Spice and Smoke (4 page)

His whole life, Harsh had dreamed of nothing but being a hero. Cheap prints of film stars had papered his walls, and he’d gone to sleep every night reciting dialogues from
Sholay
and
Deewar
instead of prayers. He’d worked every day since childhood towards a single dream, going from a
natak
company in his village to a lucky break in a serial after a production assistant saw him doing a monologue from
Hamlet
at his English medium school. He’d come from
nothing
, as the youngest child of a shopkeeper, and turned into India’s most beloved son.

Now…now he walked side by side with his idols. Now
his
pictures inspired other little boys. Only he’d forgotten one monumental lesson
: har hero ka zindagi main ek heroine hotha hain
. In every hero’s life, there was a heroine.

Trishna had bewitched him at sixteen. Now, at a shade past twenty-six, her spell was stronger than ever. She was not even trying.
Nahin.
All she had for him was anger. Her body froze under his touch while Nishta’s eyes told Alok to come closer. Her lips told him he was “
ek number ka kaminey
”, a number-one bastard, even as she mouthed love poetry from a playback singer’s voice.

He had never wanted her more.

He itched to hold her fast in his arms. To inhale her scent and taste her.

Saint Harsh. Mathur the Monk. He knew what everyone said of him. His comrades in the industry thought him above such
harami
. Him? Lust for a married woman?
Never.
He was a do-gooder, a prince, a humanitarian! They simply saw the surface and the two layers below that. They were blind to what burned in his gut. To how playacting in any scene with Trish was like shooting a blue film.

They were blind…but Trishna’s husband was not.

Avinash was making a terrible face as he lounged at the rickety table that was set up as Varun’s command center. But unlike the role he played, Avi had command of very little. Certainly not his temper. Working on the same side, even for the just the film’s purposes, was no pleasure for him. But Harsh could not sympathize. Avi’s jealousy was unfounded. Worse, it was hypocrisy. That he still wanted Michael Gill was etched in every line of his false languor; he was coiled like a serpent in the sun…ready to strike. Harsh remembered what Michael had said only days before: “You are not such a great actor.” Neither was Avi Kumar. What a pair the two of them made.
Kya jodi.

He shored himself up, took a deep breath, and closed the distance between them. He used his red kerchief to mop his face, giving the appearance of someone who was just weary from too much heat. But Avinash was in no mood for pleasantries, for playing at being friends. Harsh had barely just sat down across from him when his gaze narrowed. “What do you want?”

“Just relaxing,
yaar
. Same as you.”

Avi made a rude noise, slapping his palm down on the wooden tabletop. “You are not the same as me. You will never be the same as me.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what made them so very different. For sure, Avinash’s list would be different than his own. “You think I don’t see that you want to fuck my wife?”

“I would never make a move, never presume to come into your marriage. I have respect for her.” Even as he said it, “respect” tasted bitter, like burnt
karela
.

“Respect? That will get you nowhere.” Avi made a dismissive noise. “With Trish, you have to
act
. To
demand
. Do you know what she likes in bed? What a tigress she is in my arms? How she likes taking the lead and directing every movement? She’s insatiable, and she’ll do anything. I was her first. Her desires are all of my making.”

It was crass.
Ghatia.
Meant to shock his delicate sensibilities. What Avi didn’t know was that when it came to Trishna, Harsh had no sensibility at all. He smiled, his perfect, saintly toothpaste advert smile. “Her desire may be all of your making, Avinash…but her love is all of mine.”

“Trishna
ji
, it’s party time. Come!” cried Mili, one of the young makeup girls—oh, God, what was the world coming to when Trish thought of
other
girls as “young”? She wished she could blame it on the “
ji
”—the term of respect made her feel like her mother—but she’d felt ancient for years. Weighted down by secrets and lies. At least most of the girls in both makeup
and
wardrobe had stopped calling her “
Memsahib
”.

“
Main kya Hindustani ladki nahin hoon?
” she’d asked them.
Aren’t I an Indian girl?

