“I’m bored,” I confess to Cyrus Sponerwalla, who has come to Delhi in the line of duty to see me. “I don’t know how long I can stand this life.”

Cyrus perspires less in the dry heat of the capital, and his bulk seems to take up less space in the larger, airier rooms here. His tone is correspondingly milder, his ideas more ingenuous. “If you can’t do much in Parliament, man,” my PR man advises me, “use your position there to do something outside it, like. This is a great public relations opportunity, man.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ask. His dated Americanisms are infectious. “Like what?”

“Well, when MGR was elected to the Tamil Nadu State Assembly and didn’t have much to do, like, he distributed free raincoats to all the rickshawallahs of Madras during the monsoon, so they could go about their business without fear of getting wet. And,” he ends lamely on seeing my expression, “without catching a chill.”

“Well, thanks very much for the helpful suggestion,” I reply, making no effort to keep the sarcasm out of my tone. “My district happens to be in its third year of drought. I’m sure they could think of all sorts of useful things to do with a raincoat.”

“It’s just an idea, like,” Cyrus says defensively. “You could do something else, sorta situation-specific. We could come up with another gimmick, something different, idea-wise.”

“Yeah,” I respond heavily. “Like an umbrella, perhaps?”

“Yeah,” Cyrus is enthusiastic. “Free umbrellas. With your picture on ’em. Or maybe the party symbol. Let’s see, man…”

“Sponerwalla.” My tone is warning. “You’re getting carried away. Umbrellas? In a drought?”

His three faces fall simultaneously. “They could keep the sun off their heads,” he suggests weakly.

“Or they could be applied with force to the posteriors of anyone who tries to distribute them. Talk sense, Cyrus. That’s what I pay you to do. And speaking of payment, who’d pay for all this? A few lakh raincoats or umbrellas or for that matter plastic buckets don’t come cheap.”

Cyrus ponders this. “The party?” he suggests. I shake my head. “Some rich businessman?”

“In exchange for what?”

“Surely there are some favors you could do a businessman? Putting in a word with a minister?”

“I cant do myself any favors here, let alone anyone else,” I retort. “Even if I can put in a word, why should a minister pay any heed?”

“Because you’re Ashok Banjara,” the Bombay man says confidently.

“That, Cyrus,” I sadly tell him, “is no longer enough.”

In fact, it’s actually better these days to be Abha Patel. She has given up the films, traded backless cholis and slinky dresses for heavy silk saris, let her hair run to gray (and tied it up in a businesslike chignon), and been elected to Parliament in a landslide. She hasn’t got a portfolio either, but she is heading so many committees and forums on women’s issues and doing it all so visibly that no one dare embark on anything that relates even tangentially to women without consulting her first. Under her high-necked and long-sleeved blouses she still sports her falsies, if only for consistency, but it’s her voice people are interested in these days. There are moments when I’m tempted to go to her for advice again. But too much water has flowed under too many bridges since the last time.

Cyrus leaves, but not before asking me to help a nephew get into the Planning Commission Secretariat. I tell him I didn’t even know there was a Planning Commission, let alone a Secretariat for it. He assures me there is, and that it would benefit immeasurably from the talents of a Darius, or possibly Xerxes, Sponerwalla. Wearily I tell him I will see what I can do. I am learning the vocabulary of political Delhi.

But I am still not at home here. Quite literally, in fact: they have yet to allot me a house because the previous occupants of official residences, usually defeated MPs, are traditionally slow to vacate them. So I am based — having refused to live at my father’s — in something called a hostel. It is only marginally better appointed than the dressing rooms at Himalaya Studios, and I have resolutely resisted getting used to it. Not that I need to. Subramanyam has found me a posh farmhouse in the suburbs, complete with air-conditioners, swimming pool, and more Italian marble than Michelangelo would have known what to do with. It’s called a farmhouse to get around the zoning restrictions, but there isn’t a cow in sight and the only agriculture practiced in the vicinity is landscaping. I was pleased, but Ashwin threw up his hands in horror at the thought of my living there. “The occasional Sunday brunch with intimate friends, perhaps,” he said, “but live there? You’ll destroy everything we’ve said about you in the constituency and confirm Sugriva Sharma’s worst exaggerations. You’ve got to live somewhere more fitting, Ashok-bhai. A standard government bungalow like any other MP. Or stay with us.” He was careful not to say “with Dad.“

“I guess you’re right about the farmhouse,” I conceded reluctantly, “but I’m not staying with Dad. I’ll wait it out in the hostel. I’m hardly here anyway.”

This is true. Whatever my political importance or relative lack thereof, I am still in great demand at receptions and parties of every sort and return to my TOA (“temporary official accommodation”) only to sleep. Maya is in Bombay most of the time anyway; she thinks it would be too disruptive to pull the kids out of their school. In any case I have the parliamentary fringe benefit of free domestic air travel and can always use it to meet my domestic obligations. Frankly, I don’t mind the separation too much. I can be away from Maya without feeling guilty about it: after all, I’m sacrificing family life in the national cause. As the triplets grow (without somehow managing to grow up), it is a sacrifice I am increasingly willing to make. They are all of ten or thereabouts, and the house is already littered with cassette tapes, love comics, costume jewelry, and pinup posters of British pop stars and Pakistani cricketers. God knows who or what they will seize on when they enter their teens.

The only traditional home comfort I have brought with me is Subramanyam. He is disconsolately ensconced in a temporary office and clearly prefers dealing with producers to dialing politicians, a task at which he is conspicuously less successful. But having him around to take care of the big little things in life is the one positive element in my current existence. Well, not always positive. The biggest little thing he has to contend with these days is the flood of social invitations that have deluged me since my arrival in Delhi, and he hasn’t quite mastered the knack of wading through them.

Every time I leave Parliament feeling like the hero’s friend who doesn’t get the girl, I am consoled by the Delhi party circuit. This is a vast industry, probably the single largest contributor to the capital’s GDP and certainly to my now expanding waistline. I am invited to diplomatic receptions and ministerial inaugurations, spiritless launches of spiritual books, endless seminars on such appropriate topics as India’s Timeless Traditions, teetotal cocktails hosted by alcoholic party men, dinners to celebrate everything from a wedding to a new government contract. At these events I rub shoulders (and occasionally other anatomical parts) with journalists, party workers, bureaucrats, more journalists, middlemen, wives of middlemen, editors, itinerant intellectuals, foreign correspondents, diplomats, students, chronic partygoers, chronic party givers, yet more journalists. Subramanyam’s complete ignorance of the social pecking order outside Bollywood means that I attend far too many functions, none of them of the slightest political value to me. I am fed, lionized, photographed with, and generally (as the French ambassadress innocently trilled) “very solicited.” Some of the solicitations are more welcome than others. Few are turned down.

“Subramanyam,” I explode one morning, “I can’t believe you sent me to a reception to celebrate the National Day of Outer Mongolia.”

“But wery important I am thinking,” he replies defensively. “Diplomatic and all.”

“There were about two thousand people there, almost entirely gate-crashers from the university looking for free drinks,” I tell him feelingly. “The ambassador hadn’t the slightest idea who I was. I was pinned to a corner by a Chinese woman interpreter in glasses who kept telling me how much cleaner Beijing was than Ulan Bator. The gate-crashers all recognized me, though, and kept pestering me for autographs. I was so busy signing napkins that I couldn’t even take a sip from my drink. At the end of the evening the interpreter said it was most interesting that Indian students couldn’t drink alcohol at a foreign embassy without a signed permit from a member of Parliament. She was going to report it as a rule they would do well to apply back home in China.”

Subramanyam looks suitably’ chagrined, though I think he has rather missed the point. I resume my attack, brandishing a slip of paper. “And what was this?”

He looks at the note he had neatly written out for me, on the basis of a telephone message. “Evening with Mrs. Sippy group, sir,” he enunciates, as if I can’t read.

“I know what it says, you idiot, but what did you think it meant?”

“Mrs. Sippy, sir, you are knowing Mrs. Sippy, wife of wee-eye-pee producer in Bombay. Many big movies, sir. I thought you be happy, sir, to be accepting Mrs. Sippy invitation. Wery correct it was done, sir. Secretary called and all, said no time to be sending card. Real style, sir, no?”

I take a deep breath. “Subramanyam,” I explain with more patience than I possess. “It turned out to be Mississippi. A group from Mississippi. American visitors, Subramanyam. They wanted to know about Indian culture and customs. They spoke very slowly and clearly and loudly because they knew they were talking to a foreigner. They asked about sacred cows and whether I was from the acting caste. They wondered if Indian women were branded on their foreheads at birth. How can I ever forgive you, Subramanyam?”

“I am sorry, sir,” he says miserably. “I am not understanding all this new-new names. You better be getting someone better, sir.”

