“I’ve always wanted to have a sister,” Maya says artlessly. “Please come back soon.”
A troubled look shadows Abha’s face. “I’d like to come back soon,” she says. She turns away, biting her lip, so that no one can see the tears that have suddenly welled up in her eyes.
It is evening, and Abha is standing alone at some unidentified spot. She sings a slow, high-pitched, haunting lament:
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
Just like an unwelcome love-letter.
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
And I fear I will never be better.
How cruel is life,
To bring such strife,
And make me weep and mope;
To have the word “wife”
Strike like a knife
Instead of lighting hope.
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
I love this precious man.
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
For I must fulfill the plan.
His every smile
His sense of style
Lights up my wretched heart.
But all the while
With shameful guile
I’ve been playing my part.
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
My mind quivers with this thought.
I am torn in two,
I am torn in two,
Between the must and the ought.
As the last high note fades into the sound track, it is replaced by the roar of the hero’s motorcycle coming down the road. “Abha, why are you looking so sad?” Ashok asks. “Come on, I’ll take you for a spin and cheer you up.”
“No, thanks, Ashok, I don’t really feel like it today. I’m worried about you.”
“About me?” asks Ashok. “Why?”
“Your police work. It must be so dangerous. Just today there was an article in the paper about the ‘most wanted man in India,’ Godambo, and how many people he has killed. What would happen if they assigned you to a case like that, to tackle someone like this horrible killer?”
“Nothing,” he responds cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’ll let you into a secret, I am handling the Godambo case. And nothing has happened to me. I shall have that villain behind bars soon enough, and they will give me such a promotion I will be able to afford to marry you.”
“Hush,” she says. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you might tempt Providence.” She averts her face, swallows, resumes. “Have you — come into contact with this Godambo yet?”
“No. If I had, that would be the end of the story,” Ashok boasts. “I have successfully stopped some of his operations, but no one knows where to find the great Godambo himself. Once I can track him down to his hideout, Godambo will be mine.”
“Don’t do it!” Abha exclaims, then puts her hand to her mouth. “I mean, it might be terribly dangerous. Do you have any leads?”
“Not one,” Ashok admits. “I was hoping Godambo would show his hand after we intercepted one of his planes a few weeks ago. But he has been lying low. I must have frightened the fellow.” He laughs at Abha’s troubled expression. “For Gods sake, stop looking so worried,” he says. “Remember:
I am the long arm of the law,
No one is quicker on the draw,
Injustice and corruption,
Forces of disruption,
Will be the losers in this war!”
She runs into his arms. “ Hold me, Ashok. Hold me so tight I can imagine you’ll never leave me.”
“But I’ll never leave you,” he says, holding her. She does not reply, and he strokes her hair. There is a worried expression on his own face.
Interior: lights, throne, pool, cheetah, gravel — the scene is set.
“Yes, Abha? What have you to report?”
Abha is no longer in civvies, but wears a glorious red-and-black pantsuit emblazoned with a gold cheetah springing across her chest. She is clearly in an emotional state because the decorative animal stirs visibly, as if scenting a threat in the jungle. “Sir, you don’t need to worry about Inspector Ashok,” she says, a ripple moving through her sartorial animal.
“Oh? And why is that?” The voice is smooth now, as if the gravel has been macadamized. Godambo looks remarkably content for a man who has had no costume change in four scenes.
“He doesn’t know how to find you. He told me himself he has no leads.” Abha’s tone is eager, relief mingling with anxiety in her voice. “You are safe, mighty Godambo.”
“Safe?” the hairless head on the throne shakes derisively. “I, Godambo, do not seek to be safe, like some street corner pickpocket! I seek to eliminate all threats to myself. Must I cower like a fat merchant before a tax man, and try to keep out of Mr. Inspector Ashok’s way? No, Abha. Now that I know he cannot surprise us here, I must surprise him instead. I will bring Muhammad to the mountain.” He laughs, a deep laugh this time, like gravel being shoveled into a pit. “In a way of my choosing. You have done a good job, Abha. I think you deserve a rest. For the next part of my plan, I have a more — passive part in mind for you.”
