All of Prem’s enthusiasm evaporated. “Okay, then, thank you, I guess, for the advice,” he said, hanging his head and moving in the direction of his sad mattress.
“Wait, pause the show,” Lucky said. He turned to face the room. “I think this is a fantastic idea.”
“Really?” several people said simultaneously.
“Really!” Lucky shouted. “Imagine, you are standing in front of the stage and the music comes on and there is Madhuri Dixit, smiling, dancing, jumping. Then comes Sridevi dancing with Anil Kapoor, and in the end, the Big B himself, right in front of you on the stage.”
Everyone except the Gill family began to chime in, fantasizing about their favorite stars who might come and the dances they might do. Even Amarleen briefly released her focus from Prem to envision Dharmendra on stage before her. Prem, relieved and exultant once again, smiled and tucked his journal into his bag.
Meanwhile, King’s Court at large was bursting with entrepreneurial spirit. Though sections of Oak Tree Road were still what Monte Burke described in Forbes as a “cesspool of biker bars, prostitutes, and abandoned buildings,” the town was beginning to show signs of what it would someday be. The ambitious residents of King’s Court residents opened new businesses, supported each other’s dreams by frequenting each other’s little shops and maa-and-baap stores. Sujata Mehra opened her elegant jewelry emporium, and Nathan Kothari moved forward with his travel agency. Raghava Sai Shankara Subramanya established his casual South Indian restaurant, and Urmila Sahu was close to unveiling her Sari Palace, which also carried videos like her sister’s store in Chicago. When the sister heard about Urmila’s plan, she said, “It won’t work there, it has to be in a big city where there are lot of Indians,” to which Urmila replied, “Visit me in Edison sometime.”
Not every tenant of King’s Court met with professional success. The Ghataks in 20E bet everything they had on a small jewelry business from out of their apartment, catering to upscale customers who never came. Bhuvan Khurana in 14G tried to become an accountant but could not secure a position in his field. For several months, he toiled at Roy Rogers on Oak Tree Road, not far from Exxon, mopping floors, picking up soggy lettuce around the Fixins Bar while steeped in fried chicken and roast beef aromas until it became too much for him; he packed up his family and returned to India, broken. There were countless such stories of hardship and shattered hopes. Many an immigration story rewound back where it started, where there would still be suffering, but at least the parameters were familiar. Those who stayed and even prospered lived with the constant awareness that failure and deep shame could be just around the dingy, litter-strewn corner.
Hemant felt it his duty to prevent this sort of thing. He continued to impart his wisdom, but now it was to people who were actually listening. Many would-be entrepreneurs came to him for guidance, to whom he was delighted to offer his pearls of wisdom, such as “The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones,” or “A free lunch is only found in mousetraps.” He followed these aphorisms with concrete advice and was immensely pleased when the receivers of his advice opened new stores.
As all of this was happening, news of Prem’s would-be venture spread through King’s Court as well. Urmila Sahu heard a rumor about a business Prem wanted to start with Indian stars coming to America to perform in shows, and she mentioned it to Gitanjali Vora, who felt sad at the thought of him trying so hard to make something of himself and possibly failing. She told this to Poonam as she was hanging popular magazines like Stardust, Cineblitz, and Femina on a clothesline behind the counter at Poonam Video. Because she didn’t have any clothespins, Poonam opened the magazines and made them straddle the line so they hung sideways, causing customers to tilt their heads to read the covers. When Nalini Sen came in with her unruly twins and tilted her head to look at Juhi Chawla on the cover of Stardust, Poonam told her that Juhi would likely be coming to America soon to participate in the Superstar Entertainment show, the name of the company having come to her as quickly as the rest of the lie.
“Juhi Chawla? Here?” Nalini said.
“Oh ya, all the stars will be coming,” Poonam said, spacing out the magazines. “Juhi, Sridevi, Madhuri—”
“Any of the heroes?”
“Oh, all of them,” Uttam Jindal answered from the golden-oldies section. “Aamir, Anil Kapoor, some of the older ones. Maybe Jitendra, I heard Jitendra really wants to come.”
“Really? That will be something!” a customer nobody knew said.
Poonam told the same story to the next person who came in and the next one after that, and everyone who heard it repeated it to two others. The rumor spread through the Indian American community faster than news of a Macy’s one-day sale until eventually it became common knowledge. Some of this was the result of wishful thinking on the part of movie fans, while the rest was due to Prem’s friends’ desire to see him do well. As the weeks went forward, these friends continued their “marketing,” as they liked to think of it, embellishing a little more each time, adding fireworks and laser lights and appearances by every star they could think of, raising ticket prices and hoping that the program Prem put together would be as grand as they were promising it would be.