“Don’t be silly, Subramanyam,” I respond in some alarm. What would I do without him? “You’ll learn. These social engagements don’t matter very much anyway. I have more than enough of them to attend. My real problem is during working hours. I’ve really got nothing to do.”

A wary gleam lights up in Subramanyam’s beady eyes. Intimate awareness of my political unimportance has helped make him chronically homesick and, sometimes, presumptuously familiar.

“Why not you going back to films, sir?” he asks. “Though Mechanic not doing wery well, many producers are wanting, sir.”

“I’m afraid they’ll just have to want some more, Subramanyam,” I advise him. “I’ve only been an MP a few months, after all. It’s hardly time to give up.”

“Oh no, sir, you are misunderstanding,” Subramanyam assures me. “I am not saying you should be giving up political life, no sir. But you can be doing both films and politics, sir, like MGR he was doing.”

I wish everyone wouldn’t keep throwing MGR at me. Ashwin, Cyrus, now even Subramanyam. The fellow went on to become a Chief Minister, of course, which has rather stolen my thunder. I’m just a backbench MP, the political equivalent of the fat-arsed females with tree-trunk thighs who dance behind the heroine.

“I don’t know how the PM would react to that, Subramanyam. Let me see. I’ll think about it.”

Ashwin, who lives where he always has, with our parents, is categorical. “The party wouldn’t like it at all, Ashok,” he says firmly. “It wouldn’t fit well with the new image they want you to build, and it would give Sugriva Sharma and his ilk a chance to say I told you so. Remember how the good Pandit used to declare during the campaign that you’d be too busy chasing actresses for the cameras to do anything for the common people of the constituency? Our people’s line always was that you’d achieved all you wanted to in Hindi films and that you now wanted to turn your energies to serving the district. When you announced after the election that you would wind up the film projects that were in hand and cancel the ones on which shooting hadn’t yet begun, it got very favorable play. You can’t go back on that now.”

“But I’m not doing very much here, Ash,” I say. “And I–I’m bored.”

He gives me a look of withering contempt, like a makeup man asked to powder the arms of a too-dark actress. “You should have thought of that earlier, shouldn’t you?” it seems to say. But Ashwin’s only words are: “Then it’s about time you took up my suggestion, Ashok-bhai.”

“No.” My reaction is not as strong as usual, because his look has shaken me; but the word comes out instinctively. His suggestion was that I start receiving the inevitable flock of visitors and supplicants from the constituency — and, because I didn’t have an acceptable house of my own, that I do so where they were still coming, in other words, at my father’s house.

Ashwin shrugs, but it is not a gesture of indifference. He cares: there are really people in politics who care. “Look, they’re not coming all this way just to see Dad, or to hear me tell them you’re tied up in Parliament. The handful I send you there get little more than a namaste and a smile from you, in some open space like the Lok Sabha courtyard. That’s not enough, Ashok. They want to sit properly and talk to you, tell you their problems, seek your help. You’ve got to start doing this.”

“Fat lot of good it’d do,” I cut in. “What little we can deliver by way of favors, you’re already doing in my name.”

“You know it’s not the same thing,” he said, visibly curbing his evident impatience. “Ashok, why won’t you do this?” No “Ashok bhai” here. I notice that the suffix always slips when he can’t summon even ritual respect for me.

I go on the offensive for once. “You know perfectly well why I won’t set myself up at Dad’s place. He never issued one word of support for me during the election — no endorsement, no campaign appearance, nothing. When I won, he couldn’t find it in his heart to congratulate me. Not even when I came home in triumph.”

“Ashok-bhai, you’re overreacting.” He’s trying.

“You know what he said? Within my hearing, to you? He said, ’Ashwin, well done.’ Just that. And then he turned to me, I was standing there looking at him, and the words just stuck in his throat.”

“Words, words — why do the words matter so much to you, Ashok-bhai? Everyone knows how he must have felt. Does everything have to be a line of dialogue from a script before you can see it?”

Despite myself, I decide to let that pass. “What would you say he felt at the time?”

“Pride, satisfaction, the obvious things.”

“Well, he didn’t exactly make them obvious.”

“Oh, Ashok-bhai, you’re being childish. What gesture did you make to him? Did you go and touch his feet and seek his blessings?”

I take a deep breath and expel it very slowly. “Ashwin,” I say calmly, “I don’t care to discuss this any further. And I am not coming to hold court in my father’s house. That’s final.” He eyes me evenly, and I realize with a pang that he doesn’t like me at all. It is a half-formed suspicion that has nestled at the base of my consciousness for a long time, like a coiled serpent waiting to spring. I recoil from its hiss now and turn away from my brother. “If these people want to sit and talk to me, send them here,” I say, waving my hand to take in the drab white walls of the hostel room.

“Are you serious?” Ashwin asks, his eyes narrowing.

“Every morning, from nine to ten,” I confirm expansively. “Oh — and don’t feel obliged to be here yourself, if you’d rather not.”

I want him to turn to me, to take me in his arms and say, “Brother, I know you need me, I know my resentment has hurt you, I am sorry, I shall always be by your side.” But of course he does not.

“If you think you can manage on your own,” he says stiffly, “I’ll be happy to direct them here and leave it all to you.” And this is the same Ashwin who has told me for weeks that I need a political mentor, a political handler, and a political secretary — none of which I have yet acquired.

I nod. “Do that,” I say. “I’ve asked too much of you already.”

He leaves, and I watch him go, noticing him really as if for the first time: the walk, the movement of his arms, the shape of his narrow hips under the kurta-pajamas. He is so much like me.

“Ashokji.” Dr. Sourav Gangoolie, party treasurer and Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, rises from a plush chair in his air-conditioned office and waves his unlit pipe in my general direction. “So glad you could come.”

His warmth is as unreal as the frigidity of the air in the room. I sit gingerly in the chair he offers me and find myself sinking with uneasy comfort into its leather-upholstered welcome. On the wall a lurid Husain print portrays Indira Gandhi as Durga, all-conquering goddess of South Block.

“Some tea?” Dr. Gangoolie — the honorific is of as uncertain provenance as the spelling of his surname, but that is what everyone calls him — blinks at me behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. He wears, unusually for a politician, safari suits rather than more indigenous garb and tries to conceal buck teeth behind a trimmed beard and a rarely lit pipe, whose function, it has long been rumored, is primarily to prompt him to keep his lips sealed. With his short hair, beaky nose, and prominent ears he looks like a subspecies of owl, but a more knowing and less corpulent variety than the genus Sponerwalla. Fittingly, Dr. Gangoolie has a reputation for both erudition and discretion, which has only increased with his appointment to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat while still holding his party post. Behind his desk is a framed caricature of Dr. Gangoolie himself by the cartoonist Kutty, but where smoke curls out of the pictorial pipe, the real one is, as far as I can make out, unlit.

“Oh — no, thank you. I’ll wait,” I reply. I expect I’ll get another cup when I’m with the PM, and few liquids are as undrinkable as government-issue tea.

Dr. Gangoolie seems somewhat put out by my reply, for he opens his mouth and closes it again on the mouthpiece of his pipe. I feel impelled to ease the strain. “As you know, I’ve been trying to see the Prime Minister for some time now,” I say defensively.

“Yes, yes.” He looks uncomfortable, like a producer reminded of a promise. “The PM has been really, so to say, busy. So many meetings, visitors, overseas trips, you know how it has been.”

“Yes, of course,” I reply graciously. “I can well imagine. But I am glad the summons has come at last.”

“Oh, dear.” The resemblance to an owl becomes even more pronounced as Dr. Gangoolie tilts his head sideways and examines me in dismay through his glasses. “I fear there has been, so to say, a misunderstanding.”

“There has?” Dr. Gangoolie’s habit of lapsing into a sibilant “so to say” is beginning to grate.

“I am afraid so.” Dr. Gangoolie takes his pipe out of his mouth and smiles ingratiatingly, but the eyes behind the glasses are stern. “You see, it is not the Prime Minister who wishes to see you today, but, so to say, me.”

“You?” I flush with embarrassment. “But my secretary said the Prime Minister’s office had called — I’m sorry,” I mutter, cursing Subramanyam for taking so long to get the hang of this place.

“That’s all right,” Dr. Gangoolie says in a tone that almost sounds cheerful. But he does not offer me another cup of tea. “How are you, so to say, getting on here in Delhi, Ashokji?”

“It’s a different world for me, Dr. Gangoolie,” I reply candidly. “And there’s still a lot I have to learn. But I do wish I could be of some greater use to the party and the government than adorning the back benches and casting the occasional parliamentary vote.”

“Indeed you can, Ashokji.” Dr. Gangoolie looks delighted at the turn of the conversation. “That is precisely why I have, so to say, called you here today. It is — uh — a rather delicate matter.”

“I’m all ears.” I sit up. This is the first time the powers-that-be have taken any interest in me.

