Show Business (4 page)

I'm not used to women taking that tone with me, but there's something about Abha that eliminates all resistance. I obey.

“Sit down.” A firm hand on my shoulder pushes me onto the bed. Just as well. When I'm standing close to Abha I'm inconveniently conscious of how much smaller she is than I am. Having to look up at her magnificent superstructure redresses the balance.

“So you want to quit because you've just discovered they gave you the part for the wrong reasons, and because you don't think you're up to what they're asking you to do. Forget the first thing: most reasons are wrong reasons in this business. Someone gets a part by sleeping with the producer. In the end what matters is that she has the part, the film is made, perhaps it's a hit, and then she's getting offers for lots of other parts she doesn't have to earn on her back. If this film succeeds for you, no one will ask who your father is. One day, Ashok Banjara, he'll be known only as your father. Right?”

I nod humbly. And dumbly.

“Next, you don't think you can do what they want you to do. So you think you'll never make it as an actor. Wrong. Tomorrow you go to the producer, who wants to impress your father so much, and you tell him the film is going down the tubes unless he listens to you. Tell him you can't do Gopi Master's moves. You're too tall, your legs are too long, your back is too straight, whatever. Our two duets can easily be rechoreographed with me doing the dancing around you, while you stand and tilt your head and move your arms — yes, you do that rather well, Ashok Banjara. Then tell him your strengths are being underutilized by that unimaginative twit Mohanlal. Don't look at me like that — don't you know what your own strengths are? For God's sake, child, it's obvious. What are the things you
can
do? You've got long legs, you can leap and jump. Fight scenes, chase scenes, stunt scenes. Tell him to put in lots of these.”

I am awestruck. “But will he do all this for me? I mean, change everything? Overrule Mohanlal?”

“Mohanlal's not Jean-Luc Godard,” she retorts. “He's an employee, he'll do as he's told. And Jagannath Choubey wants to see his film finished, using the talent he's already got to the best of their ability. He has a lot of money tied up in this film, after all. Not to mention a lot of hopes involving his star's father.”

“I'll see him in the morning,” I vow. “Abhaji, I don't know how to thank you. I came in here to plead with you to come back to the set, and instead you've shown
me
the light. I'll never forget this, Abhaji. Tell me what I can do for you. Anything at all.”

She laughs. It is a relaxed laugh, as if somebody has just called “cut” and she has switched off her overdrive. “If you really want to do something for me …”

“Yes? Just name it.”

“You've got nice long fingers. Massage my back for me, it's hurting a bit after that last dance routine.”

“You bet.” Massage her back? I'd have paid for the privilege. “Er — should I say something to Mohanlal?”

“What for?”

“Well, he must be waiting for us.”

“Let him wait. It'll be good for his soul.”

“And what if someone walks in? While I'm massaging you?”

“Let's see who dares to walk into Abha Patel's dressing room without permission,” she says fiercely, adding colloquially, “Mohanlal's dad won't do it.”

“OK,” I concede, borrowing Mohanlal's copyright on the word. “Shall we start?”

“Use this cream,” she says, handing me a bottle. Her fingers move to the silver buttons of her
kameez.
My heart picks up tempo, like the music director's favorite bongo. “Turn around,” she commands. My heart reenters adagio. I hear the gentle rustle of silk being slipped off and imagine a lover's notepaper emerging from a fragrant envelope.

“I'm ready now,” she says in a low voice. I turn.

She is lying on the dressing room bed, on her front. The
kameez
is the only garment she has taken off: she has folded it onto the solitary chair. Her face is turned toward me, one cheek on the pillow, but her eyes are closed.

Bottle of cream in hand, I sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. I smear some of the cream on her back. The broad strap of her brassiere impedes my hand.

“Are you sure you want to keep this on?” I ask, my voice thickening.

“Yes,” she replies shortly. “Let it be.”

So much for the romance of the moment. I rub the cream into her skin, which is soft, smooth, devoid of lines: a young woman's.

“Does Celestine do this for you usually?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says languorously. “But Celestine has short, stubby fingers. Not like yours.” And as I stroke her shoulder blades, she moans in pleasure. The moans are soft, low: the tranquilizer must be working at last.

