Apart from having the numbers and the actors, it appears that Kumar’s meticulous planning and Herculean work ethic are what have made the shows a success. “The guy thinks of everything,” Bose said. “I do not know if he sleeps.”
Nachiket Rao, whose Electric Productions manages lighting and audiovisual effects for Superstar, put it this way: “I cannot think of anyone else who could have done this. He has a vision in his head for each show and he does not rest until he has achieved it.”
Yet the president and primary full-time employee of Superstar Entertainment is the exact opposite of the thing he is selling. He leads a simple, ascetic lifestyle and is deeply private, declining to discuss his personal status or his own origin story. With no evident family, one wonders what drives him. Kumar’s answer is, “I guess I would have to say the movies.” Faiza Khan, the company’s choreographer confirmed, “The main thing about him is that he is a movie lover and knows everything about them.” When questioned about whether he gets starstruck in his line of work, Kumar expressed surprise that he has not had this experience thus far. “Somehow, it is just work,” he explained.
Stepping out into the bustling India-in-America business district on Edison’s Oak Tree Road, Kumar added sheepishly, “If I could get Amitabh [Bachchan] to come someday, well, that would be something.” He smiled as he got on his bicycle and rode away.
26
“What a program, yaar!” Tony exclaimed, giving Prem several hearty thumps on the back. Prem had just emerged from his apartment on the humid summer morning after his Nassau Coliseum show. He was heading to First Fidelity Bank to make a large deposit and then over to Exxon to give notice. He didn’t think his quitting would be much of an issue as he had been spilling unreasonable amounts of gas on himself lately, annoying Mr. Khosla to no end.
A large group of AC-less people sat under a tree out front. “Best show ever,” Tun-Tun called. “Anil Kapoor was too good.”
A cricket-inclined neighbor lauded Prem in the lingo he knew best: “Ya, man, you really hit a sixer.”
“Sixer!” someone in the parking lot concurred.
Gitanjali Vora asked the question that was on everybody’s mind. “When is the next one?”
With one hand, Prem shielded his eyes from the sun. “December,” he said.
“It will be a Bollywood show only, no?” Tony implored. “No more ghazals, yaar, please, no ghazals.”
The term “Bollywood” had only just arrived at King’s Court, and Prem hadn’t yet decided how he felt about it. A cinema scholar in the 1970s had replaced the “H” of Hollywood with the “B” of Bombay, Abdul Rashid posited, while Urmila Sahu credited the filmi magazines Cine Blitz and Stardust. Nalini Sen insisted it was derived from “Tollywood,” the nickname of a studio in the Tollygunge neighborhood of Calcutta. Lucky found amusing this new word to describe something that had been around for ages, but Prem was concerned that it could imply they were a poor cousin, second best to Hollywood. Backstage, he’d heard rumblings from the actors themselves that they deplored the term. But, Shanta Bhatt held, the word was helpful in differentiating from the artistically inclined, non-mainstream, hey-this-should-win-an-Oscar Parallel Cinema movement. The entirety of Building 19 embraced the epithet as a way to capture Hindi commercial cinema’s global success. Wherever they fell on the to-Bollywood-or-not-to-Bollywood spectrum, all agreed it slid off the tongue more easily than the eight-syllabled “Hindi commercial cinema” or seven-syllabled “Hindi mainstream cinema.” In the interest of convenience, King’s Court took up the word without getting involved in its politics. Unceremoniously, it came into the vernacular; one day it wasn’t there, the next day it was.
“Yes,” Prem confirmed, “it will be a Bollywood show.”
27
Edison’s evolving identity took a peculiar turn when architectural palimpsests became a common occurrence up and down Oak Tree Road. The Pizza Hut became Gokul Vegetarian Cuisine and later Sukhadia’s, all the while boldly retaining its predecessor’s overwhelming red roof. Up the street, the Dairy Queen became Dosa Corner without giving up its signature red-and-white exterior, while the Boston Market kept its black-and-white awnings and cream-colored siding as it morphed into Indian Express. Some hailed all this as a crime of design, but it was also a multilayered record, a living history of Edison’s transformation from American to Indian American.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Indian population in New Jersey more than doubled to 169,180; in the same time period, the Indian population in Edison nearly tripled to almost 17,000. Moreover, they lived not only in Edison but in Metuchen, Colonia, Woodbridge, Scotch Plains, Piscataway, New Brunswick, South Plainfield, etc., and half of the Little India business district was actually in Iselin, but somehow, Edison was the name that became synonymous among expatriate Indians with a homeland in America. Local newspapers popped up, such as Little India and Khabar, catering to the Indian population there, and Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., representing the sixth district of New Jersey, cofounded the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans after studying his rapidly changing constituency.
