MARIE BOURDAINE
BLINDSIDE
The question of morality often plagued me. Even in the years spent with Dada Saheb, who taught a poor, semi-literate son of a clown to challenge the very world order he wanted so desperately to inherit. Even when our ideas clashed, he let me rebel, naturally, assuming possibly, like any aging sire, that the son in me would always return.
Not knowing that there was a part of me that always held out. That trusted no one. Least of all myself.
I can recall the first time I expressed an interest in starting a parallel theatre company to Dada Saheb.
I had just turned twenty-one. Many of Dada Saheb’s old cast members had left or were leaving. Times were changing everywhere. Like the moving circus, theatre in villages and small towns was being replaced by more formidable forms of entertainment. Movie halls…The audience wanted to laugh. To see a good-looking couple’s romance. A fight. A song.
My interest in petty village affairs and make-belief mythological tales had dwindled. I was more focused on what was happening in the country. On the social issues that plagued it.
There was news back then that farmers were dying thanks to the use of deathly pesticides. Many children were born deformed. Their limbs painfully stunted. Some, the lucky ones, were stillborn. The farmers’ angry pleas fell on deaf ears. The State Government, unmoved, like the Centre, that was numb, not so much by choice, as by convenience. Slave to new-age fertilizer companies that had possibly funded their election campaigns – the ones who simply offered hefty compensation packages. The media a pimp that hustled for any side that offered them cash.
Some of the families accepted the money, quietly wiping their tears, swallowing their regrets, as more children died.
I had written a play called Charkha, based on the same theme, which questioned where India’s future lay – how the Green Revolution had actually strangled the agrarian economy. I wanted to use puppets and miming.
The world around us was changing, and, I was keen to be a voice, a conduit, and not just a passive, make-believe storyteller…
‘What use are our plays, if not to question human justice?’ I’d once challenged Dada Saheb and the seniors in the troupe, when they had labelled my writing ‘extremist’. ‘I don’t care to be popular, all I care about is the human revolution, if I can’t direct Charkha, in this company, I will leave it, and do it on my own,’ I raised my voice against them for the first time.
Dada Saheb had stormed off the stage.
‘You didn’t mean that, did you?’ Sarlu had hissed, mortified at my outburst.
RK stood behind her. We were like brothers back then. ‘Yaara, maafi maang le. You have to stay in this profession…unlike me, who can't wait to join films,’ he'd winked, slapping my shoulder.
I turned to Sarla, grabbing her by the arm: ‘Did you like it? What do you think of my writing?’ I always depended on her approval.
‘Araam se yaara…you could hurt her,’RK reached out and removed my hand. I knew what they both were up to. Sarlu had been gone again last night, her bed unslept in, her slippers missing. In the morning, RK was late for rehearsal, saying he wasn’t feeling well. He was lying. They had both been lying.
Now Sarlu searched his face for a few seconds. Before turning her gaze to mine. Looking softer, at dusk. ‘What’s all this about breaking away from Dada Saheb? How can you, after all he’s done…just because he doesn’t approve of one of your infinite new thoughts…you know how your words will break his heart…’ she clenched her jaw.
I was struck by how beautiful Sarlu was when she transformed into her own.
‘What if I am not built to be loyal?’ I snapped.
RK stood behind her. Their bodies strangely aligned. I watched them with a guarded jealousy.
Sarlu said nothing more.
Later that night, as I squatted at Dada Saheb’s feet, I contemplated apologizing for my earlier demand.
‘We seek immortality, son. We demand that people remember our body of work. We hide behind human arrogance. We are narcissists. We wait for the slow claps to pick up momentum…But, our job, Amitabh, as directors, is bigger…more than just telling one story…we must search for the next one…Amitabh, you cannot afford sadness, or attachment or anger. It is the true purpose of art, and of this stage. You belong to no one. You are a mere sutradhaar. There is nothing you can take from me that is not already yours, son…’
I buried my face in my hands.
‘I understand your impatience; it was the same with me when I started craving my own company…it is a generational thing, to seek an inheritance, and so you shall, too, but, before that I will ask for my Gurudakshina…one day…’ Dada Saheb spoke slowly, lifting up my face.