“Of course, what I am about to say must not, so to say, go beyond these four walls.” He indicates them with a sweep of his pipe, as if to leave me in no doubt about which four walls he means.

“Of course.” I am at my professional best; my voice reflects a man who is firm, clear, dependable.

He looks suitably gratified. Then his expression changes. “How much did the party contribute to your election expenses, Ashokji?” he asks abruptly.

I am somewhat taken aback by the question. “I don’t really know,” I say tentatively. “My brother, Ashwin, handled that kind of thing.”

“But would you hazard, so to say, a guess, perhaps?”

“Oh, seven, eight lakhs?”

Dr. Gangoolie gets up, walks over to his desk, pulls a file out of a drawer, consults it. “Seventeen lakhs, three hundred and four rupees,” he says, slipping the file back and closing the drawer with the turn of a key, “and sixty-two paise.”

I raise my eyebrows, impressed.

“One of our higher subventions,” he says smugly, “but then it was, so to say, an important race. Some of our other first-time candidates got only eight-nine lakhs.”

“I’m grateful,” I say.

“Not at all, not at all,” Dr. Gangoolie waves his pipe dismissively. “It was our duty as a party. Posters, Jeeps, megaphones, speaking arrangements, so to say, tea and coffee for party workers, petrol, garlands, transport for older voters — there are so many things that cost money in winning an election. And do you know how much the Election Commission allows us to spend? In total?”

“No,” I confess.

“One lakh exactly,” Dr. Gangoolie says. “And that is what our accounts officially, so to say, show — perhaps even a few rupees less.”

It is my turn to blink. “But that’s absurd,” I say. “How can anyone run a campaign on so little?”

“Well, some candidates don’t even have that much,” Dr. Gangoolie responds contentedly. “But the bigger parties, and certainly ours, are left with no choice, so to say, but to violate the laws.”

“You mean my campaign was illegal?”

“No more so than most, so to say, of the other victors. If not, indeed, all of them.” The pipe describes a large circle, taking in the entire rotunda of Parliament.

“But our party” — I use the possessive pronoun with self-conscious pride — “has been in power for so many years. Why didn’t we change the law?”

“We didn’t need to.” Dr. Gangoolie assumes the professorial air for which he is especially respected by the dropouts and dunderheads who dominate our party. “Some laws exist, so to say, to codify an ideal, a desirable, not to mention politically salable, state of affairs. It is widely recognized that their fulfillment may not, so to say, always be realizable in practice.”

“In other words, everyone knows the law is there to be broken?”

“Ignored, my dear boy, not broken.” Dr. Gangoolie taps the bowl of his pipe on an ashtray, but nothing emerges. “You ask why we don’t, so to say, change it. Why bother to when it poses no difficulties in practice? Whom would it help? In fact, the present restrictions imply certain, so to say, advantages for a party in power. To spend above the legal limit, one needs illegal money, or perhaps I should say money that has not been accounted for.” I nod. “Who has the easiest access, so to say, to such sources of funds?”

“A party in a position to do favors?” I suggest.

“Precisely. You are, so to say, a quick learner.” Dr. Gangoolie beams, yellowing teeth parting his black beard. “So in fact a low legal limit is of some benefit to us, because we are usually in a position to do better than others once the account books are closed. In fact, raising such funds has been among my, so to say, principal functions for the party.”

“I’ve heard.”

Dr. Gangoolie acknowledges his repute with a nod. “But these days things are not, so to say, so easy.”

“Why?”

“Well, the Prime Minister and the people around him are anxious, so to say, to clean up the party. The government is launched on a full frontal assault against corruption — a term much misused in our public life, incidentally, but that is, er, another matter. The Finance Minister is busy conducting raids against businessmen whose books are not, so to say, as clear as the complexions of your leading ladies.” He allows himself a little laugh at this witticism. “It is not a good time to be asking them for unaccounted donations on the side.”

“I see.” I am not at all sure how far I can see, or where all this is leading. But something tells me I will not have long to wait to find out.

“But elections still have to be fought, our democratic processes, so to say, defended,” Dr. Gangoolie adds without irony. “So our minds have turned to alternatives. Instead of getting our funds, so to say, in small quantities from large numbers of Indians, why not get them in large amounts from one or two foreigners? It is easier, much less messier, altogether simpler. For myself, too, I must admit to a certain sense, so to say, of relief at not having to repeatedly stretch my hands out to some of the grubby little men with whom we are obliged to do business. Meet a foreign businessman, strike a deal (in the national interest, of course), agree on a certain, so to say, commission — nothing corrupt here, it is, so to say, a standard practice — and a generous amount of foreign exchange goes directly to a bank account in Liechtenstein or Switzerland.”

“Ah.” I am beginning to feel distinctly uneasy.

“And this, Ashokji, is, so to say, where you come in.”

I am taken aback. “But why me?” I ask in a mixture of genuine surprise and feigned innocence.

“Come, come, Ashokji, you are, so to say, a man of the world,” Dr. Gangoolie says affably, making it sound like a postgraduate degree. “We all know that your eminence in the film industry is not fully reflected in your tax returns. We have no real objection, of course, but we are confident, so to say, that you are in a better position to help us in Switzerland than most.”

I look at him in some alarm. “I don’t understand,” I say carefully. “Even assuming that I know, that I can find out, about such things, why would the party need me? I mean, in your position, with your authority and connections, and given the kinds of people you’re dealing with abroad, nothing should be easier than having the money put discreetly into an account, or accounts, for you.”

“How true,” Dr. Gangoolie agrees with an emphatic bobbing of his pipe. “That is indeed how it should be. But we are, so to say, a divided government.” He jabs his pipe at me to make his point. “Times are bad. There are people in Revenue Intelligence who are taking their instructions too seriously. With encouragement from certain elements in the Cabinet.” He looks suitably mournful. “It is a sorry state of affairs. No one knows whom to trust any more. There are, so to say, wheels within wheels.” On his Bengali tongue that comes out as “heels within heels,” and I have a mental image of rapidly scurrying feet. “I am told that the minister concerned has even ordered external surveillance, by a foreign detective agency if you please, of all pending and current transactions. So it is actually more difficult these days to obtain a commission from a government contract than, so to say, from a private one.”

He sucks briefly on his pipe, his eyes narrowing as at some private reflection. “We shall do something about this,” Dr. Gangoolie adds darkly, looking like an owl who has smelled a rat. “But that will take some time. For now, we cannot open a new account or involve anyone connected with the transaction who might be monitored. We need the convenience of a private account, and so to say, rather quickly.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this,” I say. “You want to have a large sum of money paid into a preexisting account abroad that has nothing to do with the government. And you thought of me.”

Dr. Gangoolie nods. “There are others known to us, of course, Indian businessmen based abroad, even in Switzerland. But we think you would be safer. And, of course, the party would be suitably grateful.”

I do not reflect long. When in Delhi, play by Delhi rules. I am just at the beginning of a political career and could do worse than get into the good books of the bosses when they need a favor. I nod. “Anything to help the party,” I say.

Dr. Gangoolie exhales his delight. “Excellent,” he replies, pulling out a pouch of imported tobacco. He must be relieved, because now it seems he is really going to fill his pipe. “Now, so to say, listen carefully. Here are the details.”

How was I to know? This is what I find myself saying to Ashwin when the dung hit the punkah. It’s not as if you were there to advise me either, brother. How could I judge with what authority Dr. Gangoolie was really, so to say, speaking? I thought I was doing what anyone in my position would have done.

Not anyone, he retorts, looking exasperated. Only you.

It happens so fast I can barely see the blur. Like one of Mohanlal’s simpleminded directional techniques that shows the passage of time by the pages on a wall calendar flipping rapidly through the dates. One moment I am basking in my newfound regular access to the Prime Minister’s office, the next an enterprising newspaper has found (or been leaked) evidence of a commission that was never supposed to have been paid. Documents start being circulated in Parliament. Dr. Gangoolie is expelled from the party and denounces its ideological direction to explain his departure. The investigation is stepped up by a self-righteous minister; Switzerland starts being mentioned. An account labeled Gypsy is unearthed, to the delight of amateur translators and travel agents. Maya’s shopping trips to Harrod’s are alluded to on the front pages. The PM’s supporters in the party attack the investigation. The minister threatens to resign rather than drop his inquiries. Fingers are pointed at me; two-bit journalists start compiling dossiers on my visits to Geneva. MPs step aside as I walk toward them in the Central Hall of Parliament. The whispers mount. The Prime Minister truthfully denies ever having met me since my election. Voters in my constituency are interviewed and quoted as saying that they have not seen my face there since the voting tallies were declared. (True, but dammit, wasn’t I supposed to be in Delhi?) A syndicated columnist suggests that I was brought into the party because of my film world connections with smugglers, black marketeers, and foreign exchange violators. No Hindi film hero has been more rapidly reduced to unproven villainy.