Just when it seemed there were enough Indian American businesses on Oak Tree, more appeared. A slew of new grocery stores—Panchvati, Patel Brothers, Patel Cash and Carry, Subzi Mandi—ensured that no Edisonian would ever go without turmeric root, betel leaves, or the sweet and tangy, mouth-freshening cumin balls commonly known as jeera goli. Several music and video stores—Sangeet, Poonam Video, Patel Video, Music Box—met the town’s Bollywood needs, while a proliferation of Indian clothing boutiques—Sari Emporium, Khazana, Aishwarya, Sari Bazaar, Nazranaa, Indian Couture, Sahil—still was not enough. Dozens of new restaurants opened up, banking on the supposition that Indians largely want to eat Indian food when they go out. India Sajawat, Pooja Hut, Butala Emporium, and Patel Vasan Bhandar provided Hindu religious accessories and wedding décor, and Kitab Indian Bookstore sold books. These new businesses drew thousands of people from near and far, and when they stepped out of their cars and onto the paan-stained Oak Tree sidewalks, they felt as though they had stepped through a window to their earlier lives.
Hemant Engineer inspected the progress of the commercial district one afternoon while walking down the street. In front of Gujarati Grocers, a young woman grilled samples of masala vegetable burgers; a few doors down, a man attempted to drape a sari on a mannequin in a window. There were signs everywhere—an Indian bridal expo, a $5.95 Gujarati lunch thali, dhokla made fresh daily, passport photos at a Halal meat shop, and phone cards at Smriti’s Sari and Spices Center. Hemant, whose sign had started it all, viewed them with a sense of satisfaction. He was pleased to see King’s Court so well represented on that stretch of road, with Gopal’s sweet shop and Varsha’s video store, which also carried carrom boards, the Singhs’ electronics store, and Lucky’s small, upscale clothing shop, The Sassy Salwar. But the main thing he came to survey were the beauty salons. It was time to get Leena’s business out of his bedroom and out onto Oak Tree Road.
He spotted only two, Payal Beauty Parlor and Shangar Beauty Salon, but he knew there were others close by. Still, in this area, with its endless supply of hirsute women, Leena’s expert hair-removal services would certainly develop a following. In fact, they already had. For years, she had operated an underground salon out of their apartment, ironing out their wavy tresses and threading their excess facial hair. When she was younger, she had taken a short course at the Shahnaz Hussain Beauty Institute in Delhi and learned all the requisite techniques for hair removal and blackhead extraction. She had quietly graduated from Rutgers and decided to continue on at the grocery store and help navigate it through the increased competition. When the store was on firm footing and she had more time, she started casually removing mustaches. Soon, women had standing appointments to have their lip hair removed and their eyebrows disconnected. The business grew by word of mouth, without the benefit of signs or ads. At first the customers were just from King’s Court, but quickly they started coming from all over town, arriving at her door after they noticed Manju’s flawless upper lip or Jaya’s delicately manicured hands. They raved about Leena’s ten-dollar arm waxing, five-dollar haircuts, and fifteen-dollar facials. She would squeeze them in on an overbooked day, effortlessly tending to five clients and a cantankerous father at the same time.
Leena’s salon became a full-time operation. She took over Hemant’s bedroom, nailed a row of mirrors to the wall, and mounted a steel rod on one side for a curtain to conceal a long, plastic-cushioned table and the women who lay down on it. He was forced to stay out of his bedroom all day, and when he could finally go in, there were broken pieces of white thread scattered all over the floor. Sometimes Leena insisted on testing out a new moisturizer or even a mud mask on him and poor Viren Bhai, who didn’t mind, it made his skin glow. There were women in the apartment all day every day using the sitting area as a waiting room, and if Hemant wanted to take a nap, he had to go to his dear friend Sanjay Sapra’s or else to the back room of the store. But the worst thing about Leena’s thriving business was the unending fight over the TV.
In recent years, the Dish Network satellite service provider had begun to carry channels with Indian programming—TV Asia, Zee TV, Sony, Star Plus, Sahara One—and for the first time since immigrating to America, Hemant could once again enjoy the thing he loved most: cricket. So many years had passed in which he had little involvement with the game, and the embers of his fanaticism reignited quickly. He was the first in King’s Court to install a dish, drawing fans to his home at all hours, often in the middle of the night with blankets and pillows so they could watch the matches as they occurred live on the other side of the world. Even after every family had acquired a dish and the disks bloomed from the sides of King’s Court’s buildings like clusters of oversized flowers, people still came to his home to watch.
Just when Hemant had grown accustomed to the elegant roar of a cricket match in his apartment, Leena declared she needed the TV and VCR to play Hindi movies so her customers would not get bored while waiting. It was the first time he had ever found his daughter to be entirely unreasonable, insisting on having her way even when India was playing Pakistan in the World Cup quarterfinals. When he asked how she could preempt India-Pakistan cricket and, in the process, called into question her loyalty to game and country, she clapped back, “It is a sacrifice I must make. If the customers are relaxed and happy, their blackheads pop out with less of squeezing.” Hemant found it impossible to argue with her on this point and ultimately succumbed to watching cricket only at night so she could show Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge during business hours.
