Maximum City (65 page)

Eishaan is on the lookout for One Good Role. He knows that people aren’t taking chances on newcomers—the costs of movies these days don’t allow for risk-taking—but One Good Role can make it all happen, like it did for Manoj Bajpai, who struggled for years before he got the role of the villain in
Satya.
It will happen for Eishaan too, he says. “I know my caliber.”

“These struggle stories are the biggest enemies of the younger generation,” says Ali mournfully. “One success story destroys one thousand lives.” He could write about Anupam Kher, who came from Simla to Bombay to make it as a star. He used to walk from Bandra to the Prithvi Theater, says Ali; he had only two pairs of khadi kurta-pajamas, which he would wash in the night and walk dry in the morning. He lived on vadapav and tutored slum children for 50 rupees a month. Then Mahesh Bhatt discovered him and cast him in
Saaransh
, and now he is a star as well as a director. “These stories drive mad the people sitting in the village,” notes Ali.

I tell Eishaan that I’d stopped over in Dubai for a day on my way to America. He had loved living there. “The traffic was so disciplined, everyone drove in their lanes.”

His family there is wealthy. I ask whether he would return to Dubai.

“I love my India,” he says, in the manner of a man confessing to adultery.

He does think sometimes about what it might be like if he returned to his life in Dubai, with all its comforts. But Bombay has a unique advantage for an actor. “In Bombay you watch everything. For an actor you need to observe so many things.” It begins when he flies into the city, observes the people in the slums by the airport, and sees a city of strugglers. “They are fighting with their lives. It’s raining, pouring, but still they’re fighting. Probably we people are addicted to this life, we need news every moment of every day.” If he leaves Bombay, after two days he wants to come back, Eishaan declares.

Ali goes him one better. “It takes me
one
day. I want to come back after one day away.” Ali is not at home outside Bombay. He tells us about a
recent trip to the small town of Khambhat, where he was watching a movie. Midway through the film, a message flashed on the screen: “Chandulal Shah is dead.” Chandulal Shah was somebody who lived in the town. The movie had to end and everybody had to go home.

When Eishaan came to Bombay to make it in the movies, he knew it would be a struggle. “But I never thought it would be harder every time.” He had enough savings for two or three years and supportive family and friends. In the beginning, he had rented a flat, paying 5,000 rupees a month. But his expenses averaged 35,000 a month. Once every three days he would go out to dinner, buying meals for a multitude of cousins who were always coming and going, taking out-of-town visitors to the beer bars.

Over the years, as his star dipped, so did his budget, which is now down to 11,000 rupees a month. He has had the great good fortune of being able to stay rent-free in a flat owned by one of his best friends, who has given it to him for two years. Eishaan doesn’t go out to the discos anymore, doesn’t even go out for dinner. “Today, to pay three hundred fifty for a prawn dish—it’s horrible, a criminal wastage.” He has learnt to cook and clean for himself.

The cousins have by now withdrawn their financial support, Hitesh tells me, but he still sends his brother money and keeps trying to persuade him to come back to the soft life in Dubai. “I speak to him for twenty minutes on the phone—”

“That costs him around five thousand rupees,” interjects Eishaan, quantifying his brother’s love.

“—and I tell him you can live a better life somewhere else. He has gone through such a bad phase. Every second of these four years huge tension.” Hitesh recalls Eishaan’s excuses for not getting roles: It was the monsoon, so there were no shoots; then it was Ganapati, so there was a holiday, then Diwali; then it was the sradh time, so no filming. After a while, Hitesh got angry with him. It wasn’t because he wasn’t earning money but because of “the psychological point: He suffers. That is more important, for me at least.” He was worried that Eishaan would do something dangerous, something wrong, “when people bang you on every part of your body.”

It has gotten so Eishaan doesn’t go home to Jaipur anymore. “They all ask, ‘Is nothing happening?’ A friend who doesn’t know me much in Dubai calls me up and asks, ‘Nothing is happening?’ My parents, relatives, well-wishers are saying, ‘All these people are coming in, why not you?’ I have
no answer to this question, ‘Why not me?’ Sometimes I blame it on God, sometimes I don’t answer.”

Eishaan is a devout follower of Goddess Durga in all her many avatars. “I . . . I have a small temple at home. When I feel like breaking down I break down in front of God. I always feel that God is trying my patience. Every ten to fifteen days I have a tendency to crack.” So Eishaan, in his depths, weeps and wails in front of the statue of his Ma. Why is she being so cruel to him? She has given a chance to all the others, why is she denying a chance to him, her most devoted son?

