The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star

by Vaseem Khan

  “So Vicky was supposed to go down into this room, wait for the doubles to do their bit, then go back up onstage?”

  “Yes,” nodded the girl. “It was all supposed to be seamless. No more than a few minutes for him to change while everyone was distracted by the doubles. Then he climbs back up through the trapdoor.”

  “But something went wrong,” said Chopra, remembering the delay when Vicky had failed to immediately reappear at the end of the illusion, and the awkward-looking final act. “Who took the stage? It wasn’t Vicky, was it?”

  “No. One of the doubles had to race around to take Vicky’s place once we realised he had gone.”

  “Tell me, Greta, if you were in the room below surely you must have seen him leave?”

  The girl lowered her eyes. “It’s all my fault,” she said on the verge of tears, her voice cracking.

  Chopra waited, patiently.

  “Vicky came down through the trapdoor. I could see immediately that he wasn’t happy. He was mumbling something, but he wouldn’t say exactly what he was angry about. I had laid out a new costume for him. That’s when I stepped outside. You know, so that he could change in private.”

  “He asked you to step outside?”

  “Oh no. Vicky doesn’t… care if I am there or not.” She blushed furiously again. “But it wouldn’t be right for me to stay while he was, you know, undressed.” She paused. “That’s when I made my mistake. Instead of waiting I went to the bathroom. I was only gone a few minutes but when I returned Vicky wasn’t there. I assumed he’d gone back up onstage, but then one of the doubles came rushing in. He told me he had to go onstage because Vicky hadn’t come back up. I was shocked. That was when I realised he had probably walked out of the show.”

  “Does Vicky often do things like that?”

  “It’s not his fault,” she said defensively. “He just gets very angry sometimes.”

  Chopra wanted to take the girl by the shoulders and give her a good shake. She was clearly besotted and this was clouding what he felt was otherwise probably an intelligent judgement.

  “What happened when the show ended? Didn’t anyone look for Vicky?”

  “Yes, of course. But he was nowhere backstage. I tried phoning him, many times, but he didn’t pick up. The concert producer was angry, but at least Vicky had completed most of the engagement. I have seen him walk out of events at the very beginning.”

  “He sounds like a difficult man to work with.”

  “He is a very good person once you get to know him.” She had the decency to look away.

  “Does he have any enemies?”

  Greta hesitated, then dug into her bag. “When Mr. Lal called me this morning and explained the situation, I fetched these from my files.” She handed over a sheaf of letters, scrawled in ink on cheap A4 paper. The letters, written in Hindi, had been crumpled, and then smoothed out again.

  Chopra looked through them.

  They were threats, presumably directed at Vicky Verma. They ranged from the predictably banal: YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR SINS to the premonitory THE PAST ALWAYS CATCHES UP WITH YOU and THE DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING.

  Each letter was signed by The People’s Judge.

  “How long has he been getting these?”

  “For the last few months. One on the first day of each month.”

  “Did you inform the police?”

  “Vicky wouldn’t let me. He thought the letters were a prank. He didn’t take them seriously.”

  “Does he get a lot of mail like this?”

  The girl sighed. “Yes,” she admitted sadly. “He gets many letters from his fans, but also many that abuse him or threaten to harm him. But these were different. They were persistent. And the way the author signed himself as ‘The People’s Judge.’ It bothered me. But Vicky just wouldn’t listen.”

  “Did you tell his mother?”

  “No. Vicky asked me not to. He felt Bijli Madam would overreact. I wish now that I had ignored him,” she added miserably.

  Chopra considered what he had heard so far. “Doesn’t Vicky have his own bodyguards?”

  “Why, yes, of course.”

  “Where were they while all this was happening?”

  “In the canteen. Once we were backstage they weren’t needed until the end of the concert.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?”

  She considered this, then said, “There was one other small thing, but I don’t think it’s important.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  “Well, as I was returning from the, ah, facilities, a man passed by me in the corridor outside the room below the stage. He was a porter—he was wearing a porter’s uniform and he was pushing a handcart. But there’s nothing unusual in that—there are plenty of porters moving things around backstage.”