Godambo claps his hands; Pranay emerges, complete with paan and whip, and stands before his master. “Take her with you. You have followed her closely. You know exactly where to go?” Pranay chews, nods. “Go then.” Godambo laughs.
“Mighty Godambo —” Abha is distraught.
“Yes?”
“I am not feeling well. May I be excused from any further part in this — this plan?”
“You may not. Why my dear, you are a very necessary part of my plan.” Godambo’s expression is almost avuncular. Then it changes. “You are not” — he leans forward, propping one elbow on a knee — “you are not refusing an order, are you?”
Abha’s voice is very small. “No, Godambo.”
“Good. Because refusal is disobedience, you know. And the penalty for disobedience is —”
A hundred black-clad voices oblige him. “Death!”
“Death,” Godambo confirms and laughs again. His cheetah, unlike Abha’s, continues to sleep.
The black Ambassador car draws up outside Ashok’s house. A window is rolled down to reveal Abha in the backseat, her eyes imprisoned behind dark glasses. Inside the car, Pranay is holding a knife against her side. “Go on,” he says. “Call her.”
“No,” she breathes.
“Godambo was right to warn me you’d gone soft on him,” Pranay snarls. “Right now two of our Black Cheetah commandos are in your parents’ home. They arejust waiting for the signal to act.”
“No!”
“Yes. So if you want to see your parents again, do as you’re told. Call her.”
Abha stifles a sob. “Maya,” she cries out in a choked voice.
“Louder. Clearer. Or else …” Pranay places the metal of the knife on the bared flesh of her midriff, between sari and blouse.
Abha obliges. “Maya!”
There is an answering squeal of recognition, and Sweet Sixteen, back in pigtails, comes running out of the house. She reaches the car; Abha starts to warn her; Pranay savagely pushes Abha aside. The sound of a motorcycle is heard. The car door is flung open. Pranay leaps out, grabs Maya. She screams. Abha’s face, frozen in horror and indecision, is visible in the window. The motorcycle enters the street. Ashok sees all three, shouts “Stop!” Pranay leers at him, bundles a screaming Maya into the car. He raises a fist: “Godambo zindabad!” he proclaims, disappearing into the car. The Ambassador drives away in a squeal of tires.
Ashok sets off in hot pursuit on his motorcycle.
Chase sequence: the Ambassador roars through the crowded streets, up Marine Drive, heads to the sea. The motorcycle follows, weaving in and out of traffic. The car runs a red light; Ashok mounts a sidewalk to chase it, scattering pedestrians, hawkers, and peanuts from a moomphali-wallah’s basket.
Twice, when Ashok seems to be gaining on the abductors, Pranay leans out and fires a shot from a revolver. Ashok ducks, veers, stays upright but loses ground. As the chase continues, Maya is seen struggling with Pranay inside the car. Pranay slaps her aside and barks to Abha, “Keep her quiet if you know what’s good for you.” Abha restrains Maya and is rewarded with a look from the young girl that feelingly combines bewilderment and a dawning sense of betrayal.
The car turns off the road, onto a dirt track. It seems to be heading straight for a hillside by the sea, going too fast to avoid crashing into it. Ashok shouts out “Stop!” and slows down himself. The car continues to drive straight on. Just when a crash seems inevitable, the hillside opens up, a huge steel door sliding aside to reveal an entrance for the car. Ashok curses, accelerates. The Ambassador has disappeared inside. The steel door begins to slide back, closing the entrance. The motorcycle roars toward it. The gap narrows. Close-up: Ashok’s face, grimly determined, teeth visibly clenched, as he strains every sinew to force his motorbike through the gap in time. The steel door is closing: with a fuel-burning roar, the motorcycle bursts through just as the door clangs shut.
