Show Business

by Shashi Tharoor

  The background music slams into everyone’s deafened consciousness. Mehnaz’s look requires no interpretation: at last she understands what has been happening.

  “ Bhaiya!” she screams, running to separate them for now, and to unite them forever. “Stop! Look!”

  Ashok heeds these admonitions. He stops. He looks. His eyebrows rise, his jaw drops, and his fingers release their pressure. The inspector takes advantage of this to turn around, fist ready — and then freezes in astonishment as he finally sees the full face of his attacker.

  As the two men, immobile, stare at each other, Mehnaz reaches up and slips off the inspector’s mask.

  “Ashok,” she says simply, “meet Ashok.”

  The brothers stretch a hand to each other, touching the other’s talisman and silently comparing it to his own. Then they embrace, and Mehnaz smiles blissfully.

  Fortunately, this time the mutual explanations are delivered offscreen.

  “Thakur-sahib.” Kalia isn’t noticeably older now than at the start of the film, but when you have no hair it is difficult to find something to whiten for the desired effect.

  “Yes?” Pranay is just as cruel, his eyes just as bloodshot, his mustache just as evil, but paint streaks his temples and more sinister lines have deepened the evil cast of his face.

  “Thakur-sahib, we have just heard that Ramkumar has escaped from prison.”

  “Hmm.” Pranay s voice has acquired the richness so necessary in a convincing major villain; even his hmms resonate on the sound track, sending shudders down the spines of the children in the audience. “That is disturbing.”

  “He is an old man, Thakur,” Kalia suggests.

  “And a weak one,” Pranay laughs. “He was easy meat for us when we wanted him out of the way, wasn’t he? I was so shocked when I discovered my father had left everything to Abha and him, rather than me. But when we hung that murder of yours on him, they didn’t stay around to claim their inheritance, did they? Heh-heh. No, I don’t think we need worry too much about Ramkumar.”

  “Sir, our contact man at the prison says that a few days before the escape, a woman and a man claiming to be Ramkumar’s wife and son came to the prison and asked for him.”

  “What? How can it be? You told me, Kalia, that you saw them drown with your own eyes.”

  “I did, Thakur-sahib. But the current carried them away and it is possible, though,” he adds hastily, “not very likely, of course, that your sister and one of the babies survived.”

  “Then why have they waited all these years to reappear? No, I don’t believe it.” Pranay waves a dismissive whip. “But to be safe, Kalia, we must be a little more careful. At least until the police re-arrest Ramkumar.”

  “I’m afraid that will not happen, Thakur.” Kalia looks down at the floor. “You see, with time off for good behavior, Ramkumar was to have been released two years ago. I had been paying our friend at the prison to — er — misplace the file. I am afraid this omission has now been discovered. No one guesses our involvement, of course, but I believe some inspector established that Ramkumar should not have been in prison at all. Everyone is so embarrassed they have quietly decided to forget the matter of the jailbreak.”

  “Are you sure no one suspects us?”

  “Positive, Thakur.”

  But neither of them notices, high up on the rafters of the chandeliered hall, that a monkey has been eavesdropping on their conversation. A monkey holding, in its long, firm fingers, a small and powerful miniature tape recorder.

  It is evening. Dressed in the brocaded raiments of debauchery, Pranay sprawls comfortably on a dhurrie, leaning against stuffed cotton bolsters and pulling on a hookah. By his side, on a brass tray and beside an elegantly curved brass jug, stands a bottle of Vat 69, the Hindi film villains favorite tipple. Pranay establishes his villainy by periodically removing the pipe of the hookah from his mouth and inserting the top of the whiskey bottle in its place. He gulps it down as if it were colored water, which of course is precisely what it is.