I am still in shock from these attacks, but what really breaks me is the defense. I know the government will not expose my involvement, because they cannot do so without betraying themselves. But the way they choose to protect me! The Prime Minister lets it be known he has not so much as spoken to me in months. An anonymous, highly placed government source tells another columnist that if I were of any importance to the party I would have been better employed than on the back benches; therefore I am obviously a politician of no consequence who couldn’t possibly have any connection to a major national transaction. “Ashok Banjara was brought into politics to win a seat, not to run the affairs of government,” a party spokesman with hair coming out of his ears bluntly tells a journalist with steam coming out of hers. A government-appointed inquiry fails to establish any connection between me (or anyone else in the party, not even, so to say, Dr. Gangoolie) and the published documents. The recalcitrant minister, who has meanwhile been kicked upstairs to a more prestigious portfolio, denounces the inquiry as “a whitewash of black money” and leaves to set up his own party.

Legally I am in the clear; my exoneration, though, is based upon the absolute reiteration of my irrelevance. There will be no criminal charges against me, but politically I am as finished as a cabaret dancer on crutches.

There really is only one thing to do. I quit.

No one has to ask me to do it. All it takes is one conversation with my brother. “Its all gone, Ashok,” he says with finality. “All gone. And you don’t even know why. You don’t even understand what the game was, whose interests you were serving, who set you up, who rode you to a fall, why. It was just another part in a story you thought you didn’t need to understand. But on this shift, Ashok-bhai, somebody gave you the wrong lines.”

“I know, Ashwin,” I admit glumly. “Tell me what it was about.”

“What is there to tell?” Ashwin is both depressed and dismissive. “You were taken for a ride, that’s all.”

“But what about all the stuff Dr. Gangoolie told me? What did it mean?”

“That? Oh, that,” Ashwin says. “That was done with the political equivalent of reflectors, playback, dubbing. That was all show business.”

What can I say to that? I resign from Parliament and announce that, for personal reasons, primarily that of being saddened and disgusted by the vilification to which I have been unjustly subjected, I am also leaving politics for good. Because I ask Ashwin to look over the text of the statement, he puts in a sentence of thanks to the voters of my constituency for having elected me. Before my announcement reaches the newspapers, Pandit Sugriva Sharma declares his renewed candidacy for the seat.

In their relief at being spared the embarrassment of having to defend me, the party tries to negotiate a deal with the Pandit. They will put up a weak candidate, in effect letting him have the seat, provided he confines his electoral attacks to me rather than the party. Confidently, he spurns them. Our ex-minister endorses Sugriva Sharma’s candidacy. His victory is a foregone conclusion. Even then, Dad and Ashwin are asked to stay away from the constituency during the by-election.

I have, as our Hindi film dialogists say, rubbed the honor of the Banjaras in the mud. I decide to leave Delhi. But I have to say good-bye to my brother. Good-bye, and farewell: I want him to fare well.

I walk into the house on the way to the airport. My mother’s face is impossible to read when I tell her of my decision. “Jeete raho, bete’ is all she can say. May you go on living, my son. The same traditional blessing she had given me when I first set out for Bollywood. I had not found the words encouraging then; I do not find them discouraging now.

Ashwin isn’t home. She doesn’t know when he’ll be back. “I’m sorry I can’t wait, Ma,” I say. “Tell him I wanted to say goodbye. I’ll telephone him from Bombay.” I hear the clatter of a cane and the shuffle of tired feet at the entrance to the room. Even before I look I know who it is, though I hadn’t known Dad had started using a cane. I want to reach out to him. He stands in the doorway a shrunken man, his face gaunt and lined, a shambling figure far removed from the towering personality I have always sought to escape.

“So you’re leaving,” he says. His voice is hoarse, echoing a fraying hollowness within. I nod soundlessly. I would like to say something more — “sorry,” perhaps, “sorry, Dad.” I haven’t called him “Dad” in ages. But no words come.

“Leaving. Escaping. Running away. As always.” He leans on his cane, each utterance emerging in an angry rasp. “Why?” He spits out the question.

“There’s nothing left for me to do here.” I am shaken, made defensive by the unexpectedness of his rage.

“There never was anything for you to do here.” The bitterness flies out of his mouth like spittle. “And once I had such high hopes for you. My—son.” His voice breaks slightly at the lost possibilities of the word. “Why?” he resumes, his cane smashing at the door-jamb. “What for? What was the point of it all?”

“KB,” Ma says, “you’re shouting.”

“I know I’m shouting!” He turns to me and I realize that not even in my childhood have I seen him so angry. “Go! Go to your films and your sluts and your dancing and kicking! Go — go and destroy something else!”

“Dad—”

“Don’t say another word!” And I see, to my horror and disbelief, that he has raised his cane and is holding it as if he is about to strike. “KB!” My mother’s alarm is genuine. Quickly she goes to him and gently lowers his arm. They both look at me, and I am lacerated by the jagged edges of pain in their eyes.

There is nothing I can say to them. I leave the house without another word.

“I wasn’t enjoying it anyway,” I say to Cyrus, whose nephew has been turned down by the Planning Commission. “But one thing I’ll never forgive the bastards for: they froze the Gypsy account, into which the commission had been paid, without warning me to get my own money out first. Cyrus, I’m practically broke.”

To his credit, Sponerwalla doesn’t remind me he’d argued against my foray into the land of the cuckoo clock. “That should be easily remedied,” he says, looking like a chocolate lover who’s just found the soft center. “Let the producers know you’re back in business, and they’ll come flocking to you again.”

But they aren’t. Subramanyam’s face registers even lower levels of disappointment than it did in Delhi: producers aren’t available when he calls them. The one or two offers that are made are at figures I would have turned down five years ago.

“What I am to be telling them, sir? When I told that sir would not be interested at that price, Choubey-sahib saying you tell him anyway, it is more than anyone else will be giving him these days.” He averted his eyes, like a Brahmin before a shish-kebab. “Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be sorry, Subramanyam, it’s only a phase.” I reassure him with a confidence I never felt in the political world. “These people only know the box office, where they have only heard of up and down, and because of what has happened they think I’m down. What they don’t realize is that I may be down in politics, but as an actor, I’m as good as I ever was, and the people love me.”

“Yes, sir,” says Subramanyam dubiously.

“You don’t seem convinced,” I laugh. “Well, don’t worry. You tell Choubey-sahib I said no to his offer, but that I want to see him. Ask him to come here, let’s say, at teatime tomorrow.”

Fifteen minutes later he is back. “I am not getting Choubey-sahib, sir,” he confesses. “Only his secretary I am getting. He is making me hold on for quite some time, then he is saying, ‘If Ashokji wanting to meet Choubey-sahib, tell him to come here.’ I starting to say something, sir, but then line going dead.”

“Hmm.” I digest this pieces of news; it’s worse than I thought. I suppose the balance sheet of the last few years is none too good: Dil Ek Qila, a few middling hits, the failure of Mechanic. And now a bad name in the press, though for reasons that have nothing to do with my acting. The reek of defeat still clings to my aura. “Well, Subramanyam, perhaps it’s time I paid a visit to Choubey-sahib after all.”

Choubey-sahib lives in a bungalow, of the kind that few producers can afford today: set back from the road, big gate, even a little stretch of grass in front. I am ushered in by a deferential manservant and shown to an overstuffed sofa.

I look around me with interest. It is years since I have been here, years since the producers started coming to me. Continued success has added to Choubey’s prosperity and his furnishings. Sofas, chairs, and a divan are upholstered in red raw silk and generously laden with cushions and bolsters clad in varying hues of the same material. The walls are not spared: I touch one and find it has been papered in raw silk. Yet little of it is visible under a scattering of modern art, all acquired since it became the fashionable thing to buy: a couple of Hu-sains from his mass-production period, an intricate Charan Sharma (mounds of stones seen through a half-open window, the producer’s view of his extras), and a gigantic Anjolie Ela Menon catch my eye. So do the photographs Choubey has placed on every available surface, all depicting the greater glory of Choubey: Choubey with the Prime Minister, Choubey with the dynastic scion who nearly became Prime Minister, Choubey being garlanded by some overdressed woman with a smile as false as her pearls, Choubey with wife and offspring in a studio pose, Choubey with (I am pleased to note) me. Some of these (but not mine) are signed. There are also solitary Choubeys in evidence, from a youthful, chubby-faced Choubey to a more contemporary Choubey, still chubby-faced but no longer youthful, the fat cheeks set in the sullenness of success. Many replica Choubeys, but no original: of the real thing, there is no sign.

“Is Choubey-sahib in?” I ask the manservant.

“Yes, sahib, he is in,” the man confirms. “Sahib, chai, sahib?”

“Coffee, I think,” I demur, just to assert myself. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I am here?”