For that entire year, Leena never changed the tape because that year, and for years after, everyone was crazy for DDLJ. The Shah Rukh Khan–Kajol starrer focused on Hindu Family Values—which became such a significant concept in political discourse that they began capitalizing it—and ushered in the era of the diaspora romance. Its plot centered on non-resident Indians, or NRIs, who affirmed Indian traditions, setting the tone for Bollywood for the rest of the decade. But for Hemant, it was always the useless movie that overrode his cricket.
After a great deal of thinking about how to solve this problem, he had the idea for his daughter to rent an actual storefront on Oak Tree Road. It would be good for both of them if she left the apartment. He was proud of how hard she worked to build a grooming empire in his bedroom, but lately, she had been especially irritable with him. He wondered if she still resented him for what had happened all those years ago with that superstar show boy, though she was now happily engaged to Mikesh. And there were plenty of others waiting in the wings if that didn’t work out: Sandeep the podiatrist and Akhil the ophthalmologist, and a very eager colorectal surgeon named Harsh, all of whom had had their mothers get in touch. But he thought things with Mikesh, who had become a fixture in their apartment, would work out just fine; the two were always laughing and talking secretly together. He wondered what they were waiting for and decided he would have to ask the boy’s uncle, Sanjay Sapra. Whispers were beginning to swirl—did he break it off with her? were their horoscopes incompatible?—as Leena was dangerously close to turning thirty without being married.
Fortunately, Hemant did not have to worry for long. Like all gossip in King’s Court, that one died down when the next one began. The rumor that swept India and the diaspora that fall would later be referred to as the “Hindu milk miracle.” Before dawn one morning, in a temple in Delhi, an offering of milk to a statue of Ganesha inexplicably disappeared. Quickly, word spread that the elephant-headed deity of good fortune had drunk the milk himself; by midmorning, Ganeshas all over the country were taking in milk, and by the afternoon, temples in America, Canada, and the United Kingdom were reporting the same. Soon, Hindu authorities declared that a full-blown, worldwide Hindu miracle was occurring. Traffic jams ensued in front of major temples and milk sales skyrocketed. Around the world, people offered their in-home Ganeshas spoonfuls of milk, some with more success than others. Before long, scientific explanations for the phenomenon and theories of mass hysteria were put forth, yet many thousands of people maintain to this day that their Ganeshas drank milk.
Leena was not one of these people. Throughout King’s Court, Hindus tried to feed their statues all day, but no one could confirm a miracle occurring in their apartment. Some said their Ganeshas seemed to sort of drink a little, with most of it dribbling down the chin, but Leena felt strongly that this did not qualify. Still, she made attempts.
Hemant came home in the afternoon as Leena was making an oblation. “Maybe you should mix some sugar in it. Ganeshji likes sweets, you know.”
“No one said anything about sugar,” Leena said, not looking away from her unresponsive statue. “He is supposed to drink plain milk, period, end of story.”
The apartment was enjoying a rare moment of quiet as Leena had given herself two hours off that day to rest. No aunties were disrobing in the waiting room or having anything removed in the salon.
“Can I sleep for some time?” Hemant said.
“I give up,” Leena said, pitching the spoon of milk into the sink. “This is not drinking anything.”
“Just for twenty, thirty minutes,” Hemant said, heading in the direction of his room.
“You can,” Leena said, “but I will be doing Mrs. Iyer’s stomach waxing there in ten minutes.”
“That is it!” Hemant declared, throwing a root comb applicator at a pile of dirty towels. “I cannot live like this—no naps, no cricket, no fun. Sticky wax cloths everywhere. It is time for you to move your hairy-ladies business to a proper store on Oak Tree Road.”
Leena was silent, which unsettled Hemant, who was used to his daughter having an immediate and loud opinion on everything. When she finally opened her mouth, she spoke slowly and calmly. “You want to kick me out from my apartment so you can sleep and watch TV?”
“No,” Hemant said uncertainly. Leena narrowed her eyes. “Okay, yes,” Hemant said. “But, but, just think how good it will be—”
Leena erupted with the fury of a thousand underpaid aestheticians. She spoke at length about sacrifice and the importance of family, moved on to the virtues of small business and the primacy of keeping overhead costs to a minimum, ranted about the cost of labor, and finally concluded with a reminder about taxes.
“Never mind,” Hemant said, waving his hand as if to erase the past two minutes. Mrs. Iyer came in boasting that her Ganeshji had drunk three spoonfuls and unbuttoned her blouse as if he weren’t there.
“Really, something has to change,” Hemant decided.
