Sacred Games

  ‘This was all I knew then. And this was all I clung to for a long time, for many years in my world, which was my street, my home and my school, and my father and mother and brothers and aunts and cousins. Every night I had that walk, every night I slept at last seeing only the beautiful models of Bombay, walking by me on a footpath where the crowd was gone, which had somehow been lifted up out from Lucknow. I wanted to know more, but by instinct I did not ask, I didn’t let anyone know. I knew women shouldn’t hanker after such things, that good girls memorized surahs and hadiths and were modest and quiet, not just while awake, but even when sleeping. Just sitting next to my mother, when I ate after the boys had finished, I knew this. So I kept quiet, and learned by listening, whatever bits and pieces I could. I tried to read the Times of India, with Azim, until it became something of a joke in the family. Come, Azim said every morning, as he opened the paper. So I knew a bit more. I knew that models lived in Bombay, that most of them were English-speaking girls who grew up there, that they made wonderful amounts of money and moved with high-high people. But it was only after we got a colour television at home, and cable, that I really understood anything.

  ‘This was just after I had turned eleven. That year, after we got cable, I began to watch television in the afternoons, and grow. Until that summer I had been an ordinary girl, only my father paid me any special attention, everybody else thought I was plain, quiet, good. But then I began to grow. I grew, and grew. My mother had been a little tall for her times, maybe five-five. My father was maybe an inch taller. Azim was the tallest in the family, five-eight. But then I began to grow. While I watched the fashion-based shows on MTV and V, I lengthened. On Zee they did interviews with fashion designers, and choreographers, and photographers. I watched. At night I ached. My joints hurt, and my tendons pulled and stretched. I watched Fashion Guru, and practised my English, and grew. By the time I was fourteen I had overtaken all my brothers except Azim, and the next year I was taller than him. I was thin, so thin. The mohalla girls said unkind things to my face, and my mother muttered. My father’s explanation was that he had a great-uncle who had been five-nine-and-a-half, and I had gone on him. But at the end of my sixteenth year, I was taller than even this uncle, and still growing.

  ‘My family was worried. Where were they going to find a man taller than me? And even if they did, would this tall man want a wife who was long and stretched? But I wasn’t worried. I knew where they wanted tall girls. I knew who I was. I had studied not only fashion, but myself. Even if nobody around me could see it, I knew I had potential. Two years after Aishwariya and Sushmita won, a beauty parlour had opened right by our mohalla. The young girls and wives used to go there, to get eyebrow plucking and facials and wedding make-up. But still, the girls who were considered pretty, who all my brothers mooned after, they were all fair and a little plump and demure-looking. I knew my colours and my lines, and I was nothing like them. I was considered ugly, I was dark. But I knew. In my mirror I could see what was there, and what needed to be done. I had read all about deportment and training and walking on the catwalk and that model look and plastic surgery. I knew where I could go. I knew where I had to go. There was only one place for me: Bombay. So I came.’

  I had never heard her speak so much before, never this long at one stretch. I think it was the darkness, and my unexpected question, and my whispered affirmatives – finally she hadn’t even been telling her story to me, but to herself. The rest of her journey I knew, Jojo had told me. Jamila had waited until the day after her eighteenth birthday. Late that afternoon, she left her house wearing a burqa, carrying only her purse in which she had seven thousand four hundred rupees, some of it saved painfully over the years, most of it stolen from her mother’s almirah. She had three gold bangles, and some silver jewellery of no account. She caught a rickshaw to Nakkhas, via Kashmiri Mohalla, where she bought a cheap suitcase. She kept her face covered and walked hunched over, becoming a pious old woman to all who passed her. Even then her acting skills were unmatched. She carried this suitcase to a friend’s house, where she had – over the past few weeks – carried articles of clothing to make a stash. Then she went to the railway station, where she waited for the Pushpak Express. She already had a ticket and a reservation for a sleeper berth, made two weeks before under an assumed name. She sat quietly in the train, and watched the miles slide by. All she left in Lucknow was a note, which her mother would find late at night in the kitchen. It said, ‘I am going of my own free will. It is my choice. Please do not try to find me.’ She wrote nothing about where she was going, and why, and what for. Since she had never said a word to anyone about her ambitions, about her direction, nobody knew where to look for her. Even the friend who had helped her thought she was aiding Jamila towards a secret, married boyfriend. But there was no man, no boyfriend, only her dream. In Bombay she had discarded the burqa, changed her name again and stayed at a little women’s guest house near Haji Ali, a dormitory where every woman got one bed and a small table and a two-foot shelf. I knew how she had suffered the first few months, the little sales jobs, the grasping bosses, the three-hour bus rides to meet photographers, the indecent suggestions and the passes and the humiliations. I had heard all this, and yet I had never understood the strength of this Jamila until that night, when she told me how she had come to this understanding of herself, of what she was and who she could be. Jojo had been right, this Jamila was like me. There are some minds that can change the world. I had learned from Guru-ji that this earth we walk on, this sky that we huddle under, all of this is a dream. Those with tapas and enough willpower can move this universe, he had said. I had written my own life. Now I knew that Jamila also had this ability, this desire. We, those few who have this grand vision, can rewrite ourselves. Some time between sleeping that night and waking the next morning, in sleep or maybe out of it, I decided to make a film for her.