  “Then why do you remember him?”

  “Well, for one, because that area was supposed to be off-limits during the performance. But he was a porter so I thought it must be okay. And, second, because he was quite striking. He was an older man, in his forties I would say, with a red beard, and wearing a Muslim prayer cap. He glanced at me as he went by and I think I said ‘good evening,’ but he just ignored me.” She fixed Chopra with a sorrowful look. “He is all right, isn’t he? Vicky, I mean.”

  “I’m sure he is perfectly fine,” said Chopra, with more confidence than he felt.

  CITY OF DREAMS

  As Chopra pulled up at the gates to Film City he found himself automatically replaying everything he had learned about the place over the years. In Mumbai, a metropolis often described as the city of dreams, Film City was where many of those dreams found their ultimate expression. The five-hundred-acre complex sprawled over a verdant landscape of low rolling hills, and contained sixteen hangar-sized studios and innumerable sets, recording rooms, editing suites, and viewing theatres. Serving as a canvas to the unbridled creativity of legendary art directors and megalomaniac producers, Film City had played host to every manifestation of Indian life imaginable. There were lakes, hills, deserts, clifftops, fake villages, and miniature cities. Mughal palaces rubbed shoulders with modern skyscrapers and seedy dance bars. In these studios countless fallen heroines had slapped the moustachioed faces of leering villains; innumerable stars had bashed senseless a conveyor belt of cronies; untold pairs of twins—separated at birth by divine circumstance to pursue lives on both sides of the law—had been tearfully reunited in bell-ringing temples.

  Every trope of Bollywood had been set into stone in Film City.

  Certainly, all the great stars of the industry had cut their teeth here; all the great movies had shot scenes here. A million careers had been born and a million just as quickly snuffed out. For many insiders, Film City had now moved into a bubble of its own making, a dome of glamour that somehow altered the air, so that all who entered became intoxicated with something akin to madness. It was even said that life was more authentic here: the fake slums were poorer than their real-life cousins; the swanky mansions plusher; the villages more rustic. In an industry that produced more than nine hundred movies each year, Film City—operating four shifts a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year—was the engine room, the beating heart of modern Bollywood.

  Vicky Verma’s agent Babu Wadekar had called ahead. Chopra was quickly ushered through the gates and directed to Studio 15, where shooting on Verma’s current movie was scheduled for the next few days.

  As he drove along the winding road he couldn’t help but glance out at the various monuments to Bollywood that whizzed by. Here, for instance, was the iconic gable-roofed façade that had so often been employed as a court—Mumbai’s High Court, Supreme Court, every type of court—and within which impassioned stars dressed in lawyers’ black robes had shaken their fists at whey-faced judges, demanding justice in an unjust land; here was a village complete with cartwheels, piles of dung, and cud-chewing bullocks, where salt-of-the-earth farmfolk had, time and again
, felt the boot of oppression hard upon their throats. And here, the famous “godless” temple, where filmmakers brought along their own deities; and Suicide Point, where car chases often ended with the villain’s white Ambassador arcing over the cliff to explode in a dazzling display of stunt pyrotechnics.

  Chopra pulled into the car park of Studio 15.

  He climbed out of the van, then let Ganesha out, before walking on to the Black Maidan, a vast field used for outdoor shooting.

  The little elephant trotted behind him into the midday sun, gingerly flapping his ears.

  Together they faced the dazzling set looming before them.

  If Chopra had not already known what to expect, he would have gaped.

  Rising into the cerulean sky before them was a perfect replica of the subcontinent’s most iconic building, the Taj Mahal.

  Described as the ultimate monument to love, the Taj had been built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz. Twenty years in the making and requiring the services of some twenty thousand artisans—and two thousand elephants—the Taj was described by poets as a “dream carved from marble.”

  If that were the case, then the extraordinary edifice rising before Chopra and Ganesha was the dream magnified a thousand-fold.

