Ashok grunted and leaned back in his chair, then sprung forward again with a forefinger raised to the air. “What if we invite film stars to the wedding?”
Prem had no intention of moving ahead with an engagement but wanted to hear more about the film stars. “Which ones?”
“Whichever ones you want. The best ones.”
“Shabana Azmi and Jayaprada?”
“Of course!”
“Can we get Rajesh Khanna and Dimple in the same room?”
“We can try.”
“Maybe Parveen Babi can perform a dance number?”
“Why not?” Ashok appeared jubilant upon making so much progress in the conversation, but then a shadow fell over his face and he shifted nervously. “Now, Son, they want, you see, after marriage … after marriage, what would be expected is … you would be staying in the Aswani house.”
Prem was aghast. “What kind of arrangement is that?”
“What can I do? The girl is very attached to her family’s cook, and the mother is also attached, so they want to keep her and her husband and the cook and the mother all there only.” He went into complicated detail about potato subji. Prem was pained by the paucity of options before him.
“Son, you would never have to work in your life,” Ashok said gently.
Prem wished he could vault back into the drapes. He didn’t want to work but he didn’t want to not work, and he definitely didn’t want Malveena Aswani as a wife. He had always wanted to emulate the onscreen exploits of the ever-amorous film stars he revered, and as far as he knew, there was no Hindi movie in which the hero married rich and coasted through life alongside a miserable woman with buckets of cash.
His father was watching the movie while digging around with his finger for a lost piece of Parle-G in his tea. When the sex worker had fallen sufficiently in love and the song ended, he turned back to Prem. “So?”
“No,” Prem said.
Ashok’s face fell. “But, Son, you cannot just watch movies for your whole life.”
“I am not just watching movies,” Prem said. He realized he’d said this with unjustified conviction because what he had been doing for two years was, in fact, just watching movies. But from this place of unfounded outrage sprouted the kernel of an idea. “I was researching,” he said. “Preparing. Working.”
His father laughed, then noted the seriousness in his son’s face and adjusted accordingly. “What kind of work is that?”
Prem sat up straight and spoke with confidence and an atypical tinge of defiance. “Making movies,” he said. This was fiction, something that had come to Prem in the moment, at first as a way to save face, but then, wondrously, as a possible cure for all that had ailed him since he was ten. What more appropriate career path? And who more qualified to pursue it, with his exhaustive understanding of Hindi filmdom and his utter neglect of everything else? As a boy, he tended to forgo outdoor play for the indoor pleasure of films, which he regarded as primers for life, though they often demonstrated a complete disregard for the rules of time and space. From Sholay, which he had viewed twenty-three times at the Plaza, he developed a strong belief in the good-versus-evilness of the world and a keen ear for iconic one-liners. His deep mistrust of the law as a means of exacting justice had its origin in the classics Mother India, Awara, and later Deewaar, although this impassioned standpoint had no relevance to his own life. Because of the cinematic pervasiveness of long-lost family members, Prem had throughout his childhood suspected the existence of a twin; and because of the longstanding onscreen link between lust and singing in the rain, he experienced an intense desire for female companionship during monsoons. Above all, Prem’s filmic education instilled in him an abiding faith in heroes. He harbored a dream of becoming a real-life hero himself—not the angry-young-man kind popular in the 1970s, but a more lighthearted hero, the kind that had frolicked across screens in the 1960s and was resurfacing in the mid-1980s, someone who twirled around trees and ran through fields of tulips, who eventually achieved complete personal and professional success, oozing glory and macho virility.
In a multistoried joint-family home with armed guards and detached servants’ quarters on Kumar Group Road, shy Prem had grown up wanting to do something big—bigger even than his father, sister, and three older brothers—yet he was scared of doing anything at all. So he hid himself in movies, studying them, reading anything he could find on the subject, and wound up with a head full of corresponding data, fervently gathered and hitherto useless. He became familiar with industry history reaching back to the patriotic, slightly communist, post-Independence days; read with great zeal about story sittings, narration, and dubbing; and gained a comprehensive understanding of the generally incomprehensible system of independent distribution. By the sixth standard, Prem could have written a dissertation on the relationship between narrative content in Hindi films and the national political climate, with a focus on Indira Gandhi’s Emergency; a fairly technical book about lighting and camerawork; or a substantial report on the appeal of Indian movies in Eastern Bloc nations.
All of this unprescribed research did nothing to improve his social standing, which by the time he was twelve had hit rock bottom. His classmates viewed him as eccentric and hurled uninspired insults in his direction. More than once he bunked class to avoid being teased in front of a pretty girl, and on these occasions he caught a matinee. On the Plaza’s fabled single screen that year, he watched Mili and Julie, enjoyed the low-budget piety of Jai Santoshi Maa, and witnessed the tragedy of star-crossed brothers in the groundbreaking Deewaar. On the opening day of the comedic and by-and-large incoherent blockbuster Hera Pheri, Prem brought a box of Frooti mango drink back to his cheap seat in the stalls, where he often sat to avoid being spotted. When three other truant classmates began flinging roasted pistachios at him from the balcony, Prem tried to focus on removing the straw from its plastic wrapper, but soon the pistachios were too much. He dropped the straw on the floor in the sticky darkness between seats and went home.
