Show Business

by Shashi Tharoor

  I am taken aback. “But why me?” I ask in a mixture of genuine surprise and feigned innocence.

  “Come, come, Ashokji, you are, so to say, a man of the world,” Dr. Gangoolie says affably, making it sound like a postgraduate degree. “We all know that your eminence in the film industry is not fully reflected in your tax returns. We have no real objection, of course, but we are confident, so to say, that you are in a better position to help us in Switzerland than most.”

  I look at him in some alarm. “I don’t understand,” I say carefully. “Even assuming that I know, that I can find out, about such things, why would the party need me? I mean, in your position, with your authority and connections, and given the kinds of people you’re dealing with abroad, nothing should be easier than having the money put discreetly into an account, or accounts, for you.”

  “How true,” Dr. Gangoolie agrees with an emphatic bobbing of his pipe. “That is indeed how it should be. But we are, so to say, a divided government.” He jabs his pipe at me to make his point. “Times are bad. There are people in Revenue Intelligence who are taking their instructions too seriously. With encouragement from certain elements in the Cabinet.” He looks suitably mournful. “It is a sorry state of affairs. No one knows whom to trust any more. There are, so to say, wheels within wheels.” On his Bengali tongue that comes out as “heels within heels,” and I have a mental image of rapidly scurrying feet. “I am told that the minister concerned has even ordered external surveillance, by a foreign detective agency if you please, of all pending and current transactions. So it is actually more difficult these days to obtain a commission from a government contract than, so to say, from a private one.”

  He sucks briefly on his pipe, his eyes narrowing as at some private reflection. “We shall do something about this,” Dr. Gangoolie adds darkly, looking like an owl who has smelled a rat. “But that will take some time. For now, we cannot open a new account or involve anyone connected with the transaction who might be monitored. We need the convenience of a private account, and so to say, rather quickly.”

  “Let me see if I’ve got this,” I say. “You want to have a large sum of money paid into a preexisting account abroad that has nothing to do with the government. And you thought of me.”

  Dr. Gangoolie nods. “There are others known to us, of course, Indian businessmen based abroad, even in Switzerland. But we think you would be safer. And, of course, the party would be suitably grateful.”

  I do not reflect long. When in Delhi, play by Delhi rules. I am just at the beginning of a political career and could do worse than get into the good books of the bosses when they need a favor. I nod. “Anything to help the party,” I say.

  Dr. Gangoolie exhales his delight. “Excellent,” he replies, pulling out a pouch of imported tobacco. He must be relieved, because now it seems he is really going to fill his pipe. “Now, so to say, listen carefully. Here are the details.”

  How was I to know? This is what I find myself saying to Ashwin when the dung hit the punkah. It’s not as if you were there to advise me either, brother. How could I judge with what authority Dr. Gangoolie was really, so to say, speaking? I thought I was doing what anyone in my position would have done.

  Not anyone, he retorts, looking exasperated. Only you.

  It happens so fast I can barely see the blur. Like one of Mohanlal’s simpleminded directional techniques that shows the passage of time by the pages on a wall calendar flipping rapidly through the dates. One moment I am basking in my newfound regular access to the Prime Minister’s office, the next an enterprising newspaper has found (or been leaked) evidence of a commission that was never supposed to have been paid. Documents start being circulated in Parliament. Dr. Gangoolie is expelled from the party and denounces its ideological direction to explain his departure. The investigation is stepped up by a self-righteous minister; Switzerland starts being mentioned. An account labeled Gypsy is unearthed, to the delight of amateur translators and travel agents. Maya’s shopping trips to Harrod’s are alluded to on the front pages. The PM’s supporters in the party attack the investigation. The minister threatens to resign rather than drop his inquiries. Fingers are pointed at me; two-bit journalists start compiling dossiers on my visits to Geneva. MPs step aside as I walk toward them in the Central Hall of Parliament. The whispers mount. The Prime Minister truthfully denies ever having met me since my election. Voters in my constituency are interviewed and quoted as saying that they have not seen my face there since the voting tallies were declared. (True, but dammit, wasn’t I supposed to be in Delhi?) A syndicated columnist suggests that I was brought into the party because of my film world connections with smugglers, black marketeers, and foreign exchange violators. No Hindi film hero has been more rapidly reduced to unproven villainy.