The man shifts uneasily from foot to foot, his eyes evading mine. “Sahib, I’ll go get the tea,” he says in Hindi, backing away toward the kitchen.

“Not so fast,” I say. “You haven’t answered my question.”

He stands on one leg and cocks his head, as if trying to recall it. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I’m here?” I repeat.

“Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping,” the man informs me sheepishly.

“Well, go and wake him up then,” I demand. “He said eleven o’clock, it’s almost quarter past already.”

“I’ll go get the tea, sahib,” says the servant and disappears before I can catch him again.

I resume, in silence but not tranquillity, my inspection of the Choubey living room. There are three Filmfare statuettes on a sideboard, Best Picture Awards for God knows what, perhaps even something starring me. A brass hookah stands on a corner table, an outsize Nataraj on another. Choubey clearly hasn’t left his interior decor to the kind of people who do the sets of his films. There are wooden elephants, a clay Bankura horse, a bejeweled Rajasthani camel. Glossy coffee table books of photographs by Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh jostle for space with well-thumbed issues of Showbiz, Stardust, and TV and Video World. Choubey has certainly acquired culture with a vengeance.

The tea arrives, accompanied by thick milky pedas on a plate. “Have you told Choubey-sahib?” I ask ungratefully as the servant sets the tray down.

“Sahib, I — sahib, Choubey-sahib is just coming, sahib.”

I am not mollified. “Did he say that himself?”

“Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping. He has given me strict instructions not to disturb him. But he will wake up soon, I am sure. I am sorry, sahib. I am sure it will not be long, sahib.”

“Well, what time does Choubey-sahib normally wake up?”

The servant shifts uneasily again. “Sir, about this time.”

“About? What time exactly? When did he wake up yesterday?”

“Sahib, yesterday he woke up at noon.”

“And the day before?”

“At noon.”

“So have you ever seen him wake up at eleven and keep an appointment?”

“Yes, sahib, many times.”

“And when was the last time?”

“Sahib, I–I don’t remember.”

So Choubey had called me for an appointment in the morning with every intention of keeping me waiting till he had woken up. That’s the way you treat aspiring actresses and perspiring journalists, not superstars. I feel a deep surge of anger and humiliation well up within me.

I rise.

“Sahib, you haven’t had your tea.”

“Give it to Choubey-sahib,” I say brutally, “with my compliments.”

And I walk out, with as much dignity as I can muster. It is not a lot. After all, I had asked for coffee.

“So what do I do, Tool?”

I am sitting with my erstwhile classmate and current Guru at his new ashram in Worli. I know the compound well: it used to be the old Himalaya Studios. The video revolution, spiraling studio costs, and skyrocketing property prices have changed the economics of the film studios: the owners of the Himalaya got far more from the Guru's expatriate backers than they could have hoped to earn in decades of rentals to film production units. Where once the studio was the fantasyland in which any world could be conjured up with canvas, paint, and a box of nails for next to nothing, filmmakers are finding it cheaper today to hire actual locales. When I began my movie career there must have been thirty film studios in Bombay, and nine-tenths of each film was shot entirely in a studio. Today there are hardly seven or eight, and some of them — like S. T. Studios, in which I shot my first film — are said to be on their last legs. If they could sell, Cyrus tells me, they would; but not all are as lucky, or adept, at getting the necessary bureaucratic permissions as Himalaya. Because of the land-use laws not every studio can sell its property to the highest bidder, so large studio lots, for which a developer would cheerfully pay a fortune, rot underused in prime locations. Rather like me. “You’re sure no one saw you come in?”

“Yes, Tool, I told you. Blinds down in the car, side gate, back way into the building. As we’d agreed. Come on, Tool, give me a break, will you?”

“And don’t call me Tool. It’s undignified.”

“It’s your name, for Chrissake. I didn’t invent it.”

“Guruji sounds better.”

“Not to me. What’s all this, Tool? Are you going to abandon me, too?”

“Only if you persist in calling me by that abominable college nickname.”

I’ve never seen him so tetchy before. “OK, OK, Guruji it is,” I say. “Now act like one and give me some advice. I need it badly.”

“I know.” Tool scratches himself in an intimate place and scowls into his beard. Thejolly bright-eyed sage of our last encounter seems a world away from the irritable figure picking his toenails in front of me. Actually, he should have much more to bejolly about: thanks at least initially to my advice and guidance, he has become the rage of Bollywood, whereas his blessings have only brought me back where I started — in fact, behind where I started.

“As I see it,” he says, “your situation is this. By going away to Parliament you lost momentum; the pictures you canceled were given to other actors, some of whom did rather well. Your last hit was more than two years ago. The Mechanic flop still lingers in producers’ minds, and since then your public image has taken a beating thanks to your Swiss shenanigans. Whatever political popularity you had has been dissipated by your resignation. You are not returning to films triumphant on another field of battle, but vanquished or, at least, disillusioned. So it’s no surprise you’re no longer the obvious choice for the role of antiestablishment hero, gloriously conquering injustice and tyranny. If anything you’re seen as somehow part of the corrupt system you used to beat as a hero. In the circumstances, producers are no longer clamoring for your signature at extortionate rates; they’ve found other actors who’d do just as well for less. Right so far?”

“Thanks for cheering me up, Guruji,” I confirm bitterly.

Tool goes on, oblivious, his fingers caressing between his toes.

“Dilemma: if you say yes to one of these producers, you go down in their eyes, you become one of many, affordable, dispensable. If you keep saying no, you starve.” He smiles for the first time. “In a manner of speaking. That is how you see your choice, isn’t it?”

“You could say that,” I concede reluctantly. “So what do I do?”

“There is a third way.” Some of thejolliness returns to Tool’s face, like lights slowly coming on before a take. “A man came to see me yesterday, a fat fellow called Murthy. You don’t know him, but he’s a producer. In the South. And he’s very, very, wealthy.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He makes movies that don’t feature in the Filmfare awards and whose stars don’t get space in Showbiz, but that do extremely well with the masses. His last film grossed over a crore.”

“I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this chap. Murthy? Are you sure you’ve got the name right?”

“I’ve got the name right.” Tool tucks a foot under his thigh and blinks at me. “He makes mythologicals.”

I look at him like a tea-drinker waiting for the infusion to brew. “And?”

“That’s why you haven’t heard of him. He makes movies that people go to see as if they were going to a temple. When you go to see a reincarnation of God you don’t care who’s acting the part. So Murthy hasn’t had to look for big names in Bombay. He’s got his own regulars, and he does well with unknowns.”

“So now he wants to break in to normal Hindi films and is looking for a superstar? Me.”

“No.” Tool looks too self-satisfied as he registers my disappointment. “No, he believes in sticking to what he’s already doing well. He’ll continue doing mythologicals.”

“So why did he come to see you?”

The Guru looks at me disapprovingly beneath bushy eyebrows. “The relations between a guru and a client are always confidential,” he intones with a solemnity that, in happier times, would have made me laugh. Instead, I nod in contrite acknowledgment.

“All right,” I mumble, chastened, “but where do I come in?”

Tool raises one hand, with forefinger upright. “That’s the interesting part. Murthy is planning a new film — the mythological to end all mythologicals. A film about the end of the world. Kalki.”

I look at him, still unsure. “And?”

“You’d be perfect for the part!” the Guru beams. “The last avatar — a divine figure of grace and strength who comes into the world riding a white stallion, with a naming sword in his hand. He sees that dharma has been violated and mocked, and he launches on his divine dance of death because he must destroy a corrupt world. What a role! What a part!”

“You’ve got to be joking, Tool. Me? Do a mythological? I’d be a laughingstock.”

“N. T. Rama Rao isn’t. That’s about all he’s done, and he’s a Chief Minister. Think about it, AB. I have some influence with Murthy. I can convince him to offer you the part.”

“Convince him? Since when have I been reduced to this, Tool? In the old days a maker of mythologicals wouldn’t get in to see me. Convince him?”

“If you can do better yourself,” says Tool, affronted, into his beard, “you needn’t ask my advice.”

“I’m sorry. Go on. Let me hear the rest of it.”

“Murthy gets a big name, the biggest name he’s ever used. In turn, he delivers a massive publicity blitz, making Kalki your vehicle. You use it to restore your image — to identify yourself forever as the destroyer of corruption, not the begetter of it.”

I’m beginning to get the point. “I’m intrigued, Tool,” I admit. “I mean Guruji.”

“This,” he says with the sudden enthusiasm of a Sponerwalla, “could mark the beginning of your renaissance. A brave step to redefine yourself in the eyes of the masses. An opportunity to play the religious chord in the hearts of the Indian public. The formula wallahs don’t want you? To naraka with them! You will turn to God.”

I am swept up by his fervor, by the messianic light in his eyes. “I’ll do it, Guruji,” I breathe.