  For the first time he understood what people meant when they said that in Bollywood everything was more real. Chopra had seen the real Taj and, as heretical as the thought seemed, that Taj bore no comparison to this splendid apparition. Here the marble sparkled with an unholy lustre, there was not the slightest sign of wear or tear on each razor-straight edge or flowing curve and, in this serene setting with the fake Yamuna river flowing behind—the current powered by a series of generators—it seemed to him that he had truly been transported to the mid-seventeenth-century durbar of the Mughals.

  Behind the Taj, scattered across the vast expanse of the Black Maidan, a horde of extras in Mughal costume were milling around, stretching into the shimmering distance. Horses, elephants, camels, cannon, and medieval siege weapons were prominent. A number of individuals with loudhailers patrolled the front ranks of this massed army, occasionally firing off bursts of instruction that were duly ignored.

  To one side of the vast outdoor set Chopra spotted a line of parked trailers. Close by, a camera crew lolled by their equipment, some dozing in plastic chairs, others chatting and smoking or drinking cups of tea. Flies buzzed over the remains of a buffet. A lone crew member reviewed something on a video monitor.

  “You’re late.”

  Chopra turned to see a short man in a baseball cap, grubby T-shirt and jeans bearing down on them. He braked to a halt and looked down at Ganesha. “What is the meaning of this?” he snarled. “This elephant is too small.”

  “What?” said Chopra, nonplussed. “Too small for what?”

  The man waved his clipboard at the faux Mughal army. “I asked for five hundred war elephants, and what do I get? Sixty-three circus elephants, six bullocks painted grey, a papier mâché mammoth from the museum… and this!” He jabbed his clipboard at Ganesha. “Look at him! The armour won’t even fit him.”

  “I’m not here for your shoot,” said Chopra stiffly. “My name is Inspector Chopra and I’m looking for Bipin Agarwal, the director.”

  “He’s in his office,” said the man, stabbing his clipboard at a temporary-looking building on the perimeter of the maidan, before stomping away in disgust, muttering under his breath.

  Chopra entered the office to find a bored assistant sitting behind a plywood desk. “I am looking for the director.”

  “B.P.?” said the young man, not raising his eyes from his mobile phone. “He’s inside.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  Chopra wandered into the inner room, following the strains of a harmonium accompanied by raised voices. Ganesha trotted after him, even the sight of the elephant failing to pry the young assistant from his phone.

  The inner room appeared to have suffered a recent encounter with a tornado. Drifts of balled paper and Styrofoam coffee cups were littered about the place. A coffee table had been upended and tell-tale smatterings of glass evinced the recent destruction of liquor bottles. A number of young men—very similar in appearance to the anteroom assistant, Chopra couldn’t help but notice, and each clutching at least two mobile phones—orbited around a pair of sofas upon which were settled a trio of older gentlemen. One of them Chopra recognised as the director of Vicky Verma’s film, the legendary Bipin Agarwal.

  Bipin Agarwal—nicknamed “B.P.” or “Blood Pressure” Agarwal, due to his notorious on-set intensity—had long been considered a visionary. A relic of the Golden Age of Indian cinema, he had cut his teeth on plot-driven period pieces, but had then lost faith with the industry as it began to increasingly cater for the “cheap seats” with senseless storylines and raucous dance sequences. In the end, Agarwal walked away from Bollywood, serving a self-imposed five-year exile. Some said he had entered an ashram in the far north, others claimed he had returned to his native village in the Indian interior.

  When he did return the great director launched a one-man crusade against the modern “big-budget brainless blockbuster.” He established his own arthouse studio and an annual “alternative cinema” festival. He spearheaded a new-wave “realist” movement and began to churn out low-budget movies devoid of frills, stars, or dance numbers, focusing on the real lives of Indian citizens, from the slum-dwellers of Mumbai and Kolkata to the lives of drought-stricken farmers in the heartlands. These films, at first scathingly reviewed by the “pye-dogs of the Bollywood machine” (as B.P. himself labelled the critics pouring scorn on his efforts), slowly but surely began to attract an audience of impressionable young urbanites keen to show off their modern sensibilities. His six-hour epic 1001 Uses for the Kerosene Tin—detailing the myriad uses for which the humble Indian kerosene tin could be employed, from lamp-oil repository to well-water carrier to roofing tile and food tray—became a cult classic, garnering numerous awards around the globe.