‘I’m sorry. I have never been a dutiful son…you must know that…I always let my father down…Nor was I a faithful son to Ammi. What if I am not built to be trusted, Dada Saheb? By anyone…’ I broke down.
Dada Saheb didn’t stop me. When I was through he said, ‘Turn off the lights…’
I did as I was told, studying the shape of his shrivelled ankles. Imagining them to be Baba’s.
I wondered if he was alive. A knot forming in my stomach as I imagined him searching for me, groping the darkness. Calling me by my pet name.
Bijli. Meaning lightning.
A month later, Dada Saheb, called me aside, one evening.
‘Our next production will be Charkha…I will step down from directing this one,’ he pressed down on my shoulders.
My heart raced.
‘But, there is a price, Amitabh,’ he continued, as I helped him sit under a large banyan tree, ‘I want you to marry my daughter.’
‘What? No, no…I am not suitable…no…I cannot marry Sarlu, never…I mean…’ I protested vehemently.
Dada Saheb cut me short: ‘I know exactly what you are thinking…Sarla is my only child…I have a sense of things, Amitabh…though I have not ever pulled her up or insulted her by asking her about her personal affairs. She is fully grown now…maybe, it is something I deliberately ignored, as her mother constantly blames me for…maybe, I should have sensed Sarla’s needs as a woman, and not just as my daughter, or a fellow artist…’ he was breathing with difficulty.
Before I could speak, he stretched out his hands, ‘Marriage is a puzzle, son. Maybe one that will take you an entire lifetime to decipher. This is the gurudakshina I want from you…’
I moved closer. ‘You don’t understand. How will I feed Sarlu? Besides, I cannot afford any attachments at this stage…especially, now, that I am to direct…take charge…Sarlu will always occupy second place in my life…I am not cut out to love a woman…I am devoted to the stage. I, I want to leave behind a legacy, like you…’ my face was flushed.
Dada Saheb patted my back.
I tried saying something.
‘This is the legacy, son,’ he gripped my shoulders.
Room 654. Hotel du Champ de Villiers. I ran my fingers over the Room Service bill. Having difficulty reading the letters, in lower case, without my spectacles.
Over the years, I had always made it a point to stay here whenever I visited Paris, in the same room, where Amitabh and I had first met. As man and woman. Where we would return to, unfailingly, every single night, after the team dinner concluded, where, at the end, as etiquette dictated, I leaned in and kissed his cold, stubbled cheeks. Amitabh would nod. Never saying more. Opening the door to his room, the same way, barely, a minute or two, later, always flinging my coat on the bed. Before I made it over there.
The French tabloids had lapped up our newfound interest in each other, labelling us a ‘couple.’ Carrying a photograph, or two. I never asked Amitabh if he understood the implications of our growing proximity, which, at some point, I presumed, would naturally tempt us to explore each other, sexually. Now and then, Amitabh would sleep with his head on my chest, never pushing the boundaries, or as much as indicating that he wanted more out of this. I was immensely drawn to him, physically, and, yet, something s
cared me. Or, maybe, there was something inherently respectable about being with a man who desired you, and yet maintained his distance.
Amitabh Kulasheshtra did what no man had done before. He made me feel safe. Maybe, I did the same for him. Maybe, I told myself, there is a love that is never spoken. A love, so unselfish, it didn’t fear its own silences.
I kept a copy of Blindside on my bedside table, reading from it every night, before I retired to bed. It comforted me to hear his voice. To imagine him in the life he once lived. To see myself sharing the years of his existence, before he came to me. Amitabh had been my ‘âme sœur,’ my soul mate.
I draped a light woollen stole around my shoulders, staring at the glass window, overlooking the River Seine that now reflected the cluster of stars in the midnight sky. I turned a page.
BLINDSIDE
Over time, I became something of a regular feature at Manju Bhabi’s olive tent, often even bunking my lessons to spend languid afternoons, reading to her. Sometimes resting my head on her stomach, her Georgette sari riding up to her knees, where we lay on the untrimmed grass, a drone of flies swarming over our heads. Sometimes Manju Bhabi would fall strangely silent, staring listlessly into the distance. Never answering when I asked her the question: whether she was happy, here. Rumour had it that Prateik Master had taken on a new mistress in Nagpur.