Barely has the applause in the twenty-five-paisa seats died down when the audience and Ashok are both drawn up short. For there is a barrier across the road, guarded by two enormous, half-naked wrestler-types, each wielding a sizable sword. The fatter of the twopahelwans pats his belly, grunts, and moves threateningly toward our hero, sword at the ready. His partner proceeds to do the same. Ashok looks at both of them, begins to dismount. The guards nod to each other in impassive anticipation. Then, suddenly, Ashok swings back into the saddle of the motorcycle, revs up his engine, and makes for a point between the two men. They raise their swords. Ashok roars in, and in a remarkable feat of action (the credit for which stunt man and editor would later dispute), simultaneously he kicks one wrestler in the vitals with an extended left leg and hits another in the gut with an upthrust right fist, while ducking to drive the motorcycle between the raised sword-arms. The two flabby toughs collapse in a heap, and our hero takes his motorcycle crashing through the barrier.
But once more the applause of the twenty-five-paisa wallahs is doomed to die down. For as Ashok rides on in the ill-lit hill tunnel, slowing down to look for the errant Ambassador, a rustle is heard, soon drowned on the sound track by the violins of violence. He looks up in surprise as a gigantic net falls on him, enmeshing him in its chains and bringing hero and motorcycle spinning to the ground.
A light is flashed into his eyes and Ashok blinks, dazzled. Pranay is standing above him, whip triumphantly in hand. “Welcome, Inspector Ashok,” the vile villain snarls through red-stained lips. “Mighty Godambo is waiting to meet you.”
Ashok is dragged through the cavern by two heavies in black, his hands tied behind him. The audience sees it all again as if for the first time: the marble floor, the eerily illuminated pillars, the Black Cheetahs, the fountain-flanked pool with its darting floating fin, and finally the jeweled throne. On this the bald caped figure sits comfortably, but the pet cheetah is at his feet. It has grown too big for his lap since the film’s shooting began.
“So you are Inspector Ashok,” the principal villain says gutturally. “Thank you for paying us a visit.”
“Where is my sister, kameenay?” our hero asks disrespectfully.
“Your sister.” Godambo does not seem unduly put out. “Let me show you.” He leans back and presses a button on the console beside him. The giant screen again emerges. This time it shows a barred cell, within which Maya weeps, tugging vainly at the bars with handcuffed hands.
Ashok, enraged, struggles to cast off his captors. Godambo laughs. “Why have you brought me here, villain?” our hero asks.
Godambo seems to enjoy this hugely. “Why have we brought him here, he wants to know. But you came here yourself! Uninvited, I might add.”
“What do you want with my sister, you castoff from an asylum?”
“Silence!” This is Pranay, accompanying his admonition with a crack of the whip. “No one abuses the mighty Godambo.”
“It doesn’t matter, Pranay,” interjects the most-wanted man in India. “We will tell him what he wants to know. Or perhaps he would prefer to hear it from more familiar lips.” The ghost of a smile haunts his impassive, hairless face. He claps his hands. “Agent Abha.”
Abha steps forward reluctantly. She is in her most recent Godambo uniform, complete with springing cheetah. Ashok’s eyes widen in betrayed realization.
“You know each other, I believe?” Godambo asks.
Outrage and contempt blaze from Ashok’s eyes. “I even took you home to meet my mother,” he says accusingly, the very thought drenching his voice in self-reproach.
“Forgive me, Ashok,” she pleads. “I had no choice.”
“No choice! Do you still expect me to believe those lies about your miserable parents?”
“They’re not lies —.” But she is silenced by a minatory wave of Pranay’s whip.
“Can you deny you were working for these thugs all along? Even when we went out together?”
She is silent; she cannot deny it. Ashok looks away bitterly.
“Enough of this love-shove talk,” Pranay snaps. “Tell him.”
Abha pulls herself together, but the strain shows on her face. “Ashok, mighty Godambo wants you to give up your pursuit of him. And he invites you to join his organization.”
“Never!”
“Ashok, if you don’t do as he says, he will — kill Maya.”
