“I do not like not knowing,” Amitabh struggled to say. “It is quite unsettling.”
“Always you are having to know everything,” Vrinda said. “Ten more seconds, hold it.”
“When you meet him”—he paused—“just inquire, was he in attendance at the 1984 Padma Shri ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan?” Amitabh collapsed onto his mat.
An Indian man who had been on the other side of the room on an elliptical machine came over to where they were. “Excuse me, but why you’re trying to kill Amitabh Bachchan with Pilates?”
Rehearsals proceeded in a timely and efficient manner to Amitabh’s satisfaction, he being an efficient and timely man. He was in four of the song-and-dance numbers, plus he agreed to deliver a dramatic monologue from one of his classic movies, which would blend seamlessly into a soliloquy that he would compose himself about life and the Hindi film industry. The monologue chosen for him was an amalgamation of the spoken parts of the song “Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye Hum,” from Silsila, which surprised him. He would have guessed they would go with something more dramatic, oozing with pent-up rage, as in Kaalia, Zanjeer, or Deewaar, rather than this softer, gentler oration on loneliness and star-crossed love. When he learned that Prem himself had selected the passage, he took it as a clue to the inner workings of his mind, though it was unclear what the learning was.
On their third day of practice for the gents-only number, he chatted some more with Salman, who was again eating biryani in between learning his steps. He had uncovered some barely useful information about Prem: “I came to know he sleeps under a bag of onions.” After Salman explained what this meant and elaborated on Prem’s living situation, they were summoned by the choreographer to continue moving into a V-formation. Amitabh pondered the onions. Why would such a man, who had built such a company and surely accrued some wealth, still live as a paying guest in a crowded apartment? What did he do with his money? And why onions? Maybe he was a very specific variety of ascetic and they had met at an ashram long ago. Amitabh shimmied to his place at the vertex.
The next day, as they began work on a dance with three men and three women, Prem sat in on their practice session. Again he took an unassuming position in one corner and kept to himself unless someone required him to do otherwise. On the one hand, Amitabh admired him for this; Prem didn’t try to strike up conversations with him or the other actors or parade them around to friends and family like trophies. Unassuming and mostly silent, he was more like a librarian than a producer. Amitabh was used to people being interested in his every move—even his breakfast preferences were well documented—but Prem seemed entirely uninterested. Why? Had they had an unpleasant incident in the past? The bulk of Amitabh’s distasteful encounters had occurred when he had ventured into politics, winning a seat as Member of Parliament in the lower house. Had Prem also served as an MP in the Lok Sabha in 1987?
In the subsequent weeks of rehearsal, Amitabh continued to observe Prem closely in the hopes of jogging his memory. When Prem spoke with any of the performers about anything, Amitabh was watching. When Prem interrupted practice to make an announcement about not destroying the hotel rooms, Amitabh studied his mannerisms. And when Prem used the men’s room at the practice facility, Amitabh was right there in the stall next to him.
One evening, after the day’s work was done and he was in his hotel room getting ready for bed, washing his face, scraping his tongue, Amitabh studied his reflection in the mirror. His French beard was rapidly becoming mostly white and the fine lines on his face were not so fine anymore. He was considering buying a smart pair of eyeglasses to offset some of this, but the truth of the matter was staring back at him: his youth was long gone. The “angry young man” of his early career had been replaced by this gentle nana with an untrustworthy liver. It occurred to him then that all of this obsessing over where and when he had come across Prem Kumar in his past was a symptom of his fear of losing his mind. The cirrhosis, which had developed when he contracted hepatitis B during a blood transfusion following his Coolie accident, could potentially cause hepatic encephalopathy, or confused thinking. He had for the past nineteen years been more afraid of this than of any of the other possible complications, which he knew was curious given that they included enlarged bleeding veins and male breast enlargement. Yet there it was. He vowed to stop racking his brain for answers about Prem Kumar and leave the man alone.