A
FEW MONTHS LATER
, Ali gives me the glad news that Eishaan has signed a B film, in which he is the star. Ali thinks I have something to do with this. “He met you, and within two meetings he became a hero; otherwise he has been waiting for last four years.”

I meet Ali and Eishaan at the Sun ‘n’ Sand and the struggler tells me how it happened. On Durga Asthami, he prayed to Durga, and finally the goddess responded. A well-wisher, the secretary to an actress, called him. There was a director looking for a lead. Eishaan met the director in a hotel, he met the photographers, and it was finalized in less than an hour. It is a mythological film about Shakumbhari Devi, the Vegetable Goddess, one of the nine avatars of Durga. In times of great hunger, the goddess appears and distributes food. Once, when there was a famine, she wept, and her tears irrigated the land. There is currently a vegetable shortage all over the country—onions are at 30 rupees a pound—and it is bringing down governments. There is a temple dedicated to this devi in the north, but it has no idol; now this film is going to give her a celluloid one. The goddess has incarnated herself expressly for Eishaan, so that he could get work.

The project is a low-budget film; it will be shot in 16mm and transferred to 35mm for projecting. Nobody’s getting paid much, and the filmmakers will release it themselves, since Eishaan is sure “no one will want to buy it.” But there is a consolation, as far as Eishaan is concerned: “They’re sure they want to complete it.” The producers have decided to capitalize on their assets. Mr. Agarwal, the financier, owns a lodge in the foothills of the Himalayas where the cast and crew will stay. The producers have also funded an ashram in Hardwar featuring a 108-foot statue of the Goddess Vaishno Devi, another of Durga’s incarnations, which will be prominently
featured in the movie, along with sermons from the guru of the ashram, to whom the producers are devoted. Religious merit and financial profit will be accumulated simultaneously.

“This would play in the villages. The devi would be hyped.” The producers might give the film different names for the big centers and the interiors; for the villages,
Jai Mata Shakumbhari Devi
would be appropriate; for the urban areas, they might go with
Vilayati Saas, Desi Bahu
(Foreign Mother-in-law, Domestic Wife) or
Kudrat ka Kamaal
(Heavenly Miracle). They’ve already recorded five songs with top singers; Eishaan is featured in a duet and in a sad song. The film’s trump card: Two of the songs are full-scale aartis; it would be incumbent on the devout Hindu audience to get to its feet in the theater, clasp their palms in worship, and throw coins at the screen when the goddess is glimpsed. Some might even bring their own lamps to the theater and wave them around the screen during the songs. “The director—Shiv Kumar—is getting a kind of rebirth,” says Eishaan.

Shiv Kumar is a big name in Bhojpur. He has made three sex films, guiltily. He is actually a very religious person, associated with the Radhaswami group, and has taken an oath that he won’t drink alcohol or eat meat. Shiv Kumar’s previous directorial ventures were titled
Be-Abroo
(Shameless),
Badnasib
(Unlucky), and
Badkar
(Worse Than Bad). The producer made back his money in all three.

“He was a struggler who I put into college as a student,” declares Ali. He worked as a production assistant and thus got into the industry. Then he started
Be-Abroo.
“The story was about women being used. Men selling them and women being sold. Every third scene was a sex scene. The girl is about to take off her clothes, the man is about to take off his clothes, the bed is shown, and
cut!
” All the songs had double meanings. But the film had a message, explains Ali. “‘No, such things should not happen. This is very bad!’ The censors were saying, ‘What a message! This is fantastic!’” It became a huge hit for its circuit.

Kumar’s fourth film will be shot in Dehra Dun, Hardwar, and Mussoorie, over forty-five days. The heroine, Raashee, is slim and tall and has an “Indian look,” explains Eishaan. She’s dark. The role came just in time for him. “Since I saw you last I have gone through a lot of mental torture with my family,” Eishaan tells me. An astrologer had come to his home and, in the presence of his brother and his cousin, told him he was wasting
his time. “It’s a criminal waste. Go back.” His family members seized on the astrologer’s prophecy. “They took me left-right. ‘See, see what he said? Now you leave this.’”

But then Eishaan brought out his trump card: his starring role in
Jai Shakumbhari Maa.

