How About a Sin Tonight?

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  When you looked at me for the first time in the taxi, my core felt the pulse of a poignant promise. When we got talking, my existence woke up to an eventual commitment. And when we finally got to know each other, it was like an irrevocable deal to go on a journey together—far beyond forever.

  The worst thing that can happen to a kid is the realization that this world is a cruel and manipulative place. I knew it when I was nine. The only thing that kept me going was a wish that someone would come and respect me because of the sacrifices I made for the woman that’s inside me, for the woman who helps me survive. Thanks for fulfilling my wish.

  I know you will be angry with me since I never told you about my uterine cancer. But I can die with that. Since I know by then you’ll be on your way to become what I know you will one day: the king of Bombay. Don’t worry, nobody here will ever tell anyone that we were in love. What will people say? The king in love with a prostitute! I don’t think anyone would believe it either.

  Anytime soon my death will whisper to my life that it’s all a dream and I’ll have to wake up. I won’t be able to see you one last time. And I have accepted it all, Shahraan. And I want you to accept it too. From now we’ll be each other’s secret. And mind you, only a lucky man becomes part of a woman’s secret.

  Do you know, Shahraan, what is a smile called when it falls in love? A tear drop.

  I fold the letter. It only tells half the story. The other half was later told to me by Bheem bhai. She had requested him to bribe an AD to look out for a role for me. Rajesh, the photographer, was Mehfil’s ‘client’. It was on her insistence that he had agreed to do my portfolio. Mehfil lied about how he helped newcomers fearing my reaction. When I didn’t see her for two to three months, it was she who’d sent Rajesh to me with an opportunity. And in exchange, she fulfilled his carnal kinks.

  God designs our lives. Love redesigns it. That’s what Mehfil did. She secretly redesigned my life while I was busy assuming it was all a result of my hard work and luck. How did she do it? I didn’t ask because the why was already weighing on me. I had talent in me. All Mehfil did was help that talent get noticed. In the end, that’s what makes the difference between winners and losers.

  I decided to leave then. As I open the door and look out, there are a myriad faces waiting to get a glimpse of me, but my vigilant security that accompanies me wherever I go has everything under control. Stardom was always a place that I wanted to reach till I arrived there and realized it was actually a price I would have to pay. I no more belong to myself. I am as much the paanwalah’s who has my photo right beside his God as I am of the teenage girl who lusts for me or the housewife who covets me, and perhaps also the pious mother’s who prays for my well being without ever meeting me. I put on my dark shades even though its night. And I get out of Neela Makaan. Another year gone by. As I walk the small lane towards my black Mercedes parked outside, I remember the earrings worn by a girl with whom I had an ad-shoot recently. They looked similar to the ones I gifted Mehfil once. For some reason the girl’s face has stayed with me. This has happened the second time in my life. The first time had changed my life in the 80s.

  As my car makes it way out, I ask Krishna, my secretary from the last nineteen years, ‘Could you please call up that girl with whom I did the watch advertisement recently?’

  He gives me a what-to-tell-her shrug of his.

  ‘Tell her, Shahraan Ali Bakshi wants to meet her.’

  THE ICON AND THE HEART THROB

  REVA GUPTA AND NEEV DIXIT

  Reality winked at him whenever he glanced at the bloated condom lying on the toilet sink beside him. It was only after the fuck ordeal that he realized the condom had perforations. He flushed it down the toilet sink, praying his sperms don’t turn out to be as irresponsible as him.

  He joined the other actors in the small drawing room of a one-BHK flat in Mayur Vihar, New Delhi, where there were now seven final-year students—four men and three women from the National School of Drama—rehearsing for a play.

  ‘Reva!’ the guy heard Amjad holler, ‘You should have made your entry by now.’

  Reva Gupta swallowed the lump in her throat. Since morning she wanted to tell Amjad—her boyfriend and the writer-director of the play—she was neither interested in this drama nor in his mindless shit anymore. With Amjad staring at her for a response along with the rest of the cast and crew, she realized now was that moment.