20
When the rumors inevitably reached apartment 3D, Prem was perplexed by the discovery that his company had a name. “Superstar Entertainment” had a strong, sensational quality to it—much better than the name he had come up with, Indian Movie Stage Program Productions—so he decided to keep it. For Prem, February 1989 unfolded largely on the phone in Beena’s apartment, Superstar Entertainment’s first headquarters. He would leave to work his shifts at Exxon or to shower and sleep at the Singhs’ place, but his remaining hours were spent making calls for his new venture. First, he focused on securing a venue, figuring it would be difficult to entice any talent to come to America without any details to offer. Beena’s customer Kishan Chopra directed him to a few local theaters that might have the kind of stage and capacity he was looking for. Prem actually had no idea what kind of stage or capacity he was looking for but called those places anyway. He quickly narrowed the options down to two places in nearby New Brunswick, the State Theatre and the George Street Playhouse. After visiting both several times, it came down to seats: 1,850 versus 180. “Are you stupid?” Beena said, referring to the possibility of renting a theater with so few seats. Thus it was decided that the inaugural Superstar Entertainment show would be held in the recently restored gilded halls of the State Theatre, on the entirely arbitrary date of March 10, 1990.
With the venue and date in place, Prem began, of course, to panic. He had taken a small loan from Beena to put down a deposit on the theater, and if the show failed, he would have to work at Exxon for years before he could repay her. What if he couldn’t convince any stars to come? How could he hire them without money? How could he get money from sponsors and advertisers without any actors? This was the business model that Prem and Beena had formulated: the bill for putting on the event would be covered by money from sponsors and advertisers, while he would keep the revenue from the ticket sales. Beena advised lining up the talent first. “But how can I do that with no payment to offer?” Prem said.
“Are you stupid?” Beena cried. “Not you,” she said then, addressing a plumber who was hanging some curtains for her. “Promise the payment to the stars and find the money later.” So Prem began calling managers and agents whose numbers he still had from his days as an aspiring filmmaker in Bombay. It would not be easy to get them on the phone, but he steeled himself and prepared more chai.
* * *
“It’s going to be me and you sitting in the empty State Theatre, watching the empty stage,” Prem said to Beena.
“I will bring samosa,” Beena said.
It was April, and they were at Raghava Sai Shankara Subramanya’s Dosa Hut, which had become the hottest hut in town. On one wall was a shaky yet enthusiastic mural of Juhu Beach, and on a shelf behind the register was a large TV showing movie songs. Multicolored streamers crisscrossed the ceiling, and the pepper shakers on the tables were filled with red pepper instead of black, which Prem hailed as a stroke of genius. Beena was treating him to idli and dosa to celebrate all the hard work he had done the past two months.
“But I didn’t book a single actor,” Prem said. “Are we celebrating my total lack of progress?”
“Look,” Beena said, “you are making progress. It is just not visible yet.”
“Invisible progress, fantastic.”
The super painful and upsetting song “Aa Meri Jaan” from the movie Chandni, which Sridevi sings to her beloved Rishi Kapoor after he is paralyzed, started on the TV. At the exact same time, Leena walked in. She was with her usual gang of friends and her frustratingly well-dressed doctor. Her hair looked about three inches shorter and was parted on the side instead of the middle, and she had on a different, pinker shade of lipstick. She glided as if on air, and when she tilted her head a certain way, it wrecked him.
Everyone exchanged hellos and waves, except for Leena and Prem.
“That’s it, this is ridiculous. Why can you not talk to her and ask what happened and does she still love you?” Beena asked, pointing her hand in Leena’s general direction.
Prem swatted her hand down. “She is engaged,” he said, trying to lower the volume of their conversation. “It is pointless.”
“Then let me ask her.”
“No! There is no need.”
“Fine,” Beena said. “Then you need some distraction. You are spending too much of time alone, working, worrying, working, worrying. Your stress is increasing my stress. Here, meet some new girls.” Beena pulled a copy of the India Abroad from her purse and slid the last two pages across the table to Prem.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he said.
It turned out that Beena’s solution was for him to respond to the matrimonial advertisements in the classified sections of Indian American newspapers in which parents, for the most part, sought potential partners for their children by presenting and soliciting relevant statistics—biodata, as it were—such as height, age, profession, degrees, location, religion, hobbies, and precise categorization of skin tone. It was too much for Beena to hope that Prem might forget about Leena altogether, but she wanted him to at least get out and meet other people and take his mind off his all-consuming, ill-advised love. Prem looked at the pages before him:
SEEKING suitable alliance for slim, fair
MD daughter, 31/5’3”, from prominent
Gujarati Jain family. Boy should be
well-settled in US (preferably in medicine),
never married, cultured, nonsmoker. Reply w/photo.