“Where was it hurting, Abhaji?” I ask a little later. “I'll rub a little more there.”

Her voice is sleepy, the words almost a drawl. “Everywhere,” she whispers. “Just go on. I'm very tired …”

I go on. So she really did want a massage: this was no camouflaged seduction. And I could imagine how tired she must have been, after all that cavorting in the wet, all those takes. And she isn't all that young anymore. My fingers press and smooth and knead, tracing waves and semicircles and military steps on her flesh. She breathes evenly, her small soft back rising and falling as my fingers coax the fatigue out of them. I realize she is asleep.

Damn! Here I am, sent to bring Abha out to film, and all I have succeeded in doing is putting her to sleep. I am annoyed with myself and even slightly with her. Perversely, to release my annoyance, I unhook her bra. It has left a pale discolored swath across her back. She must hardly ever take it off.

I continue stroking her back, the whole of it this time, and find myself unable to resist the obvious temptation. Here I am, a normal, red-blooded sexually deprived twenty-five-year-old Indian male, in intimate proximity to the most famous bosom in India, with only an unhooked bra between me and a vision of paradise. And she is asleep, knocked out; she need never even know.

Gently, I take her by the shoulder and turn her slightly. She does not awake. Emboldened, I turn her onto her back. She breathes sweetly, her nostrils widening slightly at each intake of air. I look at her for a moment: her face is still exquisite, but her skin is beginning to sag, folds are lining her neck, crow's-feet are tiptoeing around her eyes. Abha Patel has built her career on looking cute, but to be cute you have to be young. Her looks are incompatible with middle age, and middle age is creeping up on her like the villain's accomplice waylaying the filmi hero. Except that in the movies the hero could always escape the trap.

She looks so peaceful in sleep. No animal magnetism here, just a woman in repose. Tired, chemically promoted repose, at that. But what a woman.

What a woman. My eyes travel down her neck to the disarranged bra and narrow in puzzlement. I breathe more quickly, my heart pounding like the bongos on the playback track. My fingers, with a will of their own, reach for the cups and lift the brassiere gently off her torso.

I stare in shock. For an instant, the air stops coming into my lungs. My fingers lose their will. The bra drops back into place. My hands are shaking as I turn Abha back and rehook her bra.

I can't believe what I have just seen: breasts so shriveled and empty they are like pockets of desiccated skin, their tips drooping in dismay. Abha's bosom is that of a ninety-year-old. The most famous bust in India is a pair of falsies.

My breathing is still uneven as I get up to leave. She sleeps on, a tranquilized smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She must be dreaming, as millions of her countrymen do in the cinema theaters of our nation. Except that they dream with their eyes open.

 

Exterior: Day

GODAMBO

The small plane appears at a distance against a clear blue sky. Water shimmers below, the sunlight making patterns of molten gold on the surface of the waves. As the noise of its engines becomes louder, the plane weaves unsteadily. The sound of fist landing on flesh is heard.
Dishoom!

Interior: a fight is in progress. The pilot lies sprawled across the controls, a vivid red stain across his white-uniformed back. A bald villain is slugging our hero, Ashok. Ashok ducks, kicks. The villain clutches his stomach, the plane bucks, Ashok pushes the pilot aside and seizes the controls. Exterior: the plane dips, straightens itself out. Interior: the villain approaches Ashok from behind, his lips parted in a gruesome snarl. As he raises both hands to bring them down on our hero, Ashok lowers his head and in one sudden jerk smashes it backward into the villains face. Baldy grunts, clutching a bleeding nose. Ashok half rises, one hand still firmly on the plane's controls, and with scarcely a backward glance sends his free elbow crashing into the villain's solar plexus. Baldy doubles over and falls. Ashok, grim determination on his face, keeps the plane steady. Below, the water continues to shimmer.

