Show Business , livre ebook

Shashi Tharoor

SHOW BUSINESS
A Novel
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
Take One
Ashok
Godambo
Pranay
Take Two
Ashok
Judai
Kulbhushan
Take Three
Ashok
Dil Ek Qila : The First Treatment
Interval: Cheetah s Chatter
Dil Ek Qila : The Second Treatment
Mehnaz Elahi
Take Four
Ashok
Mechanic
Ashwin
Take Five
Ashok
Kalki
Voices
Take Six
Ashok
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
SHOW BUSINESS
An elected member of Parliament, former minister of state for external affairs and human resource development and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor is the prize-winning author of fourteen books, both fiction and non-fiction. A widely published critic, commentator and columnist, he served the United Nations during a twenty-nine-year career in refugee work and peacekeeping, at the Secretary-General s office and heading communications and public information. In 2006 he was India s candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General, and emerged a strong second out of seven contenders. He has won India s highest honour for overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers Prize. For more on Shashi Tharoor, please visit www.shashitharoor.in .
Also By the Same Author
Fiction
Riot
The Five-Dollar Smile
Non-fiction
The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the Twenty-First Century
India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond
Bookless in Baghdad: And Other Writings about Reading
Nehru: The Invention of India
Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-First Century
for my sisters Shobha and Smita in fulfilment of a twenty-year-old promise to take them to the movies
TAKE ONE
Ashok
I can t believe I m doing this.
Me, Ashok Banjara, product of the finest public school in independent India, Secretary of the Shakespeare Society at St Francis College, no less, not to mention son of the Minister of State for Minor Textiles, chasing an ageing actress round a papier-m ch tree in an artificial drizzle, lip-synching to the tinny inanities of an aspiring (and highly aspirating) playback singer. But it is me, it s my mouth that s moving in soundless ardour, it s my feet that are scudding treeward in faithful obeisance to the unlikely choreography of the dance director. Move, step, turn, as sari-clad Abha, yesterday s heartthrob, old enough to be my mother and just about beginning to show it, nimbly evades my practised lunge and runs, famous bust out-thrust, to the temporary shelter of an improbably leafy branch. I follow, head tilted back, arms outstretched, pretending to sing:
I shall always chase you To the ends of the earth, I want to embrace you From Pahelgaon to Perth, My love!
My arms encircle her, but as my fingertips meet, she ducks, dancing, and slips out of my clutches, pirouetting gaily away. Drenched chiffon clings to the pointed cones of her blouse, but she raises one end of the soaked sari pallav to half-cover her face, holding the edge across the bridge of her perfect nose in practised coyness. Her large eyes imprison me, then blink in release. Despite myself, I marvel. She has done this for twenty years: it is my first attempt.
I shall always chase you From now til my rebirth And it s only when I face you That I feel I know my worth, My love! I shall always chase you, I ll never feel the dearth Of my desire to lace you Around my . . .
Cut! I am caught in mid-gesture, mid-movement, mid-phrase. The playback track screeches to a stop. I freeze, feeling as foolish as I imagine I must look. Abha snaps her irritation, turns away.
No, no, no! The dance director is waddling furiously towards me. He is fat and dark, but nothing if not expressive: his hands are trembling, his kohl-lined eyes are trembling, the layers and folds of flesh on his bare torso are trembling. How many times I am telling you! Like this! Hands, feet and trunk describe arabesques of motion. Not this! He does a passable imitation of a stiff-necked paraplegic having a seizure. The technicians laugh. I smile nervously, looking furtively at my co-star. Abha stands apart from us, hands on hips in a posture of fury. But am I imagining it, or is there something softer around her eyes as she looks at me?
I open hapless hands to the dance director, palms facing him in a gesture of concession. Okay, okay, Masterji. Sorry.
Sorry? Is my good name you will be ruining. Whatall is this, they will be saying. Gopi Master has forgotten what is dance. His pectorals quiver in indignation. For you maybe doesn t matter. You are bachcha. I am having fifteen years in this business. What they will say about me, hanh ?
I shrug my embarrassment. I thought I d done what I had been told to do, but that doesn t seem the right thing to say. Gopi Master stamps his feet, one oily ringlet of black hair falling over a flashing red eye. He tosses his curls and strides off.