  Several kilometers away, within the campus of Progressive College of Engineering and Management, Ghaziabad, regular rounds of job interviews for the final year batch of engineering students were being conducted. Most students resembled molestation victims. Except Neev Dixit who was happy to have screwed up his group discussion. But to his horror, he was shortlisted for the technical interview round. He tried sounding stupid and was chosen for the HR interview which was currently in progress. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have even cared to appear. But his not appearing for the campus selection exams was improbable because the placement coordinator was a friend of his father. And their family reporter too.

  ‘Why do you think we should take you?’ asked one of the interviewers. Even though he seemed the youngest, his skin was loose. The man could very well be the next model for Godrej hair dye, Neev wondered looking at his fiercely-black hair.

  ‘Sir, honestly,’ said Neev, ‘I don’t want to get picked.’

  The interviewers exchanged quick glances.

  ‘Would you mind telling us a little about yourself?’ asked the same person. The others were sitting so tight and straight that to Neev they looked like fart balls waiting to explode.

  ‘I am Neev Dixit. And I want to be an actor. That’s all I know about myself. Everything else about me, except my sexuality, is in a state of confusion.’

  ‘Do you know we can blacklist you for this kind of talk?’ It was a lady this time. Her visage made Neev conclude she was suffering from PMS.

  ‘That would be my pleasure, Ma’am,’ replied Neev, his smile having a hint of mockery.

  The first interviewer immediately pushed back his chair, pressed a bell, and stood up. A man came running in within two seconds.

  ‘Please take this gentleman outside.’

  Neev stood up, took a bow, and left the room with such pride as if he had signed a major peace treaty with a neighbouring country.

  ‘This is the twentieth time we are performing today,’ Amjad howled, beating the script wildly against his thighs. Reva looked at Amjad and saw a stranger. In the last few months, seldom did he praise her acting skills like he used to. Earlier, whenever she promised him a smooch or a quick love-making session, he would raid the nearest Archie’s gallery to bring her the perfect gift. Not anymore. As if now he wasn’t grateful for any intimacy she agreed to, simply taking things for granted. Was she at all in love with him? At times she thought her friends were right. She was a shameless opportunist and the only reason she was with Amjad was because it would get her good roles in plays. But then an opportunist only seizes the opportunity and forgets the person on whose behest it came. She had given him everything—from her vagina to her heart. What else does a man need from a woman? What else does he deserve?

  The real problem was: Amjad was not her only problem. The three years at the National School of Drama made her realize she wasn’t cut out for the stage. She had to be the onscreen Goddess! Theatre was long shot, whereas Cinema was close up. And Reva Gupta loved close ups. Plus the attention, the pampering, the fawning it garners, always helps. From the second year onwards she realized her priorities were different. Priority decides intention which influences a decision and dons an action. Of course, there was so much to learn in NSD—India’s premiere drama school—but they were all dwarfed by what all she aspired, dreamt, wanted, urged.

  ‘Amjad, there’s something I need to show you,’ said Reva holding her middle finger up.

  Neev knew his parents would act as if they were asleep. But parents are always awake, he knew, especially when their
only child comes back from a campus interview. And because he didn’t wake them up either, Neev hoped they themselves would reach the obvious conclusion. But in the zest to throw himself on the bed and sleep peacefully, he forgot the dawn that was about to break would bring with it a Sunday—that day of the week when he met his father at the breakfast table. And yet another cold war shall follow.

  ‘So now you are going to humiliate me in front of your batchmates; my juniors?’ Amjad banged his hand on the wall against which Reva was standing. There was an inhuman condescendence in his eyes like never before which, though unexpressed verbally, reprimanded her for what she said. His only bad luck was she read it instantly. It enraged her.

  ‘Humiliate? You really want to know what humiliation is? You lying to everyone about me and our relationship; that’s humiliation. For me! And you want to know humiliation better?’

