A Son Of The Circus (7 page)

Everyone said that possibly the mother was a blue-eyed blonde, and all that the police inspector could contribute to the child was a racially neutralizing effect and a fervor for homicide cases. Nevertheless, all of Bombay complained that the box-office star of its Hindi movie madness
looked
to all the world like a 100 percent North American or European. There was no credible explanation for his all-white appearance, which fueled the rumor that Dhar was the child of Farrokh’s brother, who’d married an Austrian; and since it was well known that Farrokh was married to this European’s sister, it was also rumored that Dhar was the doctor’s child.

The doctor expressed boredom for the notion, in spite of the fact that there were many living Duckworthians who could remember Dr Daruwalla’s father in the company of an ephemeral, fair-skinned boy who was only an occasional summer visitor. And this suspiciously all-white boy was reputed to be the senior Daruwalla’s grandson! But the best way to answer these charges, Farrokh knew, was not to answer them beyond the bluntest denial.

It’s well known that many Indians think fair skin is beautiful; in addition, Dhar was ruggedly handsome. However, it was considered perverse of Inspector Dhar that he refused to speak English in public, or spoke it with an obviously exaggerated Hindi accent. It was rumored that he spoke accentless English in private, but how would anyone know? Inspector Dhar granted only a limited number of interviews, which were restricted to questions regarding his ‘art’; he insisted that his personal life was a forbidden topic. (Dhar’s ‘personal life’ was the only topic of possible interest to anyone.) When cornered by the film press at a nightclub, at a restaurant, at a photo session in connection with the release of a new Inspector Dhar movie, the actor would apply his famous sneer. It didn’t matter what question he was asked; either he answered facetiously or, regardless of the question, he would say in Hindi, or in English with his phony accent, ‘I have never been to the United States. I have no interest in my mother. If I have babies, they will be Indian babies. They are the most clever.’

And Dhar could return and outlast anyone’s stare; he could also manipulate the eye of any camera. Alarmingly, he possessed an increasingly bulky strength. Until he was in his mid-thirties, his muscles had been well defined, his stomach flat. Whether it was middle age, or whether Dhar had yielded to the usual bodily measurements for success among Bombay’s matinee idols — or whether it was his love of weight lifting in tandem with his professed capacity for beer – the actor’s stoutness threatened to overtake his reputation as a tough guy. (In Bombay, he was perceived as a well-fed tough guy.) His critics liked to call him Beer Belly, but not to his face; after all, Dhar wasn’t in bad shape for a guy who was almost 40.

As for Dr Daruwalla’s screenplays, they deviated from the usual masala mixture of the Hindi cinema. Farrokh’s scripts were both corny and tawdry, but the vulgarity was decidedly Western – the hero’s own nastiness was extolled as a virtue (Dhar was routinely nastier than most villains) – and the peculiar sentimentality bordered on undergraduate existentialism (Dhar was beyond loneliness in that he appeared to enjoy being alienated from everyone). There were token gestures to the Hindi cinema, which Dr Daruwalla viewed with the mocking irony of an outsider: gods frequently descended from the heavens (usually to provide Inspector Dhar with inside information), and all the villains were demonic (if ineffectual). Villainy, in general, was represented by criminals and the majority of the police force; sexual conquest was reserved for Inspector Dhar, whose heroism operated both within and above the law. As for the women who provided the sexual conquests, Dhar remained largely indifferent to them, which was suspiciously European. There was music of the standard Hindi combination: choruses of girls oohing and aahing to the clamor of guitars, tablas, violins and vinas. And Inspector Dhar himself, despite his ingrained cynicism, would occasionally lip-sync a song. Although he lip-synced well, the lyrics are not worth repeating – he would snarl such poetry as, ‘Baby, I guarantee it, you’re gonna find me gratifying!’ Such songs, in the Hindi cinema, are in Hindi, but this was another instance of how the Inspector Dhar films were deliberately scripted against the grain. Dhar’s songs were in English, with his deplorable Hindi accent; even his theme song, which was sung by an all-girl chorus and repeated at least twice in every Inspector Dhar movie, was in English. It, too, was loathed; it was also a hit. Although he’d written it, it made Dr Daruwalla cringe to hear it.

So you say Inspector Dhar is a mere mortal –

so you say, so you say!

He looks like a god to us!

So you say this is a little rain shower —

so you say, so you say!

It looks like the monsoon to us!