  “Let the nautch commence.” Kalia claps his hands, and with a tinkle of anklets the dancer enters the hall, raising a half-cupped palm to her forehead in a courteous adaab. Pranay nods appreciatively, as does the bulk of the audience in the theater. It is, of course, Mehnaz, accompanied by one of the Ashoks (complete with false handlebar mustache) and Ramkumar (his beard topped off with the additional disguise of a turban). The girl is covered from neck to ankle in finery, from glittering jewelry to billowing skirt atop calf-hugging silk pantaloons, yet each step she takes radiates more sex appeal than the shimmer of seven veils. The allure of what is left visible is heightened by traditional artifice. Her bare feet are painted red along the sides of the soles and her ankles are caressed by silver payals. Her hennaed hands and kohl-lined eyes transmit messages more eloquent than the lyrics of the conventional, euphemism-laden song to which she now performs:

  Don’t tell me to leave, my master,

  With you my heart beats faster,

  My palms perspire

  With nameless desire,

  Don’t tell me to leave, my master.

  I am drawn to you like a moth to a candle,

  Your heat is more than I can handle,

  I am lost,and without shame,

  I singe myself in your flame

  And fall at your feet like a sandal.

  Don’t tell me to leave, my master,

  This soul isn’tmade of plaster,

  It throbs with the need

  Tobe strung like a bead —

  Don’t tell me toleave, my master.

  (Unnoticed by the besotted Pranay and the ill-begotten Kalia, Ramkumar has slipped discreetly away on an errand of his own. The cinema audience sees this, but the dance goes on.)

  Don’t tell me to leave, my master,

  If you do it’ll bea disaster,

  Like a house with no roof,

  I’d be warpwithout woof,

  Don’t tell me to leave, my master.

  Mehnaz dances to these words as so many Indian actresses have done, with a demure grace completely unrelated to the content of the lyrics. At the song’s end Pranay, bleary-eyed from many swigs out of his bottle, beckons the girl with a crook of his finger.

  “Come here, my dear,” he slurs poetically.

  Mehnaz looks at Ashok, who nods. She walks to the Thakur, kneels suggestively before him — and in a flash pulls out a gleaming dagger from inside the folds of her skirt and holds it to his throat.

  “Don’t anybody move,” says Ashok, pulling a knife on Kalia. He grins at the goggling Pranay. “Hello, uncle,” he says.

  Upstairs, Ramkumar rummages through papers in a drawer. At last he finds what he is looking for and holds it up to the light with a gleam of triumph in his eyes. “I’ve got it,” he breathes. “The will!”

  He runs into the hall, brandishing the document. “The game is up, Pranay,” he declaims, dramatically sweeping off his turban. “You thought you had got rid of me forever. Now I have the proof that this zamindari really belongs to Abha and me.”

  “Not so fast, Ramkumar,” Pranay has regained his evil composure. “Your entitlement only derives from your marriage to my sister. With Abha dead, I am the legal heir. Let me see you fight that in a court of law.”

  “There will be no need for a court of law,” says a quiet voice. Abha has entered the hall! Pranay’s consternation is real. “But — I thought —” He staggers to his feet. “Kalia, you told me —” He takes two steps forward, unimpeded. It is a clever maneuver. Before Mehnaz catches on to what is happening, Pranay wheels around, grabs her wrist, and takes possession of the dagger. He now holds it to Mehnaz s throat.

  “Drop your knife, nephew,” he snarls.

  Ashok does as he is told. Kalia, relaxing, bends to pick it up. Suddenly there is a blur of motion as a brown, furry object jumps in through a high window and alights on the chandelier. It is Thakur, the monkey, his tail aloft like a soldiers proud standard. As Pranay cries out in a
larm, the monkey loops his tail around the chain of the chandelier and swings from it, rocking the fixture dangerously to and fro.

  “Watch out!” cries Ramkumar. He, Ashok, and Abha step back. The monkey swings defiantly one last time and then releases his tail. As he leaps through the air, straight for Pranay, the chandelier comes crashing down on the bald head of the bending Kalia.