  Before Amjad could take her into another room, she was divulging their relationship’s secrets to an all too eager audience, directed by an unadulterated anger towards him.

  ‘Keep your ears open for this one guys; as open as we girls keep our legs to fit your insects in us. I have never slept with Amjad irrespective of whatever shit he has been filling you up with. And why you may ask?’ she glanced at Amjad’s pleading eyes. Reva, whose first tear drop was falling down now, said, ‘Amjad can’t even get it up even if he wants to. So in reality he has been finger fucking me all this while, and that too because it comes with a bone.’

  The second stunned silence of the night followed. The only positive thing for her in this three-year-old relationship was that her mind had been dressed with the correct fashion of experience.

  ‘How many students did they select?’ asked Mr. Dixit, an Indian Railways employee, soaking half his bread into the hot tea the following morning.

  ‘Twenty students.’

  ‘Two thousand students and they selected only twenty?’

  ‘Everyone is taking it easy after the WTC attack last year.’

  ‘And you couldn’t make it to the list?’

  ‘No. They wanted engineers, not actors.’ Neev first ate the edges of the bread and then bit the soft middle part with the tranquility of a spiritual guru.

  ‘What about the second company?’

  ‘All I know is that they didn’t select me.’

  Hiatus. Neev always knew what existed on the other side of his father’s hiatus. Allegation.

  ‘You must have presented yourself like an ass.’

  ‘Why would I do that? And papa, it’s high time that you realize my passion lies elsewhere.’

  ‘You mean in acting.’

  It was an old war between his wishes and his father’s desires. When he was ten, Neev wanted to learn swimming, but his father made him learn cricket. At twelve, he wanted to play the guitar, but his father forced him to attend an art school. At sixteen he wanted to study arts, his father coaxed him to study science. At eighteen, when Neev finally realized what exactly he wanted to be all his life—a movie star—his father pushed him into the engineering bandwagon. Neev could never understand why people were judgmental about any kind of aberrant. Even if the tradition stank like shit, they would like to lick more it than give the aberrant a chance.

  ‘What do people do if they want to become an actor?’ Neev heard his father speak. It was unlike him.

  ‘Amjad and I had to end, who cares how it ended. Are you listening, slut?’

  ‘Like fuck I’m listening, bitch. Shimit told me the condom had holes in it. I don’t want to get fucking pregnant right now.’

  It was seven in the morning. Reva chose to be with her best friend Sheetal in her room after the group dispersed clueless about the play’s future. Reva called Sheetal a slut, with love, while the latter referred to the former as a bitch, with admiration. Their undeclared rule for sharing secrets and worries was that they would prattle about their own without listening to the other.

  ‘Get over it, slut. God allows girls a safe period as well. You are on one.’

  Sheetal relaxed realizing Reva could be right.

  ‘And listen,’ Reva continued, ‘I want to go to Mumbai.’

  ‘What? Are you out of your mind? Do you even know anybody in Mumbai?’

  ‘I’ll get to know people only when I go there, right? Theatre is so not for me.’

  ‘Then why did you opt for NSD?’

  ‘It’s only after being here that I realized the big screen is my calling.’

  ‘You are mad, bitch. Bollywood is like a secret society where you are invited only if your genes belong there!’

  ‘But the stalwarts of all the previous generations were outsiders. From Dev Anand to Amitabh Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan to Shahraan Ali Bakshi, all came from outside the industry and made it their pet, didn’t they?’ The mention of Shahraan made her heart skip a beat. Reva had a strong crush on him from the time she traversed the park of adolescence.

  ‘They were all men!’

  ‘Madhubala, Madhuri Dixit, and… ’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Reva Gupta, you never know! And please, don’t tell me what I am. Tell me what I should do?’

  ‘Alright! Six more months and our NSD stint gets over. Why don’t you talk to Raghu Sir? He keeps going to Mumbai.’