I don’t even ask him what he’s getting out of it. Or how much.

Exterior: Night

KALKI

The camera pans over a vast, arid plain, taking in an opulent city-dotted with poor people. Down its narrow streets, thin dark men in loincloths carry heavy gold-handled palanquins under whose lace canopies recline sleek women adorned with glittering jewelry. They pass a sad-eyed child wailing in the gutter, an old man lying sick and helpless on the side of the road, a cow dead or dying, flies swarming around its lank head. A beggar woman, infant at her hip, hand outstretched, asks piteously for alms. The women in the palanquins avert their imperious gazes, and the beggar stares after them as their bearers trot past, her hand still reaching out in futile hope.

Ahead, a sumptuous chariot, its gleaming carriage pulled by a healthy, impeccably white horse, comes to a halt. Its way is blocked by the broken-down cart of a ragpicker. As the mournful buffalo yoked to the cart chews ruminatively on a dry stalk, the ragpicker, his torn and dirty bundles slipping off the cart’s open back, examines his wooden wheel, which has come off entirely and tilted the cart to an acute angle.

“Out of my way!” snarls the mustachioed man in the chariot. He wears a silk tunic with a gold breastplate; bands of gold encircle his fingers, wrists, triceps and hang from his ears. He cracks his whip to lend emphasis to his command.

The ragpicker cowers and points helplessly to the broken wheel.

“Sahib,” he says anachronistically, for the usage was to be a legacy of colonialism, “my wheel is broken.”

“That’s not my problem,” the man in the chariot snaps. “Get your cart off the road.”

“Sahib, I ca- … cannot. The wheel will have to be repaired first.”

“Do you expect me to wait, imbecile? Push it out of my way.” This time the whip comes down on the ragpicker’s shoulders.

“Ye-e-s, sahib.” The ragpicker tries to lift the collapsed end of his cart, but it is too much for hirn. Sweat breaks out in beads on his face, he grunts with the strain, but the cart will not budge. He goes to the front and tries to coax his buffalo to move. It does not. He prods the animal with a stick. The buffalo starts up, but the cart only creaks and collapses further, one corner now touching the dusty ground.

“Sahib … you see—”

The man in the chariot leaps down, red eyes blazing, and hits the ragpicker with his whip. His victim raises his arms across his face in a gesture of self-protection and abasement, but still the blows rain down. Hearing the disturbance, four men, clad in simpler versions of the whip-wielder’s costume, and with copper bracelets rather than gold, run in. A command is barked: the four push aside the ragpicker, seize his cart and bodily turn it over, and send the cart and its contents crashing and splintering against the wall. The buffalo, lowing, falls; the ragpicker’s worldly goods lie shattered and scattered at his feet; one of the four men cuffs him soundly for good measure as he sprawls on the ground. But the way is now free for the chariot.

An old blind woman with flowing white hair bends down to take the ragpicker’s head in her hands. “What have they done to you, my son?” she asks, sightless eyes staring into the camera.

He says nothing. She looks into a distance beyond the vision of the seeing and says in a terrible voice, “It will all be over soon, my son. Justice will come to this world. This evil will be destroyed.”

The ragpicker utters a disbelieving sound, half moan, half laugh. “How, Ma? Who will do it?”

“Don’t worry,” she replies in the same tone. “He will come.”

“Who, Ma?”

She does not need to answer, for the sound track thunders and flaming titles fill the screen like flashes of lightning:

ASHOK BANJARA

as

K A L K I

As the credits continue, the theme song is heard, sung by a chorus of voices bhajan-style to the accompaniment of a wheezing harmonium and clashing castanets:

In the darkness of the world

dharma’s banner is unfurled

as the evil and the sickness must be fought;

when all good is crushed and curled

and insults to God are hurled,

it’s time for action to take the place of thought.

Kalki! Kalki!

arise, o lord, your noble time has come; Kalki! Kalki!

descend to earth and strike adharma dumb.

The poor can eat no rice,

the rich indulge in every vice,

the awful time of Kaliyug is here;

men are trampled just like mice

as oppression claims its price,

but now the time for deliverance is near.

Kalki! Kalki!

Hope dawns at last upon your glorious birth! Kalki! Kalki!

Our salvation comes when you destroy the earth.

[“Now wait a minute/” the superstar said to the producer. “I thought Kaliyug was now. J thought Kalki was yet to come, that Kalki would come at the end of our modern era to destroy the present-day world, which has lapsed into immorality, et cetera, et cetera. Why then have you conceived this as a costume drama, set in the age of chariots and palanquins?”

[And the producer replied, “Mythologicals in modern dress? What you are saying? You are wanting me to lose all my money or what? No, my dear Thiru Banjara, when the Indian public is coming to see mythological, it is coming to see chariot, and palanquin, and costumes with much gold. How it matters what time story is being set? When our noble ancestors were thinking of Kaliyug, were they imagining motorcars and suit-pant, if you please? And kindly be thinking also of something else. If this filmistory taking place today, without palanquins and all, in independent India, and Kalki is to come down to destroy that, how will be reacting our friends the censors? You think they will be liking? You think they will be saying, ’Please show wickedness of our politicians, and police, and corruption and all, we will give U certificate and recommend entertainment-tax exemption’? No, my friend, they will be going cut-cut with scissors, they will be banning on grounds of likely to incite disaffection and public disturbance. And then where I will be? And not to forget: where you will be?”

[“You’re right, Murthy-ji,” said the superstar. “Forget I ever asked.”] Vignettes of Kaliyug, when the moral order of the world is turned upside down: in a luxurious palace rules an evil queen, with a hooked nose and white-streaked hair, seated on a throne of burnished gold. She is surrounded by courtiers with ingratiating smiles who bend deeply from their copious waists. A young man is dragged into her audience hall and flung at her feet. “He is from the stables,” says an oily courtier. “He wants more. He has been saying that the horses eat better than the stablehands.”

“Take him away and flog him,” says the queen. “Then send him away. We can hire two new stablehands on the wages this ungrateful men is being paid.” The man shouts his defiance as he is led out, but his eyes bear the haunted look of one who acknowledges his own defeat.

Next comes a young woman clad in a coarse black-and-white print. She has been going from pipal tree to pipal tree, telling stories about evil and injustice across the land. “Have her tongue torn out,” says the queen. The woman is too numbed with shock to protest as courtiers leap gleefully to execute the command.

An old Brahmin sage is then brought in, a former counselor to the late king. At first the queen is respectful; the old Brahmin has helped the throne in the past, he has persuaded bandits to lay down their weapons and embrace dharma, he is a man of learning and wisdom. But his message now is unwelcome: he wants the queen to retire, clad only in bark, to the forest to commune with the trees and the animals and to contemplate the Absolute.

“But I am not ready for such an exile,” says the queen.

“The people want it,” replies the Brahmin, “and I demand it of you. Otherwise I fear Nature herself will revolt against your rule, rivers will flow backward toward their source, clouds will drop blood rather than rain, the very earth will crack and blacken in its shame.” The queen trembles in rage. “Lock him up and starve him,” she screams as her courtiers scurry to obey. “I do not want to hear his voice again.” The Brahmin is led unprotestingly away, his face serene in its knowledge of the inevitable.

More vignettes: the poor and the wretched huddle in the streets, unshaded from the blistering sun, their pitiful bodies covered in soot-blackened rags, while the debauched rich cavort in sumptuous homes, partying at perpetually groaning tables on mounds of grain and flesh borne by flocks of occasionally groaning servants. As liquor flows from stone jars and animal bones are flung to the floor, skimpily clad women dance for the amusement of the revelers, shaking their pelvises to suggestive lyrics in a rhythm unlikely to have been heard in India much before A.D. i960. When the song ends, they fall into the arms and laps of their laughing patrons from whose embraces the camera cuts to shots of temple sculpture that render explicit in stone what the lyrics have already hinted at in words.

Yet more vignettes: Brahmins are abused and beaten by muscular men in chariots, their womenfolk used without fear of consequence. In one scene a laughing officer of the court rips the clothes off a protesting woman and takes her by force. [“Wonly mythological story with rape scene,” said the happy producer to the superstar. “But yit is all in the Puranas. Guruji was confirming.”] Moral collapse falls both ways. Slatterns seduce strangers in temples before the shocked but unblinking gaze of the deities. Servants become masters and claim their former mistresses; men of nobility and breeding are forced into the streets. The social order has broken down; the world is in chaos.

The land is scorched dry in dismay. Cracks and fissures open up in the earth; not a blade of grass grows. Plants and flowers wither into ashes, leafless trees raise skeletal branches in surrender. In the barren fields men and women begin to drop dead, their knees buckling in exhaustion. Seven suns appear in the scorching sky, each burning with the fury of heavenly rage. Their rays shoot down to earth like lasers, sucking the world drier still: wells crumble into dust, rivers are drunk up by the insatiable rays, the seas churn skyward and evaporate. Into this desolate land, in a little hut in the midst of a dying forest, a little boy is born to a Brahmin hermit and his dutiful wife. A boy who emerges in the shape of a well-known child artiste, with a halo shining round his head.