  The monkey knocks the dagger out of Pranay’s hand with an emphatic swipe. Mehnaz runs to the others. Pranay, cursing, lunges at the monkey, who leaps out of harm’s way.

  “It’s all over, Pranay,” says Ramkumar. “My sons have all the proof they need of your evil doings. You’re going to jail for a long, long time.”

  “Not without a fight,” says Pranay, who knows what the audience wants. He pulls a ceremonial sword off the wall and charges toward them.

  Ashok parries his first thrust with a cushion, then sidesteps to the wall and pulls down a sword also. As the others watch helplessly, the two clash and thrust and parry, knocking over furniture and lamps, slashing bolsters and paintings, and considerably reducing the value of Abha’s inheritance (while enhancing the producer’s tax write-offs).

  At last, with neither having the upper hand, Ashok leaps toward a door. “Come and get me, Pranay,” he mocks. Pranay steps forward, an evil grin of pursuit on his face, when a voice from the opposite door stops him.

  “I’m here, Thakur,” says Inspector Ashok, standing at one door. Pranay looks at him aghast, then back to the other Ashok, by the other door.

  “No, I’m here, Thakur,” says Ashok the monkey-man.

  As Pranay remains motionless, disoriented by the twin apparitions, the brothers leap simultaneously at him. This time the fight is an unequal one. Pranay is overpowered, and Ashok the monkey-man stands poised to strike him with the dagger when Ramkumar speaks.

  “No, son,” he says. “We will not treat him the way he treated us. He must face the full justice of the law, and pay for his crimes in prison.”

  Ashok looks regretfully at his father. Then, obediently, he lowers his dagger. Inspector Ashok produces handcuffs instead, which are quickly applied to Pranay’s wrists.

  “In the name of the police,” Ashok says solemnly in a procedure unknown to the authorities, “I place you under arrest, Pranay Thakur.”

  Ramkumar and Abha smile at each other in parental pride. The monkey applauds.

  “There is one thing that remains to be done,” Ashok the monkey-man says.

  “Oh, and what is that?” asks Mehnaz.

  “Before Chacha, your father, died, he asked me to do something very important,” Ashok recalls.

  Mehnaz s pretty brow puckers. “And what was that, Bhaiya?” she asks.

  Ashok takes her hand. “To marry you,” he says mischievously, “to someone just like myself.”

  He pulls her by the hand to Inspector Ashok, who looks as if, under all that makeup, he just might be blushing. And he joins both their hands together. Laughing, the three embrace. Ramkumar and Abha exchange yet another look of parental pride. And the monkey, not to be outdone, leaps onto the trio and tries to embrace them all in his long thin arms.

  The sound track fills with a fast, joyful rendition of “We must go on seeking” as the screen announces THE END.

  [The Usual Note: this time we have omitted only two songs in the condensation, but a couple of fight sequences toward the end, three separate scenes of Pranay tyrannizing his tenants on horseback, one rape, a set of flashbacks about the murder for which Ramkumar was framed, and a pair of subplots involving Raju the faithful retainer and Shahji the chawl friend have also been excised in the interests of brevity — which, as we all know, is the soul of It.]

  Monologue: Night

  KULBHUSHAN BANJARA

  Yes, its true I always disapproved of you. Can you blame me? You were serious about nothing, Ashok, even as a boy. You had a gift for acting as a child, though we really thought of it as pretending — you were a very good pretender. But while you could be anyone you wanted with a few simple props, you never wanted to be what I wanted you to be. Oh, I know that sounds like the typical complaint of every father with ambitions for his son, but was I wrong to harbor such ambitions? You were worthy of them: you had the looks, the charm, the style, the glib tongue. And I could have opened doors for you, brought you into the party the right way, got you to move up from the grass roots where only I could have planted you. But you didn’t want it. Your brother, Ashwin, with half the natural talent for politics that you had, followed me because I told him I needed a political heir — but not you. First, you preferred that stupid job selling detergent powder to middle-class housewives, and then you went off to Bombay to become, of all things, a film actor. Of course I disapproved.