‘What will you do with all these storybooks? What use do they have, once I have finished reading them to you?’ I placed my hands over hers, clumsily.
‘These books are my only constant. The stories they contain make my spirits soar, and you my darling boy, are the only way I can access them…’
I wiped my newly sprouting moustache.
‘Darling,’ I chuckled, adding cheekily, ‘you, rich people use that word a lot. It was also there in our English textbook, in some of the short stories or, maybe, in one of the poems; darling meaning lover, right? Am I your lover?’
Manju Bhabhi blushed.
Later that night, as I lay next to Baba, dead drunk himself, with his clown makeup intact, I fantasized about her, imagining Manju Bhabhi in a cramped loo, covered by a makeshift asbestos shed, only her spine visible as she scrubbed a pile of dirty underclothes in insipid colours.
As I turned lethargically on my side, I tried suppressing a cramp in my lower abdomen, my organ stiff as I visualized her lips opening and closing, a thin line of sweat travelling down her cleavage divided by a thick gold chain interspersed with a series of tiny black beads. My feelings for Manju Bhabhi trapped somewhere between loneliness and lust.
I insisted she watch my first-ever production – the story of a magnificent lion in a great, big circus, whose greatness lay in tamely obeying instructions, over the years. Jumping through circular rings of fire and growling when his trainer cracked the whip.
I wore a mask I had hand-painted, jumping at a great height, on her bed.
‘What happens, next?’ She pulled me closer.
I grabbed her hips.
‘A terrible fire breaks out in the circus, the same year. The lion – a fool – watches the circus burn to ashes, taking refuge in his cage, like a coward. Frightened by the very prospect of the freedom he so desperately longs for. A mighty heart thwarted by time…’
I panted on purpose.
Manju Bhabhi sat on her haunches, on a cotton mattress.
‘Darling,’ she dragged me into her arms.
For a while, we remained like that. Then before I could say anything, she asked me to kiss her over her mouth, her breath tinged with supari – her addiction. I spent the rest of the night, lying beside her, stark naked, as she instructed me, matter-of-factly, telling me what to do next. I told her someday I would be a famous man. Not a mere manager, like her husband. How I wanted to direct, own a stage…
At dawn, I left.
‘You have a talent,’ Manju Bhabhi groaned, as I walked away.
I liked the word.
‘Talent,’ I pronounced awkwardly, a couple of times. The way it made me feel. Like I meant something…that I was someone.
The next night, I was back outside her tent: ‘I want to show you something else, this time…another type of natak I have written. You said I was good the last time? That, that I had a talent…I found your note…I believe you…’ I professed, as she covered my mouth, suspiciously glancing over her shoulders and dragging me, inside.
I followed, transfixed, her passion intoxicating as she unbuttoned me urgently, pushing her tongue desperately inside my mouth and pressing her sex over my organ…gyrating deliciously, as I clumsily held her hips…
When I got back, Ammi stood waiting for me: ‘What were you doing outside Prateik Dada’s tent, again, at night?’ she reprimanded sternly, emptying out the contents of my frayed satchel.
It was the last show in Solapur, where we had been stationed for all of last month.
‘I was there to read Bhabhi a new natak I have written. She’s the only one who understands these things. She’s also more refined than the rest, here. She is my darling…’ I bragged.
‘Focus on your studies, this woman, she seems desperate…’ Ammi hissed.
My blood boiled: ‘And, what were you doing out again, at night? What’s to say you weren’t desperate, like her?’ I pushed back Ammi’s rough hands, speaking in a cold, dispassionate tone.
Six months later, Prateik Sir fired Baba. Throwing our things out, as Ammi pleaded before Manju Bhabhi and him with folded hands.
‘Where will we go, now? What great talent do we ordinary folks have?’ she sobbed, collapsing on the ground.
‘Spare us the drama…we know just how talented you all are…’ Prateik Master sniggered, clicking his fingers.
Ammi covered her face in shame.
‘And your son…that is, if he even has a real father…he’s way more talented than you all put together…. Up to no good, here…where’s the money to feed all these extras, anymore? The glory days of the circus are dead…’ he raged, even as his wife attempted calming him down.
Baba who had been listening silently, all this while, outstretched his hands, as if he was trying to say something.