“The Lord has blessed your womb,” the saffron-clad hermit says to his wife, as he prostrates himself before his own son. “Vishnu has come to us.” And as she does likewise, throwing herself at the child’s pudgy feet, the boy is transformed by a cinematographic miracle into Ashok Banjara, clad in resplendent white, a bow in his hand and a quiver of divine arrows on his bare shoulder.

“Rise, Mother,” he says. “You have given me birth; you shall not bow before me.” He lifts her to her feet and turns to offer a respectful namaskar to the hermit, who takes the dust of the superstar’s feet onto his forehead before rising, his long white locks now lustrous with divine benediction.

“The world is no longer a fit place for the likes of you,” Ashok says sadly. “The natural order of the universe has been turned on its head; injustice and depravity reign; dharma is in disarray. The time has come to end it all.”

The hermit nods. “Kaliyug has reached its nadir.”

“See,” says his wife, “I do not even have water with which to wash our Lord’s feet.”

“There is no need,” Ashok says, compassion battling smugness on his visage. “Your tears of joy as you bent to receive me have already bathed my feet.” His surrogate mother looks suitably gratified at this hyperbole.

“What will you do, my Lord?” the hermit asks.

“What is necessary.” Ashok looks around him. “For everywhere I see that dharma has been violated and mocked. Betake yourselves to pray for the next world, because this one is coming to an end.” And even as he speaks the skies appear aflame. Gigantic clouds, garlanded with fire, appear between the suns; thunder roars. “A mighty conflagration is building up,” Ashok says, “which shall reach from the bowels of hell to the thrones of the gods. And then the rains shall come, a mighty crushing flow that will dissolve what the fire has burned, till the dry riverbeds become surging torrents, and the seas swell up to invade the sandy coasts; then mountains shall tremble and crumble into the dust, and the earth sink under the cleansing flood. For twelve years this rain shall last, and through it all, I shall dance the dance of destruction, till no one of this cursed earth remains upon it. When it is all over, the fire spent, the waters calmed, then, once again, will peace and dharma return to the world. But for now, my blessed parents, you who have been chosen to bring me, as a son of Brahmins, upon this earth to fulfill my divine mission — I must bid you farewell.”

Ashok raises folded palms to them, the halo shining ever brighter around his head. He raises one hand, and instantly a white stallion appears by his side; his robes are transformed into the short battle dress of a warrior horseman; and in his right hand has sprung a brilliant sword, its sharp edges aflame with sulfur and righteousness.

“Kalki,” his parents breathe.

And then he is off, fiery weapon in hand, to show the forces of evil that he has come to put out their faithlessness with a great conflagration.

[This is how it happened.

[The crowds outside the studio were enormous; inside, the massed ranks of actors, extras, technicians, production executives, delivery boys, hangers-on pressed around the equipment for the shooting of the great horseback sequence. People were milling about; somebody shouted “close the doors,” and somebody did.

[Proud of his record of not having employed a double for most of his stunts (“They’d never find one who could really look like me,” he used to say), Ashok, flaming sword in hand, began his canter on the white stallion. For a moment it was as glorious as it was meant to be, the resplendent figure of righteousness charging onward to bring retribution to a faithless world. Then a flame seemed to spurt from the sword, singeing the horse, which bolted out of its rider’s control. The rest was a blur. The stallion ran wild, through the studio set, into the technicians and their equipment. Amid the screams Ashok Banjara fell, thrown by his mount; his sword fell with him, plunging into some carelessly strewn cloth, which promptly ignited; and with a whoosh the flames leaped to the ceiling.

[Tongues of flame licked scripts, sets, and sidekicks. Accompanying the screams of panic, cast and crew and hangers-on ran everywhere they could; someone got to the door but found it shut, the tumblers of the lock having fused in the heat. The blaze voraciously devoured wood, canvas, drapes, metal, and human flesh. Smoke choked the lungs of those who were screaming for help, acridly scarring the throats of dialogists, sapping the sinews of stuntmen, obscuring the eyes of actresses.

[When it was all over, the destruction was complete. The smoldering remnants of the set turned up twenty-seven bodies, including that of the producer, Murthy. Another twenty-three were admitted to the hospital, where four died in intensive care and one, an actress who had been burned beyond recognition, committed suicide with her mother’s help.

[Ashok Banjara had contusions, concussions, broken bones, and burns. But he survived.]

MonoiogLies: Night / Bay

PRANAY

So they tell me it doesn’t look too good. Vital signs in decline, the doctor said. I can’t say I’ll grieve for you, Ashok Banjara. In fact, your departure should make a lot of things easier. But still, I don’t really want you to go.

Now that’s a lot, coming from me. You’ve never liked me, but I’ve hated you. Right from the moment you took Maya away — but much more in the years since, for all you’ve done to her. When I came to the hospital first, befriended your parents, talked to your brother, it was all for Maya’s sake. To establish myself here where I could do her some good. But after all these weeks, Ashok, and I admit this grudgingly, I’ve developed a bit of an interest in you and your welfare. Especially after the doctor initiated these talking sessions, and I found myself the only one who was willing to volunteer for the first one. There’s a strange sort of bond that’s sprung up in the process. I don’t suppose you feel it. I don’t suppose you feel anything, for that matter. Not that feelings were exactly your strongest suit before the accident either, hanh?

Enough of that. I haven’t come here to be nasty to you. What I’ve had to do I’ve done already. Something tells me you even know it. And it’s really begun to take effect on you.

Poor Ashok Banjara. You’d have really enjoyed the adulation you’re getting at this time. This accident has really been the remaking of you. The crowds, the banners, the prayer meetings! OK, so the Prime Minister’s visit couldn’t take place as scheduled, but they say it’s only a postponement, pressing business of state or something. In any case, it’s not the bigwigs who matter. Take it from me. It’s the little guys, the ones who’ve had to give up something to hold this vigil for you outside the hospital, their love is the love that counts. I should know: I was one of them. Before I acquired my silk shirts and four hundred ties, I was like those chaps out there, the petty clerks and the youths without jobs. I was one of them, in spirit and in class origin.

Class origin. What’s the point of mentioning that to you? You probably think “class origin” refers to who you studied with at school. I’m the only one among you clods who reads. But it’s people like me who are the vanguard of revolution — we, the frustrated lower-middle-class whom your lot have squeezed to the point where we have to worry every day where our next meal is coming from. OK, not me personally, but I haven’t forgotten what it was like. I’m still from the underclass, and it never leaves you. I don’t have to force myself to remember.

Did you ever wonder why you were so much more popular a filmi hero than a politician? Why the mass adulation you enjoyed as an actor failed to translate into mass political support when you needed it? Elementary, my dear hot-son. Your screen image was that of the angry young man, the righter of wrongs, the rebel against injustice, the enemy of the establishment. But when you became a politician, you were revealed as what you are — the polar opposite of your screen image. A part of the establishment. The son of a politician. The Prime Minister’s man. The people who cared for you as a hero couldn’t care for you as a leader. You no longer meant anything to them.

Ironic, hanh? And even more ironic — when you ceased to be a politician and this happened to you, they forgot the political stuff and remembered you only as their hero. Look at them outside this hospital. You can see why I despair of the Indian proletariat. Sometimes I wonder if they are even capable of revolution.

I tried to talk to your brother about all this the other day. Nice fellow, your brother, as unlike you as it is possible for a brother to be. A decent chap, and seems to like me, though I say so myself. But the poor fellow was aghast at my politics. I could imagine him thinking how hypocritical it all seemed — successful screen villain emerging from the blast of air-conditioners to speak up for the proletariat. “Bathtub socialism,” somebody called it the other day. I see no contradiction. I was lucky enough to join the system and make it work for me. I know how to make myself useful to the Choubeys and the Gangoolies, useful enough to get what I want from them. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the system for what it is. The film world is the one place where these class distinctions don’t matter. You can take a street corner tough and make him into a star and even have the convent-educated daughters of millionaires pining for him, a man they wouldn’t have spoken to in the street or admitted into their living rooms. You can also have a rich man’s daughter, classy English accent and all, reduced to stripping for the roles she can get. Ability, public popularity, these are still the clinchers. Hindi filmland is India’s only true meritocracy.

Except — there’s always an except — except for all these filmi dynasties that have suddenly sprung up. Can you imagine it — spoiled, overfed kids whose only qualification is that Daddy was a star, leaping onto the screens and demanding star billing! And it’s actually working, that’s the unbelievable thing. The public is lapping up these tyros as if their being there was the most natural thing in the world. After all, we are a country that still believes in handing professions down from father to son, the same way the caste system came into being. If you are a doctor, your son must be a doctor. If you are a Prime Minister, your son must be a Prime Minister. If you are a movie star, your son must also be a movie star.