  There was silence. And it stretched for another four hours. Sheetal fell asleep while Reva remained wide awake, with the pendulum of decision oscillating between her mind and heart. Finally it stopped at her heart.

  Six months and then I’ll be in Mumbai. That’s it! She finally stretched herself on the mattress, relieved. She woke up, took a paste-it slip from a nearby table, and wrote:

  Sorry Slut, I was kidding. You are not on your safe period. Get to a doc first thing tomorrow. She pasted the note on the door of the refrigerator and went out to run a few errands.

  It was twenty past eleven at night. Neev was busy playing FIFA on his desktop. His room’s door opened and Mr Dixit stepped in.

  ‘You awake, beta?’

  In the last ten years, he had never seen his father come in his room. He haphazardly stood up switching on the tube light. Is he throwing me out of his house already?

  ‘Yes papa, what is it?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Neev gave his chair to him and himself preferred to stand.

  ‘After talking to you in the morning, I kept thinking about what all happened in the past. I don’t think you know this: when you had applied for FTII, they had replied back but…’ Mr. Dixit took a pause, wiped some dust from a corner of the computer keyboard with the tip of his index finger and said, ‘Just because you are my son doesn’t mean the course of your life is my prerogative.’

  Neev’s mouth went dry and his throat drier. Parents at times do things which you least expect them to do. His father was looking around at his only child’s room as if he was discovering him for the first time. There were five posters in the room: one was of The Godfather movie, then there was Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, a small computer print out of The Beatles, and a full-size Charlie Chaplin poster.

  ‘Your grandfather never allowed me to do anything against his wishes. As a result of which, many desires of mine remained thwarted within me. Locked forever into obscurity.’ He gesticulated by crisscrossing his fingers. ‘And when you were born, I thought those desires had been granted wings. My mistake. I wanted to live not through you but through thrusting myself onto you. My foolishness. If you think you can act well and are sure you want to make it a career, then go ahead. I will not stop you. I simply came to tell you that you have my back, son. The only piece of real advice I can give you at this stage is complete your graduation first and then steer your life in whichever direction you want to.’

  His father left the room. Neev sat down on the chair, letting himself loose. Six months and I am done!

  Life was waiting for both Reva Gupta and Neev Dixit in Mumbai.

  REVA GUPTA

  A day before, Mumbai had been hit by monsoon. Mons
oon and Mumbai make a classic love story, she was told by a copassenger. Reva stepped down from an express train at the Borivali station. She had been craving for this moment all her life.

  Reva had a few relatives in Mumbai. But she knew a girl alone in the city who had come to become an actress would be gossip fodder for them. They would criticize her to start with and then end up accusing her father, Shirish Kumar Gupta, of not being a good parent. In his hay days, Shirish Kumar Gupta was a name to reckon with in the theatre circuit of Delhi. Many famous contemporary theatre personalities owed their skills to him. People called him ‘master sir’. All this came to an abrupt halt when cancer snatched away his wife. After which, he withdrew himself from theatre and all other futile things in life that other mortals, at times, deliberately magnified in order to give them a reason to live. Shirish would have been as okay if Reva had chosen to become a housewife as he was when he heard she wanted to be a cinema actress. Reva had an elder brother residing in the US, married to a Chinese woman. Reva and he never really connected.

  Making her way towards platform one, Reva was already scanning the faces around. She was supposed to meet someone with a hard stubble, well-oiled hair, and wearing old-fashioned spectacles.

  Amit was Sheetal’s Mumbai-based cousin whom Reva had met twice before during his visit to Delhi. At first she thought Amit was a nerd because every time they talked, he gave her an unwanted lesson on all the upcoming gadgets in the market. The second time she realized he was a psycho, because whenever Reva excused herself to join a group of girls, he would shoot at her a straight-wide-eyed-open-mouthed ogle. And as destiny would have it, of all the people to help her in Mumbai, it had to be Amit scouting to help her. Sheetal had told her he had taken care of her accommodation. That was the first major concern in a big city where she knew nobody of consequence.