‘Why don’t you be plain? Tell us the real reason for throwing out my father, who despite his blindness, still performs the fire act, with brilliance…people come from far and wide, just for this man, here…’ I stood defiantly between Ammi and Prateik Master.
‘Bijli…’ Baba shuddered, calling me by the nickname he used to address me, covering his shrunken chest.
‘What do you mean, plain? Talking too much, you son of a…’ Prateik Master shoved me back with his hands.
I grabbed his collar.
‘Why don’t you confess to your pretty, innocent wife how almost every night even you sneak out…tip-toe to the animals’ feeding area, how you go missing conveniently just to…’ I gritted my teeth, adding in a menacing voice, ‘how you ask my mother to suck your swollen cock…dragging her into an empty tent…at the farthest corner of the field…and fuck her all night…free of cost…how you exploit women like Ammi, here, daily…besides having another mistress in another town…how you take advantage of our poverty? Our dependence on this circus…’
Prateik Master’s face was flushed.
‘I…I don’t know what’s gotten into this boy? Who’s been filling his head with such filth? Forgive him his foul mouth, please, Dada…’ Ammi cried apologetically, trying to disentangle my arms from around Prateik Master’s burly chest.
‘Just leave me, Ammi…I am sick of you all, this damn life…the constant pretence!’ I retaliated as Prateik Master swerved lower and removed his sandals.
‘And you…what are you doing watching this spectacle with this sorry face of yours, huh? Go on…tell your husband how you have been luring me, on purpose…how you can’t get enough…how you teach me things…pleading with me to come to your tent, alone, on the pretext of making me read books, just any excuse to be touched and tasted…speak up, I say! Enjoying this tamasha, aren’t you?
’ I hissed, pointing accusatorily at Manju Bhabhi who placed her hands over her ears, her cheeks reddened.
‘He’s deranged, this lad! Been drinking that cheap country liquor again, or what? All I did was listen to some play he had written because he literally begged me to…something about a lion in a burning circus…juvenile stuff, really, I, I mean…’ she stuttered nervously, trying to evade my fierce gaze.
Ammi fell at Prateik Master’s feet.
‘Tell me what I have to do, to atone for this misdemeanour…I am willing to send him away…I have a cousin, close by…I can do anything…but, but, please don’t take away our jobs…this circus, is our life, my husband’s sole existence…where will he go, from here? You know he can’t see…’ she begged, weeping copiously.
Prateik Master was fuming, his eyes enflamed. His chest heaved up and down, along with his misshapen paunch.
‘Mumtaz…’ Baba interrupted all of a sudden, clumsily walking up in their direction.
Ammi shot a desperate glance over her shoulders. It was the first time I had heard him call her that in public.
‘Is it true, what Bijli just said? Everything…?’ he questioned, sharply.
Prateik Master laughed out loud. ‘Maybe we should introduce a new segment to your act – the sordid sex lives of you poor, desperate losers! Bet that will be a sell-out!’
I slapped him hard across his face, just then.
‘Darling…’ Manju Bhabhi shrieked, lunging forward to hold him in her arms.
Prateik Master glanced up; his lip cut open. Blood gushing out.
‘Tell her the truth, rascal…tell her what you do to my Ammi every night…speak up, you loser…instead, of blaming it all on us…you…your wife…all of you…all you privileged people…you are all the same, selfish, sadistic,’ I rolled a fist, pointing threateningly at him.
Some members of the circus had gathered around us by then. They stared, shell-shocked, whispering amidst themselves.
Prateik Sir was shaking, his shirt drenched in sweat. ‘I…I…’ his lips trembled.
‘It’s all my fault…’ Baba spoke out of turn again, taking everyone by surprise, adding, as I breathed heavily into Prateik Master’s face: ‘Forgive my son; I…it was on my instructions that Mumtaz…that she…I mean…the money that was stolen last summer…it was me…I stole it from Prateik Dada’s tent…I needed it desperately…the alcohol, it is the only thing that makes me feel sane…accept this condition that just wouldn’t go away…I was petrified Dada would discover it was me…it’s why I sent her, every night…hoping he would forget, maybe get distracted…stop suspecting a blind clown, like me…it’s all my fault…Bijli…I made my wife a common whore…I used Ammi to survive this trade…I had no other way…I am not talented, like the rest.’
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