  I am still in shock from these attacks, but what really breaks me is the defense. I know the government will not expose my involvement, because they cannot do so without betraying themselves. But the way they choose to protect me! The Prime Minister lets it be known he has not so much as spoken to me in months. An anonymous, highly placed government source tells another columnist that if I were of any importance to the party I would have been better employed than on the back benches; therefore I am obviously a politician of no consequence who couldn’t possibly have any connection to a major national transaction. “Ashok Banjara was brought into politics to win a seat, not to run the affairs of government,” a party spokesman with hair coming out of his ears bluntly tells a journalist with steam coming out of hers. A government-appointed inquiry fails to establish any connection between me (or anyone else in the party, not even, so to say, Dr. Gangoolie) and the published documents. The recalcitrant minister, who has meanwhile been kicked upstairs to a more prestigious portfolio, denounces the inquiry as “a whitewash of black money” and leaves to set up his own party.

  Legally I am in the clear; my exoneration, though, is based upon the absolute reiteration of my irrelevance. There will be no criminal charges against me, but politically I am as finished as a cabaret dancer on crutches.

  There really is only one thing to do. I quit.

  No one has to ask me to do it. All it takes is one conversation with my brother. “Its all gone, Ashok,” he says with finality. “All gone. And you don’t even know why. You don’t even understand what the game was, whose interests you were serving, who set you up, who rode you to a fall, why. It was just another part in a story you thought you didn’t need to understand. But on this shift, Ashok-bhai, somebody gave you the wrong lines.”

  “I know, Ashwin,” I admit glumly. “Tell me what it was about.”

  “What is there to tell?” Ashwin is both depressed and dismissive. “You were taken for a ride, that’s all.”

  “But what about all the stuff Dr. Gangoolie told me? What did it mean?”

  “That? Oh, that,” Ashwin says. “That was done with the political equivalent of reflectors, playback, dubbing. That was all show business.”

  What can I say to that? I resign from Parliament and announce that, for personal reasons, primarily that of being saddened and disgusted by the vilification to which I have been unjustly subjected, I am also leaving politics for good. Because I ask Ashwin to look over the text of the statement, he puts in a sentence of thanks to the voters of my constituency for having elected me. Before my announcement reaches the newspapers, Pandit Sugriva Sharma declares his renewed candidacy for the seat.

  In their relief at being spared the embarrassment of having to defend me, the party tries to negotiate a deal with the Pandit. They will put up a weak candidate, in effect letting him have the seat, provided he confines his electoral attacks to me rather than the party. Confidently, he spurns them. Our ex-minister endorses Sugriva Sharma’s candidacy. His victory is a foregone conclusion. Even then, Dad and Ashwin are asked to stay away from the constituency during the by-election.

  I have, as our Hindi film dialogists say, rubbed the honor of the Banjaras in the mud. I decide to
leave Delhi. But I have to say good-bye to my brother. Good-bye, and farewell: I want him to fare well.

  I walk into the house on the way to the airport. My mother’s face is impossible to read when I tell her of my decision. “Jeete raho, bete’ is all she can say. May you go on living, my son. The same traditional blessing she had given me when I first set out for Bollywood. I had not found the words encouraging then; I do not find them discouraging now.

  Ashwin isn’t home. She doesn’t know when he’ll be back. “I’m sorry I can’t wait, Ma,” I say. “Tell him I wanted to say goodbye. I’ll telephone him from Bombay.” I hear the clatter of a cane and the shuffle of tired feet at the entrance to the room. Even before I look I know who it is, though I hadn’t known Dad had started using a cane. I want to reach out to him. He stands in the doorway a shrunken man, his face gaunt and lined, a shambling figure far removed from the towering personality I have always sought to escape.

  “So you’re leaving,” he says. His voice is hoarse, echoing a fraying hollowness within. I nod soundlessly. I would like to say something more — “sorry,” perhaps, “sorry, Dad.” I haven’t called him “Dad” in ages. But no words come.

  “Leaving. Escaping. Running away. As always.” He leans on his cane, each utterance emerging in an angry rasp. “Why?” He spits out the question.

  “There’s nothing left for me to do here.” I am shaken, made defensive by the unexpectedness of his rage.