So I must qualify my earlier assertion. Bollywood may still be a meritocracy, but it is a meritocracy tempered by genes. And by looks. I’m not a bad actor. I know my limitations, but I grew up with the medium, I know what I can do. And yet, with a face like mine, who’d cast me as a hero? I might be able to act the pants off the idiots who call themselves the stars of the screen, but villain I am, villain I’ll always remain.

Except to Maya.

All those years that you were neglecting her, I remained the one person she could talk to. You didn’t know that, did you? But then you knew so little about her, you had so little time to devote even to thinking about her. You were so busy pursuing your own agenda, you never thought of finding out about hers. Like who she spoke to. Or what she spoke about. Or whether, finally, she felt she had to do something about it.

At the beginning it was just her needing to talk to someone. She rang me out of the blue one night. It was late, nearly eleven. You weren’t home; it wasn’t clear when you would be. She just wanted to talk. I had a woman with me, but I turned away from her and gave my full attention to Maya. Just the opposite of you: you had Maya but turned your attention to other women. As on the screen, so in real life: I had to be your antithesis.

The phone conversations increased in frequency and in length. She got from me, the man she didn’t — she had said couldn’t — love, the things that you, the man she did love, couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her. Patience. Caring. Understanding. Support. Occasionally, but only when she asked for it, friendly advice. Which she never took, because mainly my advice was “Maya, leave him. Walk out.” She couldn’t do that, or she wouldn’t — and I suppose I always understood why.

But then she came to need more than telephonic communion. The first time she asked me to meet her it was for a cup of coffee at an expensive hotel, the kind of place you’d expect to find movie stars. When we went there at three the place was deserted, and even a passing journalist would have found nothing to remark about in the sight of the two of us drinking coffee in a public place. But when she suggested it again I worried about the risk of being seen — worried for her sake, not yours. And so she asked me to come to your home instead, the one place you were unlikely to be found.

I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest, but when I came here the first time I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even now, if I really believed you could hear all this, register it, react, I might not have the courage to speak so openly. But it’s important for me to make a clean breast to you. Before it’s too late.

I want you to understand something, Ashok. With Maya it was never just gender attraction, sex, call it what you like. It was, for me, very much more than that. We've abased the word “love” so com pletely in our business that it has come to mean much less than I intend it to, but I do love her. And always have. Even when she was completely yours and I had no contact with her beyond the occasional greeting at the sets when she came to visit you, which she still did, poor innocent, in those early days of your marriage. My feelings for her lay dormant during the years that had nothing to sustain them, but they were always there, like a current waiting to be switched on again. That kind of love doesn’t die, Ashok. It was always there for her, and on that our subsequent relationship was built. Not because I wanted to hop into bed with her or she with me.

I don’t suppose you could really understand that, because I don’t imagine you’ve felt anything for any woman beyond the desire to possess her. You must have agonized over whether you were the first to possess Maya, or whether I, insignificant villain that I was, had beaten you to it. Let me put you out of your misery. I hadn’t. Maya would not have slept with someone she didn’t love, and at that time she didn’t love me.

I’m saying this to help you come to terms with what I’m going to tell you now. In the last few years Maya was tormented by your treatment of her, torn between her duty to you and the triplets on the one hand and her need for love on the other. She thought she could find consolation in conversation with me, but it was soon obvious I had much more than my silences to offer her. Before she made that leap of faith she gave you so many chances, Ashok, to claim her back. You never seized any of them. One small gesture from you would have been enough, one sign that she mattered, that her loyalty was reciprocated by your love. You didn’t bother. In the end you whittled away her resistance with your indifference as surely as I did by my sheer constancy.

And so it happened. We loved, and we loved while unable to acknowledge our love. The fact that I gave her my love made her, ironically, a better wife to you: not out of guilt so much as because she was fulfilled in a way she had not been before and could turn to the other things you wanted out of her without the emptiness and bitterness she had choked on before. She became a diligent daughter-in-law, a dedicated mother, a loyal political wife on the campaign trail. And from wherever she was, she always returned from her duty with you to Bombay, and to me.

As long as you survive, Ashok, in any condition, she will never leave you. I don’t think you’ll survive, but if you do, I won’t mind. I have what I want, which is more than I had dared hope for.

And yes, I suppose you should know, though a husband less self-obsessed than you would have guessed it a long time ago. Aashish is not a Banjara. For in the course of discovering her love, Maya, our Maya, bore you my son.

KULBHUSHAN BANJARA

My son. My son, I cannot bear to see you lying there, bandaged and still, the life ebbing out of you. Why did this have to happen, Ashok? I expected one day to have you come and light my pyre, send my soul to another world. I cannot, I will not, imagine you going there before me.

There is so much to say, my son. So much I should have said earlier, before all this. But you would not have listened. And I was too proud to speak. That is what came between us, my pride and yours.

I will not make the mistake of lecturing you again. I–I’m sorry. The words do not come out easily, Ashok. They trip over lumps I did not know I had in my throat. They hurt.

You hurt me, but I took too long to realize how much I had hurt you too. Why could we never talk directly about these things, about our expectations, hopes, fears? You never saw beyond my disapproval, and I never looked beyond your resentment. Even though my disapproval has always turned out to be justified, because every time I disapproved of something you did it was for your sake. I knew it would be wrong for you, that it would hurt you. When you entered politics, how bitter you were about my disapproval! And yet I knew from the first day that the way it was happening, the way you were going into it, you were doomed to failure. Even I could not predict the scale of the disaster that would overtake you. But you would not listen, my son. You never did.

Ashok, stay on. Fight this — whatever this is that is taking its toll on you. Come back, and make a fresh start. You have all of us with you, and so many friends and well-wishers from the film industry, even the political world. And of course you have the people, the great ordinary masses of India. They all, we all, love you, Ashok. Come back to us. Don’t give up.

That friend of yours, that fine young man, Pranay, was telling us what this trag this accident has revealed about the place of films in our country. The experts, he says, were all predicting that as in other countries, television and video would sound the death knell of the film industry; that once people had alternative sources of entertainment, they wouldn’t turn to the cinema any more. There were visions of theaters closing down, film people being thrown out of work, stars reduced to the twenty-inch mediocrity of the TV screen. It hasn’t happened. And it hasn’t happened, Pranay says, because, in addition to the economic realities that restrict the number of people who can have access to TV and video, the magic of the cinema has not faded in India. This is something that the vast, nationwide outpouring of grief and support for you has proved again, beyond doubt.

Ashok, my son, there are rickshawallahs who have walked hundreds of miles to be by your side, beggars who have given their pitiful alms to temples in offerings for your recovery, housewives who have refused to eat until you are discharged from the hospital. You have incarnated the hopes and dreams of all these people and of all India. You cannot let them down now.

And you cannot leave me, Ashok. In all these years, I have made my disapproval clear, but I have not directly asked you for anything. I am asking you now, Ashok. Do not go away from me, my son. Let me take you in my arms and ask for your forgiveness.

I… I’ve said it at last. Forgive me, Ashok, for everything. For the lectures. For the disapproval. For the sin of always having been right, and of having known it, and of having shown I know it. Forgive me, Ashok, and come back to me. I want to hear you call me “Dad” again.

Ashok … my son … I can’t go on.

ASHWIN

I have a message for you, Ashok-bhai. The Guruji rang. You remember him, from the election? He’s here now, a sort of resident seer to the stars. I had no idea you had maintained contact with him, but then I have no idea about lots of things involving you. I told him there was no indication you’d be able to hear or understand what anyone had to say. He said, “He’ll understand.” So I’ll read you his message.

It’s in Sanskrit, a verse from the Valmiki Ramayana:

dharmadarthaha prabhavati

dharmath prabhavate sukham,

dharmen labhate saw am,

dharma saarabinda jagat.

Hope I’ve said it right. The Guruji also supplied a translation: “From dharma comes success, from dharma comes happiness, everything emerges from dharma, dharma is the essence of the world.”

Is that all? I asked him. Is that the message? And he said, “Tell him that dharma is what life is all about, the upholding of the natural order. Tell him that whatever he did was in fulfillment of his dharma. Tell him to have no regrets.”

I’m passing it on, Ashok-bhai, but for what it’s worth, I think it’s too easy. One has to have regrets. I have regrets. A life without regrets is a life lived without introspection, without inquiry. That’s not a life worth living.

MAYA

It’s too late, Ashok. There was so much to say, so much I wanted to tell you, so much you never had time to listen to. Now I see you lying there, and I have no words for you anymore. You wrote me out of your script, Ashok. You left me nothing to say.