He threw himself completely into the work, rededicating himself to learning his lines and hitting his marks. He took a fatherly tack with the younger actors, counseling them on their careers and inspiring them to work harder. When Akshaye and Sushmita had trouble with their salsa dance barrel rolls and the choreographer threw up his hands and declared them hopeless, Amitabh worked for hours with them until they were in sync. He came to rehearsal even for acts he was not in just to help out and keep everyone motivated. When Saif panicked when he saw the size of the stadium at the first stage rehearsal, Amitabh practiced nadi shodhana alternate-nostril breathing with him until he stopped hyperventilating.
A week before the show, Giants Stadium was abustle with people moving heavy things from one place to another, connecting and disconnecting wires, yelling into mobile phones. It was a much larger enterprise than anything Amitabh had witnessed before, and he was grateful to be a part of it. He stood at the edge of the stage one morning and took a deep breath of pure New Jersey air. It was cooler than he was used to for May, and he pulled his pashmina tighter around himself. As he took it all in—the vast sky, the enormity of the place, the seats high up from which no one would be able to see anything—he wondered, What if it rains? What will happen? A panic seized him as he thought of those thousands of fans who had paid so much and would walk such a long distance from the parking lot, stampeding toward the exits, disappointed and soggy. He spotted Prem in the distance sitting in a lower mezzanine seat while on his phone. After a minute, Prem walked up a few flights and to the left and sat down again, still on the phone. He did this over and over again, and Amitabh finally stopped Pankaj and asked what was going on.
“Oh, Mr. Bachchanji, yes, certainly, you see, Mr. Kumar is checking the view from different seats so he can advise the ticket buyers.”
“Interesting. He is doing this for how many people?”
“I think fifteen, twenty have called, sir.”
“And he will walk around the stadium and check seats for all of them?”
“Correct, sir.”
“And is the show not sold out?”
“Secondary market, sir,” Pankaj said.
“And what happens if it rains, Pankajji? Is there a plan for that?”
“Mr. Kumar has thought of everything.” Pankaj cleared his throat and shifted in place uncomfortably. “Mr. Bachchanji, you are, I think, sir, the best person in the world.”
Amitabh became distracted by a stray cloud in the sky. “Oh, yes, thank you, you as well,” he replied. Pankaj did not know how to respond to this unintended compliment from his idol, so he nodded and bowed many times and left. Thankfully, the cloud seemed quite benign and passed quickly. And even if there had been rain, Prem Kumar could apparently handle it. Whoever this man was, he certainly had an ability to get things done. Later that day, as Amitabh drank his milk, he saw Prem speaking with the special-effects crew, and the following morning, he was occupied with making sure the hospitality suite was up to his high standards for hospitality suites. One minute he was with the parking supervisor, the next with the head of concessions, who was unhappy about the importing of off-premises samosas. Prem had everything under control and the performers were left to perform.
Three days before the show, they had a glorious full-dress rehearsal at the stadium. Amitabh could feel the electricity, the excitement, the covert Johnnie Walker in the air. They were allowed to sit in the floor seats and watch each other’s performances as long as they reported backstage in time for their own turns, which proved to be a mistake as the rowdier of the young stars became quite rowdy. All of the actors sat together to watch the special guests, all-male acapella sensation Penn Masala and multilingual Indian-Californian rappers Karmacy, the latter of whom were so original and magnetic that they caused Sushmita and Bipasha to throw intimate articles of their clothing onto the stage and Akshaye and Sunil to drink heavily, alarmed that the talent before them so far exceeded their own. As the sun began to set behind what the grounds crew referred to as “the Hoffa end” of the field, Amitabh took the stage. Stagehands, electricians, wardrobe, sound, catering—everyone stopped to watch. He breathed deeply and into the pin-drop silence spoke his evergreen lines.
Mein aur meri tanhai
Me and my loneliness
Aksar yeh batein karte hain
Often they talk about this
Tum hoti to kaisa hota
Had you been here, how would it have been
Tum yeh kehti, tum wo kehti
You would have said this, you would have said that
Tum is baat pe hairaan hoti
You would have been shocked by this matter
Tum us baat pe kitni has ti
You would have laughed so much at that matter
Tum hoti to aisa hota
Had you been here, it would have been like this
Tum hoti to waisa hota
Had you been here, it would have been like that
Mein aur meri tanhai
Me and my loneliness