Not that she looked the part now…dressed like a mod Bombay city girl in her ripped jeans and tank top, ready for a casual picnic and cheap beers. Trish shed Nishta’s
sari
and blouse like snakeskin…wishing she could cast away what was ahead for her character just as easily. Love. Passion. Heartbreak. Who really needed to experience all of that over and over in the name of art? Who needed to take it home every night when she had Avi and his demons waiting for her in the dark? That was
kafi
—definitely enough.

Trishna hurried to catch up with Mili, but she had practically sprinted up the dirt footpath towards the crew trailers, where the music was already pumping. The promise of a night off, mixing with everyone, was a luxury for her. One people of Trish’s status frequently took for granted. The rich, the privileged, they knew how to play, but not how to work, play and treasure both. Saint Harsh had given the entire industry lessons in how to be humble and thankful when he rose up from village boy to poster boy.

As though thinking of him had conjured him up like Aladdin’s genie, Trish knew Harsh was behind her even before he spoke. She could feel his gaze twisting into her like a corkscrew, trying to force her to uncap emotions best left in the bottle.

“Going to the party?” With his long strides, he was soon at her side.

“No, I’m going to the
mandir
to pray,” she snapped. “Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know. Tell me and I will take you.” He grinned at her, boyish and innocent. Perfectly happy, as though they were taking a sweet lovers’ stroll through the park.
Harsh Mathur’s smile is like sunshine
, one of those stupid movie magazines had declared. She’d never quite been able to forget the comparison.

“I don’t need you to take me anywhere.
Samjhe?
Understand? You can leave me alone.”

“I left you alone for almost ten years.
Aur nahin.
No more.” The boy’s façade dropped, revealing the man he’d become. If his smile was sunshine, then his eyes were like
bijli
. Lightning. “I won’t come between you and Avinash. I will simply be here with you. Everywhere you turn. Everywhere you are. I’ll be the immovable mountain in your path.”

What
nerve
. Who did he think he was? Trishna stopped walking, her fingers itching to slap him like she had at the
muhurat
. Instead, she used that very same hand to shove at the center of his chest. He was not the only one who could bring lightning. She was that and much more: lightning, thunder…the entire bloody storm.

“You forget something, Harsh,” she warned him. “Mountains can be climbed…and they can be conquered.”

Someone’s iPod was blaring music across the field. Snoop Dogg. Dr. Dre. It was angry and so very
Amrikan
, it didn’t fit this place, this time. Avi had to shake himself out of the instinctive flashback to long-ago lazy days at NYU, when he had been smoking up and wearing entirely too many gold chains. Climbing into that narrow dormitory bed with J.T. after a gig at the Bitter End.

In the here and now, the crew and some of the cast had begun partying in the little picnic spot set up between the trailers to celebrate two full weeks of shooting. The sweet smell of
ganja
was the only thing that was remotely the same. Bihar was warm and wet and somehow
other
. He half-expected villagers to come over the rise, torches in hand, demanding they turn down
shaithan
’s wailing.

Michael and Harsh looked as if they’d been born dancing. He could picture it. Michael’s perfect legs, perfect feet, suddenly on a miniature scale…beating the rhythm of a classical dance inside his mother’s belly. Avi felt big and awkward and hot inside his own skin. Trapped. It took him hours with the choreographer to pick up the steps that took them only moments.

Put drumsticks in his hands, and it was a different story altogether. That was rhythm he felt. He
bled
. Sitting behind a kit was the only time he’d felt whole. What he had with Trish was close, because she let him constantly riff against her skin. Slapping and teasing her lush bottom like the taut heads of the
tabla
. Pounding her like a
dhol
.

But even she was more at ease here than he was. Dropping the mask of the spoiled ice queen to throw back a bottle of Kingfisher and dance with the makeup girls. His darling wife had a face for every occasion, every scene. None of them hid anything more complicated than a girl who always got what she wanted. Trish didn’t know what it was to live with hunger, with madness. With the sense that, at any moment, something was going to explode from inside her.