Okay, okay. This is the director, Mohanlal. Mohanlal looks like a lower divisional clerk: he wears a fraying white cotton shirt, black trousers, thick glasses and a perpetually harassed expression. Right now it is even more harassed than usual. I am evolving a Mohanlal Scale of High Anxiety, ranging from the pained visage with which he embarks on any second take (1 on the scale) to the extreme angst that furrows his face when the Producer-sahib visits and wants to know why the film isn t finished yet (10). My terpsichorean incompetence has him up at about 5, but he is teetering on the edge of 6. I try to look earnest and willing.
Okay, says Mohanlal for the third time. Let s get back to this. Abhaji, I am sorry. Just once more, please, I promise you. Right, Ashokji? We ll get it right this time.
Right, I respond, without confidence.
Okay, clear the stage. Mohanlal s instructions emerge in the mildest tone. One of the producer s sidekicks, standing beyond the arc lights, claps his hands to reinforce them, like a manual relay station. The clapper boy holds his board up for the start of the take. I grin at Abha, hoping for sympathy. She averts her gaze.
Lights! Camera! Action!
Ah, the magic of those words! I suppose that s what brought me into this business in the first place. Years of amateur theatre, from college productions of Charley s Aunt and The Importance of Being Earnest to post-degree forays into Pinter and Beckett, had given me an irrevocable taste for greasepaint and footlights. Except, of course, that there was no money in it, and not much recognition either-unless you count the occasional notice in The Hindustan Times, sandwiched between a dance recital and an account of a Rotary Club speech. I spent months rehearsing foreign plays after work with other similarly-afflicted ex-collegians and four evenings at a stretch putting them on for audiences of a few hundred Anglophile Delhiites, all for no reward other than a mildly bibulous cast-party at which ignorant well-wishers poured pretentious praise into my rum. After half-a-dozen of these productions I decided I had had enough. But I couldn t stop wanting to act, and when I discovered that I could no longer face going to the office without the prospect of rehearsals afterwards, I realized what I had to do . I had to take the advice of my classmate Tool Dwivedi, as avid a cinephile as ever queued in dirty chappals and torn kurta for black-market tickets to the latest releases. I had to go into films.
Only real world there is, yaar, Tool had said between lengthy drags on his chillum, before disappearing to Benares to study Hindu philosophy. I had not heard from him since, but his enthusiasm lingered. I decided to act on his idea.
But it s all so artificial, Malini had protested when I told her of my plans. Malini was a fellow after-work thespian, an account executive in an advertising firm, in whom I was moderately interested.
Artificial? I asked incredulously. What do you mean, artificial? Isn t all acting artificial?
You know, all that running round trees, chasing heroines. Singing songs as you waltz through parks. You know what I mean.
That isn t artificial, that s mass entertainment. She raised untrimmed eyebrows and I decided to let her have it. You want artificial, I ll tell you what s artificial. What we re doing is artificial. Here, in Delhi, putting on English plays written for English actors, in a language the majority of our fellow Indians don t even understand. What s more artificial than that?
Are you telling me, Malini bridled, that our work in the theatre, in the theatre, is artificial, and what you want to do in -she uttered the phrase with distaste- Bombay films, is not?
She was beginning to get angry, and this was a bad sign: I had had hopes of a farewell kiss, if not more. But I was in too deep now to pull back. Yes, I said firmly, We re an irrelevant minority performing for an irrelevant minority in a language and a medium that guarantee both irrelevance and minorityhood. I mean, how many people watch English-language theatre in this country? And how many of those watch us?
Numbers? Is that all that matters to you? Malini was scathing. We re reaching a far more important audience here, a far more aware audience. We re in the front line of what s happening in world theatre. We re doing plays that have taken Broadway and the West End by storm.
Yeah, ten years ago, I retorted. Look, Malini, English-language theatre in India has no place to go but in circles, and you know it. The same old plays rehashed for the same ignorant crowd. Who cares? Films are for real.
Hindi films? Real? Give me a break. She got up then: she was always fond of matching movements to words, to the despair of our directors. Look, Ashok, if you want to go off and make a fool of yourself in Bombay, do what you like. But don t give me this kind of crap about it, okay?
That was my cue, and for the sak