And what was their reaction?

“They are excited. I know. They have to be.” His brother didn’t believe it till he showed him the train tickets given to him to travel north for the shoot. Eishaan hasn’t seen the script yet. The director has narrated the story to him. “I didn’t want to ask the director for a script,” Eishaan says.

Ali approves of his decision. “If you ask for a script, you’re almost asking for disqualification, even if you’re an established star. ‘Who are you? You think we are making shit?’”

Eishaan is prepared to go in complete humility. “People won’t have much of an ego problem under this banner. I told the director, Even if your cook is missing, I’ll be there.” Ali advises the star that he should not put on weight during the shoot, as will happen if they look after him well. Eishaan responds that he is carrying his jogging shoes, and will live on jaggery and peanuts. Ever generous, Eishaan is lending his flat—which is itself on loan to him from a friend—to his Muslim neighbors, in whose family there is a wedding, for the time he’s gone. Property is always communal in Bombay; there is a constant circulation of sleeping space.

T
HE STAR COMES
to my office in Elco Arcade, fresh from the first segment of his shoot. He looks good; he has just been jogging on the beach. He has thrown himself into the film. “I want to sleep and breathe the role.” Eventually he would like to work with a renowned director, he tells me, like Vinod Chopra. But I don’t think he’s asking me for an introduction to Vinod. Eishaan is not that pushy. It’s part of his problem: He’s not that pushy.

The shooting of
Jai Shakumbhari Maa
has come to a hopefully temporary halt, because the director suddenly got a spate of TV work. He was asked to submit two serials to Doordarshan. He has offered Eishaan the role of the heroine’s second husband in the serial. Eishaan has now actually been paid for his work—a first installment of 10,000 rupees, for what was
supposed to be three days’ work. It grew into twenty-two days. There’s just one small problem: “The check hasn’t cleared yet.”

The producers had put their star up in the hotel they owned, in a leaking room with another actor who smoked like a chimney and snored. Eishaan can’t take cigarette smoke. He recorded his roommate’s snores and played them for the producers, who agreed to transfer him to another room.

The budget was one notch below shoestring; it was the plastic tip of the shoestring. The producers were too cheap to give Eishaan a tape of the songs, so he stole it from the sound studio. They were too cheap to give him a photo to show his brother that he was working; so he stole it from the stills album. The inexperienced producers didn’t arrange for enough security on the sets. “When I was not shooting I used to assist the director. I used to shout,
Silence!
and give the clap.” This led to altercations with the public. One Saturday, Eishaan was trying extra hard to keep control of his temper, because he realized the hot-headed influence of Shani Maharaj, the god to whom Saturday is dedicated. But a tapori kept interfering with the shot. The star—cum—security guard asked him to keep quiet. It escalated into fisticuffs. Eishaan pulls out a newspaper clipping.
HERO THRASHED BY PUBLIC
, reads the headline, from a Hardwar paper. Actually, insists Eishaan, it was the other way: “I bashed him straightaway.” But he is grateful that the newspaper wrote it the way it did; if he had been portrayed as a hero that beats up the public, the local toughs would have been hunting for him.

The shooting ratio was roughly 1:1. “Usually the first take was the last, except when a person in the public was passing by and got caught in the background of the shot.” Then, grudgingly, there was a second take. The costume department in the film depended on what was available daily in the market, like vegetables. Every morning the woman in charge of costumes went shopping in the local market for clothes; until they arrived, the entire set was in a state of tension. The hotel where they were staying had an “exhibition-cum-sale” of garments on the premises. The producer spotted this and instantly saw an opportunity. He asked his star to select the clothes he needed for the day’s shoot from the sale, wear them for the filming, and then return them at the end of the day, telling the merchants they didn’t fit.

On the set of the film about the vegetable goddess, there was a severe shortage of vegetables. The cast and crew were fed a diet of potatoes. “Not
a single dish excluding potatoes. Even the yogurt had potatoes.” Eishaan began losing his patience with the tuberous diet. He tried hinting subtly at his discomfort; he composed and recited aloud satirical verse on the potato. The producers simply said, Eishaan complains too much. Shooting on the set alternated with an unseemly scramble for nutrition. The technicians were hardened veterans of many a B movie. “When the food was served the technicians would take four or five rotis and a lot of vegetables and disappear. We would have to wait in line with our plates till they got more food.”