She accepted him, but she didn’t know what it was to
be
him.

Avi watched Michael move, reflected in the light of the bonfire one of the spot boys had set to roaring. He watched until his entire body felt aflame. Then he spun away, rescuing a bottle of Jack Daniels from the unit chief and dousing the burn.

Dre turned into R. Kelly turned into Usher.

His head started to spin with remembrances of a dozen back-room hookups in places that actually had air conditioning. He had a quarter of the bottle gone already when a shadow loomed over the director’s chair he’d parked himself in. “
Yaar
, we have an early call tomorrow. Are you sure you want to do that?”

He squinted through the layered glass, his view obstructed by the labels. Not that he needed to look. He knew exactly who it was. He pitched his voice to the crew clustered about. “
Yaaron
…buddies…someone needs to learn the difference between being a ‘motherfucker’ and acting like my goddamn mother.” It was lost on most of the local hires, so he translated: “
Lagtha hain yeh maderchod mera ma banna chatha hai.
” Drunken laughter greeted his generosity…none of it courtesy of the illustrious Michael Gill.

Nahin
, the illustrious Michael Gill was not amused. He wasn’t even sweating after his impromptu hip-hop dance workout. “I don’t give a damn what you do to yourself, Avinash, but we’re up early tomorrow,” he said, like someone had shoved a stick up his proper pseudo-British arse. “I don’t want to go through thirty bloody takes because you’re hung over.”

“
Ek
take,” he assured, making a show of taking one, long gulp and swishing the whiskey around in his mouth. “
Sirf ek take lagey ga.
I always get it right the first time.”

Michael’s eyes held something…something that could’ve been amusement. But it felt too prickly, too much like sandpaper on Avi’s skin. “You could’ve fooled me…
buddy
,” was all he said before he walked away.

Avi watched him go, studied how his frayed, tight jeans clung to his perfect ass. He knew he was fooling
himself
most of all.

Chapter Six

The scene: 2013’s
The Raj
, starring Avinash Kumar, Trishna Chaudhury, Harsh Mathur, Michael Gill, Vikram Malhotra and Sam Khanna.

“Kyu mere piche karthe ho, Alok? Kyu?”
Nishta’s thick lashes are fringed with tears, her entire body trembling like a leaf battling against the wind, lest it break from its tree. I can’t do this, she tells Alok with every fiber of her being. Stop coming round, stop following me, stop tormenting me. I will surely die of it.

Alok stands painstakingly still, as if he is a mirror for her agony. Without saying a single word, he tells her, “I can’t. You are as vital to me as air.”

It was a small mercy when they finished the fadeout to the song and dance sequence—thankfully not on the schedule for another week, as they flew in more background dancers from Mumbai. It was a relief when Trish could finally break character and shed the skin of the silly, young girl whose greatest torment was an excess of love. Nishta’s biggest troubles vanished once the cameras stopped rolling…Trishna’s were still very much present. Tall and hulking, green-eyed like the monster of legend. When Harsh looked at her the way he was looking at her now, he was saying the same thing that Alok had expressed only moments before. “You’re vital to me. I need you. I want you.”

True to his word, he’d proved ever present. On set. At the hotel. In the garden. By the pathetic excuse for a swimming pool. Everywhere she was, there was Harsh Mathur, manly mountain.

“Why now?” she wanted to ask him. Thank God her carefully cultivated persona prevented it. Spoiled, selfish, bitch queen Trishna, who only cared about professionalism and nothing else, could bite her tongue and swallow the bitter question. He’d had
years
to look at her this way. Years before she met Avinash, then the years where their marriage was still tender and breakable. For Harsh to do this to her now…it was unfair. It was nearly cruel. It was all the things this saint of a man wasn’t supposed to be.

As if he knew that her mind was on this track, he paused in shedding his dusty
kurta
. “They’ve signed Priya for the item song. She will be here in a few weeks. Avinash and I will both be in the sequence.”