  Years later Agarwal was christened the “third eye of Bollywood” by legendary film critic Zubin Mehroun. This was a reference to the third eye of the Hindu god Shiva, deemed to penetrate the illusion that is life, and see the reality at its heart.

  Having built a reputation as the pre-eminent anti-establishment filmmaker, it was a considerable surprise to many when, two years ago, Agarwal revealed that he had agreed to direct The Mote in the Third Eye of Shiva, a blockbuster slated to be the biggest Bollywood production of all time. While the press had a field day—“Third Eye directs Third Eye”—devotees of the great man howled with anguish and claimed that he had sold out his own movement. Others sniggered that he had finally come to his senses.

  In Bollywood, they said, money is the juggernaut that ultimately overrides all pretensions.

  The director himself had remained steadfastly silent, refusing to reveal the reason behind his decision. “Wait and see,” he had simply said.

  Chopra looked down at the stick-thin figure of B.P. splayed on the hidebound sofa, clad in a maroon kurta and white pajama, grey hair scraped back to the nape of his scrawny neck, eyes shut tight, as if in deep anguish. A half-full whisky tumbler was clutched in his right hand.

  On the sofa opposite him an overweight man was sitting cross-legged with a teak harmonium balanced across his knees. His plump fingers worked the instrument, releasing a plangent melody into the room. Beside the musician another elderly gentleman in a white shirt and dark trousers was scribbling furiously in a notebook.

  He suddenly sensed Chopra’s presence and looked up. Then he saw Ganesha. “That elephant is too small,” he remarked.

  “So everyone keeps telling me,” muttered Chopra. “I need to talk with Mr. Agarwal. It is about Vicky Verma.”

  The harmonium player’s fingers slipped, causing a discordant wheeze to erupt from his instrument. The five orbiting youngsters froze.

  And B. P. Agarwal opened his eyes, which were bloodshot and f
ull of rage.

  He arose from the sofa and, in one fluid movement, threw his whisky glass at the wall where it smashed into a million pieces. “If I hear that name one more time today I swear I’ll kill someone!”

  Chopra waited for the director’s fury to subside. “I must talk with you. It is important.”

  “Important!” Agarwal foamed with rage. “Let me tell you what is important. Over the next three days I am scheduled to film the most expensive scene in the history of Indian cinema. A scene that is itself the climax to the most expensive movie in the history of Indian cinema, a movie that is now so far over budget that it will bankrupt the studio if there are any further delays. Do you think Mughal-e-Azam was expensive? This movie makes Asif’s film look like a soft-drink commercial. The climactic moment involves the greatest war scene ever depicted. I have ten thousand extras decked out in specially designed costumes; I have the most lavish set ever created; I have elephants, horses, chariots, and cannon. I have fifteen camera crews set up to film the scene from fifteen different angles. I have every stuntman from here to Kodaikanal on station… And what do I discover? That my leading man is unavailable. Unavailable!” Agarwal brandished a fist at the heavens.

  Chopra was momentarily taken aback by the director’s fury. Even Ganesha seemed impressed by his histrionics.

  One of the young assistants spoke into the coruscating silence. “B.P., sir, please calm down. Here, take your tablets.” He shook two tablets into the director’s palm, then handed him another glass of whisky.

  When Agarwal had recovered his composure, Chopra repeated his request. “I must talk to you alone.”

  “All of you, out,” said Agarwal, clapping his hands. “Except you,” he pointed at the elderly gentleman in dark trousers. “This is Farukh Mehboob, my assistant director.”

  Once the room had been cleared, Chopra informed the two men of Vicky Verma’s mysterious disappearance, requesting their discretion, and explaining that Bijli Verma had asked him to investigate. As the news hit Agarwal, Chopra thought the director would begin to rage again, but instead he simply collapsed back on to the sofa.