  “There never was anything for you to do here.” The bitterness flies out of his mouth like spittle. “And once I had such high hopes for you. My—son.” His voice breaks slightly at the lost possibilities of the word. “Why?” he resumes, his cane smashing at the door-jamb. “What for? What was the point of it all?”

  “KB,” Ma says, “you’re shouting.”

  “I know I’m shouting!” He turns to me and I realize that not even in my childhood have I seen him so angry. “Go! Go to your films and your sluts and your dancing and kicking! Go — go and destroy something else!”

  “Dad—”

  “Don’t say another word!” And I see, to my horror and disbelief, that he has raised his cane and is holding it as if he is about to strike. “KB!” My mother’s alarm is genuine. Quickly she goes to him and gently lowers his arm. They both look at me, and I am lacerated by the jagged edges of pain in their eyes.

  There is nothing I can say to them. I leave the house without another word.

  “I wasn’t enjoying it anyway,” I say to Cyrus, whose nephew has been turned down by the Planning Commission. “But one thing I’ll never forgive the bastards for: they froze the Gypsy account, into which the commission had been paid, without warning me to get my own money out first. Cyrus, I’m practically broke.”

  To his credit, Sponerwalla doesn’t remind me he’d argued against my foray into the land of the cuckoo clock. “That should be easily remedied,” he says, looking like a chocolate lover who’s just found the soft center. “Let the producers know you’re back in business, and they’ll come flocking to you again.”

  But they aren’t. Subramanyam’s face registers even lower levels of disappointment than it did in Delhi: producers aren’t available when he calls them. The one or two offers that are made are at figures I would have turned down five years ago.

  “What I am to be telling them, sir? When I told that sir would not be interested at that price, Choubey-sahib saying you tell him anyway, it is more than anyone else will be giving him these days.” He averted his eyes, like a Brahmin before a shish-kebab. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Subramanyam, it’s only a phase.” I reassure him with a confidence I never felt in the political world. “These people only know the box office, where they have only heard of up and down, and because of what has happened they think I’m down. What they don’t realize is that I may be down in politics, but as an actor, I’m as good as I ever was, and the people love me.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Subramanyam dubiously.

  “You don’t seem convinced,” I laugh. “Well, don’t worry. You tell Choubey-sahib I said no to his offer, but that I want to see him. Ask him to come here, let’s say, at teatime tomorrow.”

  Fifteen minutes later he is back. “I am not getting Choubey-sahib, sir,” he confesses. “Only his secretary I am getting. He is making me hold on for quite some time, then he is saying, ‘If Ashokji wanting to meet Choubey-sahib, tell him to come here.’ I starting to say something, sir, but then line going dead.”

  “Hmm.” I digest this pieces of news; it’s worse than I thought. I suppose the balance sheet of the last few years is none too good: Dil Ek Qila, a few middling hits, the failure of Mechanic. And now a bad name in the press, though for reasons that have nothing to do with my acting. The reek of defeat still clings to my aura. “Well, Subramanyam, perhaps it’s time I paid a visit to Choubey-sahib after all.”

  Choubey-sahib lives in a bungalow, of the kind that few producers can afford today: set back from the road, big gate, even a little stretch of grass in front. I am ushered in by a deferential manservant and shown to an overstuffed sofa.

  I look around me with interest. It is years since I have been here, years since the producers started coming to me. Continued success has added to Choubey’s prosperity and his furnishings. Sofas, chairs, and a divan are upholstered in red raw silk and generously laden with cushions and bolsters clad in varying hues of the same material. The walls are not spared: I touch one and find it has been papered in raw silk. Yet little of it is visible under a scattering of modern art, all acquired since it became the fashionable thing to buy: a couple of Hu-sains from his mass-production period, an intricate Charan Sharma (mounds of stones seen through a half-open window, the producer’s view of his extras), and a gigantic Anjolie Ela Menon catch my eye. So do the photographs Choubey has placed on every available surface, all depicting the greater glory of Choubey: Choubey with the Prime Minister, Choubey with the dynastic scion who nearly became Prime Minister, Choubey being garlanded by some overdressed woman with a smile as false as her pearls, Choubey with wife and offspring in a studio pose, Choubey with (I am pleased to note) me. Some of these (but not mine) are signed. There are also solitary Choubeys in evidence, from a youthful, chubby-faced Choubey to a more contemporary Choubey, still chubby-faced but no longer youthful, the fat cheeks set in the sullenness of success. Many replica Choubeys, but no original: of the real thing, there is no sign.