  ‘So you have really fallen for the Egotistical Giraffe,’ Jojo said decisively when I told her about my plan to produce a movie. I had made my usual afternoon call to her, in Bombay.

  ‘Why do you assume that I’ve fallen for anything?’ I said. ‘I have been wanting to make a film for a long time.’

  ‘Maybe, perhaps. But now is when you choose to make it. You are fida on her. Admit it. The Egotistical Giraffe has you hooked.’

  Nothing would budge her from this belief, this certainty, and from referring to Jamila each and every time as the Egotistical Giraffe. This despite the fact that Jamila was her protégé, that she, Jojo, was the girl’s best sponsor, that Jojo herself had brought her to me. ‘Jojo, you are jealous of the poor girl.’

  That got a big Jojo laugh out of her. ‘Jealous that she has to put up with you sticking it to her every two minutes, Gaitonde?’ I had, in a foolish moment of satisfied relaxation, told her how much I liked to arrange Jamila in aesthetic poses, how I took her in various positions and exotic locations. Giving a woman any information is a foolishness that I counselled my boys against. Whatever you tell will always be one day used against you. But with Jojo somehow I broke my own rules. We had known each other too long, we knew each other too well. Sometimes even during the act – chodoing Jamila in a limousine on the way to a restaurant, say – I was aware that I was looking forward to telling Jojo about it. That the telling was crucial, that the act was for the telling. I had to tell Jojo. And so she knew too much, including how much I enjoyed riding the Egotistical Giraffe. ‘I have better things to do with my time than giving my gaand to you, Gaitonde,’ she said.

  ‘But Jamila’s gaand is going to be on a big screen,’ I said. ‘And that burns yours.’

  ‘Ten years ago it would have. Maybe even five. But now I am happy, baba. Do you understand that? Happy. I like my work, I like what I have. I have success at what I do. And I realize now that even if I had got a film, I wouldn’t have lasted long in that business. I was just a little girl playing big games. I didn’t know anything.’

  ‘This Jamila has been studying the business
since she was a child.’

  ‘Yes. She worked very-very hard for a long time. That’s because she is an Egotistical Giraffe.’

  There it was again, that sting at the end of the unwinding compliment. ‘Don’t be a kutiya,’ I said. ‘You live off bachchas like her. And their studying and hard work.’

  Jojo accepted this gracefully. She could be sharp as a Japanese chef’s knife, but she was honest. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘And I send some of them to you, Gaitonde. For your enjoyment.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Read me a letter.’ This, too, was one of my pleasures. For the last two or three years, Jojo had been receiving letters. They came in those brown envelopes they sold near post offices and in bazaars next to postings about government jobs and stacks of application forms.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Jojo said. ‘Just hold on. I got a really good one on Friday. I was saving it for you.’