If Dhar was a good lip-syncer, he also demonstrated no enthusiasm for the much-maligned art. One critic had dubbed him ‘Lazy Lips.’ Another critic complained that nothing energized Dhar – he lacked enthusiasm for everything. As an actor, Dhar had mass appeal – possibly because he seemed constantly depressed, as if sordidness were a magnet to him, and his eventual triumph over evil were a perpetual curse. Therefore, a certain wistfulness was ascribed to every victim whom Inspector Dhar sought to rescue or avenge; a graphic violence attended Dhar’s punishment of each and every evildoer.

As for sex, satire prevailed. In place of lovemaking, old newsreel footage of a rocking train would be substituted; ejaculation was characterized by listless waves breaking on shore. Furthermore, and in compliance with the rules of censorship in India, nudity, which was
not
permitted, was replaced by wetness; there was much fondling (fully clothed) in the rain, as if Inspector Dhar solved crimes only during the monsoon season. The occasional nipple could be glimpsed, or at least imagined, under a fully soaked sari; this was more titillating than erotic.

Social relevance and ideology were similarly muted, if not altogether absent. (Both in Toronto
and
in Bombay, these latter instincts were similarly undeveloped in Dr Daruwalla.) Beyond the commonplace observation that the police were thoroughly corrupted by a system based on bribery, there was little preaching. Scenes of violent but maudlin death, followed by scenes of tearful mourning, were more important than messages intended to inspire a national conscience.

The character of Inspector Dhar was brutally vindictive; he was also utterly incorruptible – except sexually. Women were easily and simplistically identified as good or bad; yet Dhar permitted himself the greatest liberties with both – indeed, with all. Well, with
almost
all. He wouldn’t indulge a Western woman, and in every Inspector Dhar movie there was always at least one Western, ultra-white woman who craved a sexual adventure with Inspector Dhar; that he faithfully and cruelly spurned her was his signature, his trademark, and the part of his films that made Indian women and young girls adore him. Whether this aspect of Dhar’s character reflected his feelings for his mother or gave fictional evidence of his stated intentions to sire only Indian babies – well, who knew? Who really knew anything about Inspector Dhar? Hated by all men, loved by all women (who
said
that they hated him).

Even the Indian women who’d dated him were uniform in the zeal they demonstrated in protection of his privacy. They would say, ‘He’s not at all like he is in his movies.’ (No examples were ever forthcoming.) They would say, ‘He’s very old-fashioned, a real gentleman.’ (No examples were ever asked for.) ‘He’s very modest, really – and very quiet,’ they would say.

Everyone could believe he was ‘quiet’; there were suspicions that he never spoke an unscripted line –these were happy, mindless contradictions of the rumor regarding his accentless English. No one believed anything, or else they believed everything they’d ever heard. That he had two wives – one in Europe. That he had a dozen children – none he would acknowledge, all of them illegitimate. That he actually lived in Los Angeles, in his vile mother’s house!

In the face of all rumors, and in keeping with the violent contrasts created by the extreme popularity of his movies and the extreme animosity toward him that was inspired by his sneer, Dhar himself remained inscrutable. No small amount of sarcasm was detectable in his sneer; no either thick-set, middle-aged man could possibly have seemed so self-possessed.

Dhar endorsed only one charity; so totally and convincingly did he solicit the public’s support of his personal crusade that he had achieved a philanthropic status as high as any among the several benefactors of Bombay. He made television commercials for the Hospital for Crippled Children. The advertisements were made at Dhar’s own expense and they were devastatingly effective. (Dr Daruwalla was the author of these commercials as well.)

On the TV, Inspector Dhar faces the camera in medium close-up, wearing a loose-fitting white shirt –a collarless or mandarin-style kurta – and he holds his practiced sneer only as long as he imagines it takes to get the viewer’s full attention. Then he says, ‘You may love to hate me – I make a lot of money and I don’t give any of it to anyone, except to these children.’ There then follows a series of shots of Dhar among the crippled children at the orthopedic hospital: a deformed little girl crawls toward Inspector Dhar, who holds out his hands to her; Inspector Dhar is surrounded by staring children in wheelchairs; Inspector Dhar lifts a little boy from a swirling whirlpool bath and carries him to a clean white table, where two nurses assemble the child’s leg braces for him – the boy’s legs aren’t as big around as his arms.