The villain, lying on the floor of the cockpit, spots his gun under the pilot's seat. His eyes glint. The gun glints. Ashok, at the controls, has his back to him. Slowly, Baldy inches forward, his bloody hand stretching out toward the gun. Close-up: Ashok, alert eyes scanning the horizon, look of grim determination still on face. Back to villain, inching steadily closer to weapon. Ashok, seemingly oblivious, looks at altimeter, fuel gauge, and assorted other indicators. Baldy s hand nears the weapon. He almost has it! Just as his fingers touch the gun metal, Ashok's foot lands crushingly on his hand. The villain grimaces, yowling in pain. Ashok kicks away the gun, which flies to the door of the plane. The villain gets up, stumbles toward it. He reaches the gun; the plane lurches, the villain trips, falls against the door. His free hand, seeking support, grabs the first thing it can. Alas, it is the handle of the door, which flies open. Villain and gun follow each other into the void.

Long shot, in slow motion, of Baldy plummeting unceremoniously to his wet fate, punctuated by a long, plaintive, despairing scream. A resounding splash is heard; a small fountain mushrooms upward. Shark fins appear ominously in the water. Ashok smiles grimly, brings the aircraft under control. Once again, the plane is seen against the clear blue sky, but now its flying steadily and purposefully, like its pilot. The water still shimmers.

The credits appear on the screen. The sound track swells with the theme song:

I am the long arm of the law,
I'll always show villains the door
By day or by night
I'll handle any fight
And put all the bad men on the floor!

I am the long arm of the law,
I'll never flinch from blood and gore,
Rapists and muggers,
Car thieves and smugglers,
Will always get it on the jaw!

I am the long arm of the law,
No one is quicker on the draw,
Injustice and corruption, Forces
of disruption, Will be the losers in this war!

Ashok taxis to a stop. A police Jeep is waiting on the tarmac. A uniformed officer with a thin mustache and fat jowls asks anxiously, “What happened? Where's the villain?”

“He had an urgent appointment,” Ashok replies, “with destiny.”

Inside the police station more details emerge. “You were right, sir,” Ashok tells his senior officer, the ramrod-straight Iftikhar, the only filmi cop whose waistline is as thin as his mustache. “The smugglers have become even more daring. They have taken to using small private planes now.” Ashok had hidden on board with the gold biscuits, been discovered, and in the ensuing altercation Baldy had shot his own pilot by mistake. As Iftikhar regrets that neither villain is available for questioning, policemen enter with the boxes recovered from the aircraft, closely packed with the precious yellow metal. The gold glints like sunlight on shimmering water.

“Shabash,”
says Iftikhar. It is his favorite word of congratulation: he has uttered it, in precisely that tone of rectitude and recognition, in more than two hundred films. Ashok acknowledges the accolade with a manly nod. “But there is much more to do. We must nab the mastermind of this operation — the dreaded Godambo.”

Interior: a huge, cavernous hall. Two nervous men walk across a marbled floor. The sound of their shoes on the marble is the only intrusion in the silence. Then the music builds: at first slow, then with mounting tempo, danger in every note. The men pass massive pillars, eerily lit in red and gold, and cast apprehensive glances at the black-clad commandos standing at attention beside each pillar, submachine guns at the ready. Each has a springing animal stitched on a badge on his sleeve, onto which is embroidered the words “Black Cheetah” in gold thread. In the center of the hall ripples a large pool flanked by ornamental fountains whose waters are also illuminated in red and gold. Gradually emerging into view beyond the pool, an imposing figure sits on a jeweled throne. He has a large domed and hairless head: not even a mustache breaks the expanse of solid flesh. He is attired in black, red, and gold; a cape flows behind him, and his feet are encased in gold maharajah shoes, their very points sharp with menace. On his lap is a baby cheetah — a live one this time — which he strokes incessantly.

The men come to a halt at the pool and look across at their master. In the water a fin appears, swirling rapidly, and disappears again. The men swallow, exchanging tense glances.

“Well?” The voice from the throne is deep and gravelly, the voice of a major villain.

The men shift uneasily from foot to foot.

“Where is my
maal?”
the powerful voice asks. In close-up, the villain scratches the cheetah's neck.

“Sir — mighty Godambo, we don't have it,” says the thinner of the two men.

“And how can that be? Who dares to deny mighty Godambo his goods?”

“Sir, the plane did not land. The police have captured it.”