  I could hear her rooting about through her shelves. The letters came from all over the country, but especially from the north, from places like ‘Azadnagar, Maithon Farm, Dhanbad’, and ‘Asabtpura, Moradabad’, and ‘Mangaon, Dist. Raigad’, and ‘Mallik Tola, Banka, Bihar’. Some Hindi paper out of Delhi had plagiarized a Times of India Sunday article about modelling, complete with pictures of a couple of women who had come to Bombay from small towns and had become successful models and actresses. In this article, the paper had listed Jojo as one of the model co-ordinators who worked with new people. And the letters had started arriving. They came in a steady trickle that grew into a gush as the article was copied and duplicated and stolen by other papers. The letters were mostly from men, and Jojo and I had speculated about why women didn’t write more often. Jojo thought that the girls were probably afraid of receiving a reply at home. Jojo said, what if the father opened a letter from me telling the girl to come to Bombay? She said, the girls just run away. Or sometimes they win a local beauty contest and talk one of the parents into coming to Bombay with them. Nowadays even the parents hear the lakhs jingling in their dreams, so they come.

  ‘Okay, Gaitonde,’ Jojo said. ‘Here it is. This one is from village Chhabilapur, post office Gobindpur, district Begu Sarai.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Bihar, baba.’

  ‘What is it with these Biharis?’

  ‘They’re good-looking people, they’re intelligent, they’re ambitious and they’re survivors. Now be quiet and listen.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Tell me.’

  Her reading of Hindi was slow and painful, she had only learnt to speak it after she had reached Bombay. And she had learnt to read – what she could – even later. She’d got better at Hindi from reading letters to me. Before she had told me about these letters, she used to stack them up unopened behind a cupboard and throw them away once a week. But after she had told me about them, I had made her read one to me, and then another. Now she cast an eye over each one, and saved the best for me. ‘This one,’ she said, ‘starts with the usual opening. He read about the Mr International contest in a paper, and my company was mentioned in the article. He wants to know how he can enter the world of modelling.’

  ‘Arre, read it, Jojo.’

  ‘Gaitonde, his Hindi is really difficult and northern, full of hum and humara pata and kasht karein and all that.’

  ‘Just read it.’

  ‘Okay. I liked this one because he makes lists. Languages known: Hindi, English, Magahi, Maithili. His name, by the way, is Sanjay Kumar.’ The amusement was already gurgling in her voice. ‘Sanjay Kumar does not want to send an ordinary biodata. So he has added a “Favourites List”. Favourite flower: Rose. Favourite heroes: Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan. Favourite heroines: Rani Mukherjee, Kajol, Aishwarya Rai.’

  ‘Why does he think you need to know this?’

  ‘Who knows? Listen, Gaitonde – favourite films: Karan Arjun, Sholay, Dilwalle Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Pardes. Favourite foreign places: London, Switzerland, New Zealand.’

  ‘The bastard has never left Chabillapur.’

  ‘He’s seen New Zealand in the movies, Gaitonde. His father bought a VCD player for the family, they watch films every day. Favourite creams: Fairever, Pond’s Cold Cream. Favourite perfume: Rexona. Favourite soap: Lux, Pear’s and Pear’s Face Wash. Favourite shampoos: Clinic All-Clear and Nyle Herbal Shampoo. Favourite hair oil: Dabur Mahabrahmraj Hair Oil.’ She was laughing so hard now that she could barely read. ‘Favourite powder: Denim and Nycil. Favourite shaving set: Denim and Old Spice. Favourite toothpaste: Colgate Gel Blue and Aquafresh. Favourite jeans: Levis. Favourite cars: Cielo, Tata Safari, Maruti Zen, Maruti 800, Ferrari 360 Spider.’

  ‘This little maderchod has not even smelt a Ferrari in bhenchod district Begu Sarai. They don’t even have chutiya roads there which are worthy of being called roads.’

  ‘He’s done his research, Gaitonde. Listen, listen.’

  Listening to Sanjay Kumar’s lists gave me a queer feeling in my belly, a soft, slipping panic in my veins. Of course he was funny. Jojo read out his lists and we laughed. I listened to her laugh and I laughed some more. But still there was this unnameable, endless plummeting in my chest. I didn’t want to tell Jojo about it, but even if I had wanted to, if I had tried to, I wouldn’t have known what to call it. I had never been to Bihar, but I knew exactly what sort of district Begu Sarai was, what village Chhabilapur looked like. There was one ruptured road winding through the fields, and muddy little kachcha lanes leading off to the clumps of huts and houses. There was something called a primary school, which was really a bunch of children sitting on the patio of the local Shiva temple, with a teacher – when there was a teacher – calling out the alphabet. There was a long wall bordering the sarpanch’s orchards, and advertisements for engine lubricant and seed on this wall. There was a family of labourers squatting by the pond, waiting to be paid for the day’s work. There was a three-storeyed college, with ranks of loafing students in the stained corridors. Outside, the motorcycles of the rich boys, the merchants’ sons, the landowners’ sons. Overhead, a vacant sky. Somehow, in this village, in this district, Sanjay Kumar had gathered the elements of his lists, he had put them together. He had written it all down. How? From borrowed newspapers, from second-hand magazines? From television, watched at a friend’s house between power cuts? He had prepared his letter, then copied it out in fair, and sent it off to Bombay. Thinking of Sanjay Kumar bent over his letter, under a lantern, this is what made me queasy.