On the screen the concealed camera zooms in on Maya, hands tightly gripping the bars of her cell, tears streaking her pretty face, pigtail dangling by one wet cheek. Ashok grits his teeth, straining to shake off his shackles. He is restrained by the black-clad commandos and a menacing crack of Pranay s whip.
“What kind of man are you, Godambo, to fight your battles through an innocent young girl?” he rails. “Come and face me in hand-to-hand combat, and we will see.”
Godambo stiffens in his throne. The hairless visage registers offense. “Don’t ever, and I mean ever, speak to me like that again,” he growls, crunching gravel under every syllable. “What makes you think you are worthy of hand-to-hand combat with mighty Godambo? I could crush you like an ant with one hand tied behind my back, Inspector Ashok, but I won’t bother. I have made you an exceedingly generous offer. I can see you need some time to think about it. Very well.” He laughs, but there is no amusement on his face. “I shall accommodate you with your sister. But if you want her to see another sunset, Inspector Ashok, you will give me the answer I want by dawn tomorrow.”
Ashok’s eyes blaze defiance at this ultimatum, but the dialogue writer’s imagination has failed him, and he remains silent. A snap of Godambo’s fingers, a dismissive gesture, and Ashok is dragged away. But not without casting a bitter parting glance at his erstwhile lady love.
Abha looks away, and this time there are no dark glasses to conceal the despair in her reddening eyes.
Interior: Godambo’s dungeons. In the dimly lit cell, Ashok consoles the tearful Maya. She nestles against his chest, and he embraces her as far as the knots on his wrists will allow: elbows and forearms resting on her shoulders, unfree hands clasped behind her head. He looks into her eyes and sings:
We’re one small happy family,
We live and love together.
We’re one small happy family,
In sunshine and bad weather.
We’re one small happy family,
United, good and strong.
We’re one small happy family,
So nothing can go wrong.
Maya’s response is to burst into a fresh torrent of tears.
Outside the cell a Black Cheetah patrols the stone-flagged corridor in hobnailed boots. As Ashok looks up alertly, he hears another pair of footsteps. The commando’s boots pause in their stride.
“Who is — oh, it’s you, Agent Abha.”
“Just checking to see how thi
ngs are, Ali. All well with the prisoners?”
“They were making a lot of noise, but its quieter now.”
“Could I see them?”
“I’m afraid not, Agent Abha. You know I can’t let you in. Strict orders from mighty Godambo himself. No one may disturb the prisoners.”
“I won’t disturb them.”
“Sorry, Agent Abha. I have my orders.”
“Good. I was just checking to make sure you were following them. Hey — what’s that?”
“What?” The guard whips around, submachine gun at the ready. In a flash Abha brings the butt of her own revolver down on the back of his head. He sinks soundlessly to his knees. She eases him to the floor. Looking around quickly, she pulls his bunch of keys off the belt loop from which they are conveniently dangling and opens the barred gate of Ashok and Maya’s cell.
“Come on,” she whispers urgently to the astonished prisoners.
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” Ashok asks.
“Of course it isn’t,” Abha says in an urgent hiss. “I’m risking my life for this. And the lives of my poor parents. Hurry. If Godambo catches us, it’ll be certain death.”
“What have we got to lose?” Ashok asks rhetorically. He raises his handcuffs. “Do you have the keys for these?”
“I think so.” Abha sifts through the bunch, finds a likely key and inserts it. It turns: Ashok is free. He rubs his sore wrists while Abha liberates Maya. The young girl smiles hopefully at her.
“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Ashok says unnecessarily, taking charge. “Do you know the way out of this place?”
“Yes,” whispers Abha. “But I’m warning you, it’s heavily guarded.”
Ashok sets his jaw. “We’ll see about that,” he snaps, as the three creep out into the corridor.
They advance a few paces. Abha presses herself against a wall and pokes her head round a corner. The coast is clear. She signals, and they run down one more corridor. At the next intersection of pathways, Abha repeats the maneuver. They run — and are drawn up short by the sight of Pranay standing in the middle of the corridor chewing calmly, legs astride, whip at the ready, and a demoniacal gleam of delight in his eyes.