Home, at that time when his mother had not yet moved on to her next life, made everything bearable. Lavanya Kumar was the kind of nurturing mother about whom kids with unloving mothers dreamed. In those utopian fantasies of maternal perfection, the mother was lovely, with cascading waves of unfrizzy hair, a glowing complexion, an air of rosewater, and eyes that smiled. Prem’s mother had possessed all these qualities. In the sixteen years he knew her, she was entirely blind to any flaws in her last-born’s character. When his essay, “Challenges to Environment in the Modern Age,” for the Class 9 writing competition was disqualified for relying entirely on Hindi movies for references, she explained it was ahead of its time and wrote “100%” at the top of the first page. When he came home brokenhearted because his few friends had all been absent and he’d sat alone at lunch, she held his hand as they watched Junglee. And on days when he feigned sickness, she let him stay home with her and play carrom and watch movies until he regained a degree of courage. She never acknowledged the fact of his debilitating shyness, always emphasizing how clever and charming she found him. And had she lived, she would never have said he was incapable of anything and therefore had to marry a shrew.
The illness appeared in her stomach when Prem was fifteen, and it was a negative prognosis from the start. She must have been in a great deal of pain, he recognized many years later, but at the time, he did not guess it as they enjoyed their afternoons together on the drawing room couch under a blanket. They watched picture after classic picture: Shree 420, Chori Chori, and other Raj Kapoor films; Pyaasa, Mother India, and Baiju Bawra; and the hits of Dev Anand, beginning with Guide. It was as though she had wanted to leave him with a thorough motion-picture education grounded in the golden age of Indian cinema. Some days he forgot she was even sick, but by his sixteenth birthday, the disease had spread. His father and siblings and various aunts and cousins were there as much as their schedules would allow, but it was Prem who spent the bulk of those last days by her side. Her final words to him were not melodramatic utterances about being good or moving on. Instead, and this he would remember until the end of his own life, after a marathon day of watching Mughal-e-Azam (run time: 3 hours, 11 minutes) and Madhumati (run time: 2 hours, 59 minutes), during which she was in and out of sleep, she said, “You know, Hindi movies can be quite long sometimes.”
The years after Lavanya Kumar’s passing were tough on the whole family but for none more so than Prem. He kept his sadness to himself. And by the time his father entered the drawing room and proposed marriage, he had very much learned how to be alone.
“You want to make movies?” his father said in a way that did not suggest rampant enthusiasm.
“Not movieeeez,” Prem said. “Just a movie. One. I would try one and see.” Not wanting to appear desperate, he leaned back and crossed his legs, but then uncrossed them and sat up straight again, then repeated the sequence two more times. Ashok wiped away a piece of soggy biscuit at the corner of his mouth and stood. He clasped one elbow behind his back and began again to pace. The strained jaw, the pulsating neck vein, the eye twitch, and occasional nose pick—all of this suggested to Prem that his father was thinking hard on the matter, sorting out the financing, mulling over the connections he had in the industry, and considering the potential return on investment.
At last, Ashok spoke: “What if we find another, more suitable girl?” he said.
Prem visibly deflated. For a quick second, the lights had finally come on in his life, and the next, they were extinguished by a procession of eligible socialites with spears. “I am not marrying Gauri Jindal or Bhumika Damani either.”
“Those families said no already because you do not work.”
“Oh,” Prem said. There was a minute of silence between them, then Prem said, “I can make a film, Papa.” He tried in earnest to convince him that he understood the production process as well as the tastes of today’s movie-going crowds. “In fact,” he said, “I have the story half-written”—he didn’t—“and I have rung up Subhash Ghai to direct”—he hadn’t. He talked at length about the role that advanced technologies would play in the industry in the coming years and the opportunities for innovation in film distribution, including the possibility of vast networks of multiscreen theaters (as opposed to the prevailing single-screen behemoths). This fount of ideas formed on the spot and spouted forth from within him, his excitement gaining momentum as the thoughts came tumbling out, mounting until he was breathless and hopeful.
“What about that round, happy girl from the Sharma family?” Ashok said.
“Papa!”
“Okay.” Ashok cleared his throat. “Work just is not in your nature, Son. Also, movie halls with five screens? This will never work.”
But when Ashok Ratan Kumar, Titan of Technology, Giant of Generics, Purveyor of Lite Lager, glimpsed his son’s long face, he reconsidered. Prem, fighting back tears, had returned his gaze to the movie with a high-speed motorcycle chase now in progress. Ashok observed his son’s profile, which echoed the angel features of his late wife. Prem watched too many movies and was distressingly timid, but he was a good boy, the most decent, in fact, of all his children. He had been left largely alone since his main supporter’s departure from this world. Perhaps, Ashok thought, he could have spent more time with Prem and perhaps he could have guided his path somewhat. Here he was now, exhibiting signs of ambition and the inklings of a career, albeit in a ludicrous field. A wave of guilt-laden love came over the Titan of Technology. Eyes welling with tears, he resolved then to give his youngest child a chance.