  ‘At the very end of the letter,’ Jojo said, ‘after he signs off, he adds a request.’ She snorted. ‘He lists English as one of his languages, up front in his letter. But at the end, he writes, “I await your speedy and kind response. Please answer my letter in Hindi only.” This Sanjay Kumar is not very smart. Or he thinks model co-ordinators in Bombay are chutiyas.’

  ‘Who would dare to think you are a chutiya, Jojo? No, no. The poor boy is just trying to move ahead in the world. Remember, you were there once.’

  ‘I was never such a gaandu as this. Sending letters to Bombay. Wanting replies in Hindi. Listen, I’ve been in the business for a while now. I have a feeling for people now, for who moves ahead and who doesn’t. And I’m telling you, this one doesn’t have a chance. Even if he looks like Hrithik Roshan, he doesn’t have a chance. If he comes to Bombay, he’ll be eaten up.’

  I couldn’t argue against that. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ Sanjay Kumar didn’t have a chance. He probably didn’t have a chance even if he stayed in that rotting, choking village of his. But whether he stayed or left, he was going to keep watching movies, making lists, continue writing letters. Stupid bastard. But there were crores and crores like him, up and down and across the country. They were there, and they were our audience. I was going to make my film for them.

  Of course I consulted Guru-ji before I put any cash into play. I wanted to see Jamila on the screen, and I was sure she would succeed as a star, but I wanted direction. I wasn’t about to rush into a game I knew nothing about without some knowledge about what
was to happen. But Guru-ji could see nothing, he couldn’t see into the future of my movie with any specificity. ‘I have a good feeling about the project, beta,’ he said. ‘But that’s all. It happens sometimes, it’s like trying to see through a warped lens. Some things get blanked out, some things come into sharp focus. I can’t see anything bad.’

  ‘But you can’t see anything good,’ I said.

  ‘No, not that either. But it’s a minor risk, compared to some of the things you’ve done. And are doing.’

  He was absolutely correct, as usual. I had risked my life many times, and this was just money. I remembered then what Paritosh Shah used to say, if you let Lakshmi go, she comes back to you multiplied, if you try to imprison Lakshmi she will escape you and never come back. For Jamila, I had to let my Lakshmi out into the world, to move as she pleased. It was only appropriate.

  So I made a movie for Jamila. Getting the production team together was easy enough. I had the money, so I hired the best. Actually, I had Jojo find me a producer, a man named Dheeraj Kapoor, and this Dheeraj did the hiring. Dheeraj had made three hits in a row, all in the four to six-crore budget range, with respectable actors and strong scripts. Now he was hungry for a chance to jump into a higher league, to play the game with twenty-odd crores and real stars. I liked hungry men to work for me. You had to watch them closely, but they performed well. And this Dheeraj was a coming man, I could feel it. He would succeed.

  Meanwhile the new Jamila went from triumph to triumph. We had given her a new name, a name to fit that star she was becoming: she was now ‘Zoya Mirza’. It was a good modern-sounding name, short and easily written and pronounced, it had that hip Z sound at the beginning and towards the end. It was a new name that could live in this new world. And once the work on her face was complete, she was more than new. She was the future. What Dr Langston Lee had done to her cheeks, her hairline, her chin, her nose, was not radical. It was just a little bulk taken off there, a hair’s breadth of length added there. She was the same, and yet she was completely different. Before, she was striking. Now, she was dazzling. Sometimes it was hard to look at her, it was as if she were far away, even when she was sitting right next to me. Her beauty made me yearn, and it was hard to bear. She was complete, and she made me feel that big raw hole somewhere deep inside me, a wound that ached when she was far, and even more when she was near.