  “Is Choubey-sahib in?” I ask the manservant.

  “Yes, sahib, he is in,” the man confirms. “Sahib, chai, sahib?”

  “Coffee, I think,” I demur, just to assert myself. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I am here?”

  The man shifts uneasily from foot to foot, his eyes evading mine. “Sahib, I’ll go get the tea,” he says in Hindi, backing away toward the kitchen.

  “Not so fast,” I say. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  He stands on one leg and cocks his head, as if trying to recall it. “Have you told Choubey-sahib I’m here?” I repeat.

  “Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping,” the man informs me sheepishly.

  “Well, go and wake him up then,” I demand. “He said eleven o’clock, it’s almost quarter past already.”

  “I’ll go get the tea, sahib,” says the servant and disappears before I can catch him again.

  I resume, in silence but not tranquillity, my inspection of the Choubey living room. There are three Filmfare statuettes on a sideboard, Best Picture Awards for God knows what, perhaps even something starring me. A brass hookah stands on a corner table, an outsize Nataraj on another. Choubey clearly hasn’t left his interior decor to the kind of people who do the sets of his films. There are wooden elephants, a clay Bankura horse, a bejeweled Rajasthani camel. Glossy coffee table books of photographs by Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh jostle for space with well-thumbed issues of Showbiz, Stardust, and TV and Video World. Choubey has certainly acquired culture with a vengeance.

  The tea arrives, ac
companied by thick milky pedas on a plate. “Have you told Choubey-sahib?” I ask ungratefully as the servant sets the tray down.

  “Sahib, I — sahib, Choubey-sahib is just coming, sahib.”

  I am not mollified. “Did he say that himself?”

  “Sahib, Choubey-sahib is sleeping. He has given me strict instructions not to disturb him. But he will wake up soon, I am sure. I am sorry, sahib. I am sure it will not be long, sahib.”

  “Well, what time does Choubey-sahib normally wake up?”

  The servant shifts uneasily again. “Sir, about this time.”

  “About? What time exactly? When did he wake up yesterday?”

  “Sahib, yesterday he woke up at noon.”

  “And the day before?”

  “At noon.”

  “So have you ever seen him wake up at eleven and keep an appointment?”

  “Yes, sahib, many times.”

  “And when was the last time?”

  “Sahib, I — I don’t remember.”

  So Choubey had called me for an appointment in the morning with every intention of keeping me waiting till he had woken up. That’s the way you treat aspiring actresses and perspiring journalists, not superstars. I feel a deep surge of anger and humiliation well up within me.

  I rise.

  “Sahib, you haven’t had your tea.”

  “Give it to Choubey-sahib,” I say brutally, “with my compliments.”

  And I walk out, with as much dignity as I can muster. It is not a lot. After all, I had asked for coffee.

  “So what do I do, Tool?”

  I am sitting with my erstwhile classmate and current Guru at his new ashram in Worli. I know the compound well: it used to be the old Himalaya Studios. The video revolution, spiraling studio costs, and skyrocketing property prices have changed the economics of the film studios: the owners of the Himalaya got far more from the Guru's expatriate backers than they could have hoped to earn in decades of rentals to film production units. Where once the studio was the fantasyland in which any world could be conjured up with canvas, paint, and a box of nails for next to nothing, filmmakers are finding it cheaper today to hire actual locales. When I began my movie career there must have been thirty film studios in Bombay, and nine-tenths of each film was shot entirely in a studio. Today there are hardly seven or eight, and some of them — like S. T. Studios, in which I shot my first film — are said to be on their last legs. If they could sell, Cyrus tells me, they would; but not all are as lucky, or adept, at getting the necessary bureaucratic permissions as Himalaya. Because of the land-use laws not every studio can sell its property to the highest bidder, so large studio lots, for which a developer would cheerfully pay a fortune, rot underused in prime locations. Rather like me. “You’re sure no one saw you come in?”