2
It was a transformative moment in the history of Hindi films: the destined-to-be-legendary Sridevi and Anil Kapoor were hitting the scene, displacing aging industry stalwarts; Govinda’s gyrating hips had begun gyrating while Mithun Chakraborty had launched a decade-late but well-received disco revolution; fans in India and around the world welcomed the proliferation of romantic comedies, which were a departure from the serious “social” films that had reigned for so many years, and they embraced the tunes of Bappi Lahiri, that rotund music director who ushered in an era of synthesized Hindi film music (some of which bore a suspicious resemblance to certain Western tunes) while wearing fifty gold chains. All of this occurred without the benefit of bank loans or commercial financing, which is to say, with the help of sinister forces, shadowy underworld figures, and “black money” in need of laundering. It was a chaotic business, every man for himself, no place for the meek.
Into this entered the meek Prem, unimpressive in a T-shirt and jeans, armed only with an unwavering love of Indian cinema. On an oppressively humid morning at the end of May, he first set foot on the grounds of the storied Mehboob Studios, knees quivering under the weight of great responsibility, both to his father and, he realized after turning onto the tree-lined drive and spotting one of the grand old soundstage buildings, to the studio itself. Mehboob was the setting of the masterpiece Mother India, where Dev Anand became the Guide, where Amitabh Khaike Paan-ed his way into history. Prem experienced a kind of euphoria muddled with nausea as he entered Soundstage One. The inside of the building, it turned out, was not as glamorous as the movies filmed in it would suggest. The cavernous space was crammed with stacks of crates, large coils of cable, wooden planks of all sizes. In one corner was shattered glass and what looked like a pile of rubbish; a cat wandered around in the shadows. Prem discerned the stale smell of cigarettes mixed with tandoori fish. It would be a serious task to transform this place and get the project off the ground. Historically, he had not enjoyed a challenge. He kicked a hairspray can, nearly hitting the cat, which screeched. He paced a cheerless, dirt-covered rug for several minutes before accepting his limited options. So, like Amit in Silsila when he marries his dead brother’s pregnant fiancée, in classic hero fashion, Prem decided to try rising to the occasion. He opened a side door to let the cat out then got to work.
It did not go well. From the dining room of his family’s flat in Bandra, Prem attempted to coordinate the preproduction of his movie. From his years of casual study as well as a recent magazine article, “So You Are Wanting to Make a Hindi Movie,” he had some notion of what needed to be done. With a script (written by him) and the money (from his dad), he went in search of a top director. Subhash Ghai, of Karz, Hero, etc., his top choice, had unfortunately established his own production company and would not come to the phone. Others who would not come to the phone included Ramesh Sippy, K. Balachander, Govind Nihalani, both Ramsay brothers, and Gulzar. As Prem continued his search for a director, a hero and heroine, and a supporting cast and crew, he was reminded that Hindi films were a family business. Without deep roots and personal connections in the industry, you had little chance of breaking into the talkies, even with a heap of cash. Prem felt betrayed by the thing he loved most, and the heavy weight of failure bore down on him as he sat at the dining table one morning next to a silent phone. At nine thirty, he asked Chandraprakash, an ancient and loyal servant of the Kumars, to make him a cup of tea. At ten, he asked Chandraprakash to teach him how to make the tea himself. He drew several doodles of a monkey in the margins of a diary and then spilled his tea on the floor, shattering the cup. He cleaned up the mess and then decided to clean the entire flat. At noon, he sat back down by the phone.
A month in Bombay and all he had was a studio space reserved for him by his father’s University of Delhi batchmate’s accountant who was vaguely related to Mehboob Khan. He would have to settle for a third-rate director and no-name actors. It could be good, he told himself, giving young newcomers with fresh ideas a chance. But the talent he ended up finding was neither young nor talented. The cameraman was blind in one eye, the music director uninspired, the remainder of the crew a motley assemblage of has-beens. For lead actors, the best Prem could do was Brijesh, whose teeth were alarmingly crooked, and Yashika, who, along with the director, smelled strongly of whiskey. Somehow, after several weeks and considerable bribing of city officials for the necessary permits, they were ready for production.
Three days before filming was to begin, Prem threw up in a giant ashtray. He had come down to Mehboob to see the renovated set, which was supposed to look like the interior of a gaudy mansion. It was an unbearably muggy Bombay afternoon, so when his car reached the end of the driveway he was surprised to find a malevolent-looking man withstanding the heat in the unattractive courtyard between sound-stage buildings. Prem got out and exchanged nods with the man, who upon closer inspection miraculously turned out to be Amrish Puri, the quintessential villain of Hindi films. He was ashing a cigarette into an enormous bowl. Prem stood slack-jawed and staring at the veteran actor until at last and somewhat inevitably Amrish Puri waved him over.