  But even at the height of my disapproval, I never ceased to be your father, Ashok. I know you always accused me of never having lifted a finger to help you. I did not deny the charge. Why should I? You chose this disreputable profession, knowing full well what my views on the matter were. Why should you have expected any help? “My son neither gets any help,” I declared to anyone who asked, “nor does he expect any.” And I said those last words with pride, though God knows you had not given me much by then to be proud of.

  But you didn’t know, Ashok, that a father never switches off his fatherhood, whatever his son may do. In those early days in Bombay, when you were still shamefacedly “borrowing” money from your mother to make ends meet — money, incidentally, that you have not remembered to repay her, though she would never mention it — I received the visit of an oily creature named Jagannath Choubey. He did not come to my office at Kapadia Bhawan, where I was then Minister of State for Minor Textiles, but to the house, during the hours I kept for visitors who are not personal friends. In fact, the only reason I gave him an appointment at all was because he said he was calling on me at your suggestion. You never wrote or telephoned much in those days, so I had no way of disproving this, and any contact with you, however indirect, was welcome. So I told him to come.

  This Choubey sat corpulently opposite me and presented himself as your great benefactor. “Your poor boy,” he said, “has been badly treated”; and he went on to list a long series of disappointments you had had, parts you had sought and been turned down for, petty indignities you had been made to suffer at the hands of producers until he, Choubey, had come by like a porcine knight in shining armor and rescued you by offering you a part in his film. You can imagine, Ashok, the rage I felt building up inside me as this unctuous fellow tried to slip me into his debt for having done you a favor he implied you did not deserve, a favor I would have much preferred him not to do in any case. But I controlled my anger and said nothing. I was waiting for the object of the exercise to make itself known.

  Soon enough, Choubey came to the point. It so happened, he said, that he had a few small-scale textile mills, nothing too grand, you understand, just small operations, which unfortunately had been granted licenses up to only half of their real capacity. It would be so much better for him if he could be licensed to expand his production, well, indeed to double it. This required very little effort, just a signature, mine in fact, on a file that had been pending in a subordinate’s office for some time. He was sure that once he had explained his position to me I would see my way clear to appending that little, but very useful, signature on that minor little file whose expeditious clearance nobody would particularly notice.

  He made it all sound so very simple, Ashok. “And this is why my son sent you to see me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure, you see, and I had to know.

  “Well, not exactly,” he said shiftily, then — “Yes.” And I knew immediately that you had done nothing of the kind, that indeed you probably did not even know that Choubey was seeing me. And that intensified and focused my anger, till it became a pure white glow of heat inside me, directed at the overfed, oil-oozing opportunist across the table.

  I leaned back in my chair. “And if I were to find myself unable to approve that
proposal on the file?” I asked amiably.

  He was prepared for this line of questioning. “Then I am very much afraid the financial realities of my business would not be, how you say, permitting me to continue producing my current film,” he said. “Most unfortunate this would be. Especially, I am so sad to say, for your elder son’s future.”

  “You presumably have a lot of money tied up in that film already, Mr. Choubey,” I observed mildly.

  “Tax write-off,” he responded smugly. “I have been looking for a few good losses to show.”

  “Then you do just that, Mr. Choubey,” I advised him. “I have no desire to see you, or anyone else, advance my son’s prospects in this disgusting film world of yours. If all the inducement you need to put an end to this nonsense is my refusal to sign a file I am not at all sure I should sign anyway, I am happy to give you such an inducement. Good-bye.”

  The fat little man was a picture of dismay and consternation. He sat squirming miserably in his chair, making little inarticulate noises of supplication, until I cut him short. “And I’d be careful about that tax return you submit when you cancel your film,” I added. “I intend to talk to my good friend the Minister of State for Revenue about the circumstances of your proposed write-off. I believe his department would like to look at that return very carefully indeed, as well as your returns for the last few years while they’re about it.”