Regardless, Inspector Dhar was still hated; on occasion, he was even attacked. Local bullies wanted to see if he was as tough and practiced in the martial arts as the police inspector he portrayed; apparently, he was. He would respond to any and all verbal abuse with a queerly restrained version of his sneer. It made him appear mildly drunk. But if physically threatened, he wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate in kind; once, assaulted by a man with a chair, Dhar struck back with a table. He was reputed to be as dangerous as his screen persona. He’d occasionally broken other people’s bones; perhaps from his understanding of orthopedics, he’d caused serious injuries to the joints of his assailants. He was capable of real damage. But Dhar didn’t pick fights, he simply won them.

His trashy films were hastily made, his publicity appearances minimal; the rumor was, he spent next to no time in Bombay. His chauffeur was an unfriendly dwarf, a former circus clown whom the film-gossip press had confidently labeled a thug. (Vinod was proud of this allegation.) And except for the plentiful number of Indian women who’d dated him, Dhar wasn’t known to have any friends. His most public acquaintance – with an infrequent visitor to Bombay, an Honorary Consultant Surgeon at the Hospital for Crippled Children who was the hospital’s usual spokesman for its foreign fund-raising efforts – was accepted as a longstanding relationship that had withstood invasions from the media. Dr Daruwalla – a distinguished Canadian physician and family man, and a son of the former chief of staff of Bombay’s Hospital for Crippled Children (the late Dr Lowji Daruwalla) –was witheringly brief to the press. When asked about his relationship to and with Inspector Dhar, Dr Daruwalla would say, ‘I’m a doctor, not a gossip.’ Besides, the younger and the elder man were seen together only at the Duckworth Club. The media weren’t welcome there, and among the members of the club, eavesdropping (except by the old Parsi steward) was generally deplored.

There was, however, much speculation about how Inspector Dhar could conceivably have become a member of the Duckworth Club. Movie stars weren’t welcome there, either. And given the 22-year waiting list and the fact that the actor became a member when he was only 26, Dhar must have applied for membership when he was four! Or someone had applied for him. Furthermore, it had not been sufficiently demonstrated to many Duckworthians that Inspector Dhar had distinguished himself in ‘community leadership’; some members pointed to his efforts for the Hospital for Crippled Children, but others argued that Inspector Dhar’s movies were destructive to all of Bombay. Quite understandably, there was no suppressing the rumors or the complaints that circulated through the old club on this subject.

There was also no suppressing the exciting news about the dead golfer in the bougainvillea near the ninth green. True to his fictional character, Inspector Dhar himself had located the body. Doubtless the press would expect Dhar to solve the crime. It didn’t appear there had been a crime, although there was talk among the Duckworthians that Mr Lai’s excesses on the golf course were of a criminal nature, and surely his exertions in the wrecked bougainvillea hadn’t served the old gentleman well. The vultures had spoiled a clear impression, but it seemed that Mr Lai had been the victim of his own chip shot. His lifelong opponent, Mr Bannerjee, told Dr Daruwalla that he felt as if he’d murdered his friend.

‘He always fell apart at the ninth hole!’ Mr Bannerjee exclaimed. ‘I never should have teased him about it!’

Dr Daruwalla was thinking that he’d often teased Mr Lai along similar lines; it had been irresistible to tease Mr Lai in regard to the zeal with which he played a game for which he manifested minimal talent. But now that he appeared to have died at the game, Mr Lai’s enthusiasm for golf seemed less funny than before.

Farrokh found himself sensing some faint analogy between his creation of Inspector Dhar and Mr Lai’s golf game, and this unwanted connection came to him as the result of a sudden, unpleasant odor. It wasn’t as strong an impression as the stench of a man defecating at close quarters, but instead the smell was at once more familiar and more removed – sun-rotted garbage, perhaps, or clogged drains. Farrokh thought of potted flowers and human urine.

Far-fetched or not, the nature of the comparison between Mr Lai’s lethal golf habit and Dr Daruwalla’s screen writing was simply this: the Inspector Dhar movies were judged to be of no artistic merit whatsoever, but the labors that the doctor performed to write these screenplays were intense; the nature of Inspector Dhar’s character was crude to most viewers, and outrageously offensive to many, but the doctor had created Dhar out of the purest love; and Farrokh’s fragile self-esteem rested as much on his sense of himself as a closet writer as it did on his established reputation as a surgeon, even if he was only a screenwriter and, worse, even though he was perceived to be such a shameless hack – such a whore for the money – that he wouldn’t even lend his name to his creations. Understandably, since the actor who played Inspector Dhar had himself become (in the public eye) the very character he portrayed, the authorship of the screenplays was ascribed to Dhar. What gave Farrokh so much pleasure was the actual writing of the screenplays themselves; yet, despite his own enjoyment of the craft, the results were ridiculed and hated.