Aksar yeh batein karte hain
Often they talk about this
“Loneliness,” he continued in his own words, “who is the one who knows loneliness best? Is it the jilted lover or the widowed wife? The parent who has lost a child or the child who has lost a parent?” They hung on his every word, and when he quietly yet firmly declared, “No,” they believed him. “It is the person who lives in fear who is most alone. He could have all of the love; she could be surrounded by admirers. But the one who leads with fear is alone.”
He spoke then of his parents and the beautiful influence they had on his thinking. He talked of the enduring depiction of strong mothers in Hindi cinema, which he wove into an eloquent love letter to the industry he cherished. “Our movies,” he declared, “have borne endless criticism and ridicule but now provide the platform for intellectual debate. They have entered educational curricula and have become a forebearer of the nation’s identity. Bollywood, as some unfortunately deem to call it, has survived almost a hundred years and is still growing. If over a billion people love and patronize Hindi cinema, it must be doing something right.” These last words, a version of a foreword he had recently contributed to a book about Hindi cinema, spoke directly to the hearts of the actors before him. Hearing their life’s work extolled rather than mocked, upheld by the greatest amongst them, they rose up in applause. Ajay wiped away tears, and Saif was flat-out bawling. The Penn Masala boys tried to improvise an Amitabh medley, which didn’t quite cohere. Amitabh bowed and offered his thanks.
The ladies’ “Jiya Jale” dance was next, then the Salman-Saif-Sunil “Koi Kahe” number. The whole rehearsal went swimmingly; Sunil even managed not to fall off the stage this time. The full-cast grand finale to “Mehendhi Laga Ke Rakhna” was flawless, but it was decided they would go over some of the trickier numbers a few more times. As daytime discipline slouched into late-night buffoonery, Amitabh called for his car. He was tired but knew he had one remaining responsibility for the day, which was to pose for pictures and sign autographs for the mob that had waited for hours outside his hotel to see him. Every evening he arrived to the same scene of mostly calm and sensible fans standing patiently in a neat line. The driver offered to bring him to a back entrance, but he refused; photos and signatures were part of the job. Many did not even want photographic or autographic evidence; they wanted to pay their respects by touching his feet. This he didn’t mind. It was the more zealous ones, the ones who fully prostrated themselves before him, that he found tiresome. What was a man to do in this situation? He wasn’t a guru or swami, how was he to respond? He had tried on several occasions to help the splayed-out individual back up on their feet, but this invariably resulted in an awkward lifting and pulling of limbs.
Amitabh hoped he didn’t have one of those tonight. But as the car pulled up to the hotel, two men and a woman flung themselves onto the driveway and another man appeared poised to do the same. A few photographers were also present, waiting to snap a photo that would help feed their families. This was fine with him. They had a right to their living, and the air belonged to all. He recalled the episode from his childhood when he was in the blessed presence of his big-screen hero Dilip Kumar, who had been busy and couldn’t sign an autograph. Such an impact that small slight had had on his younger self. Amitabh emerged from the car to great fanfare and began tending to the horizontal fans first. What an unusual, unimaginable lifetime this was.
* * *
An hour before the start of the show, Bipasha declared she couldn’t go on. It was a warm evening, the first one of the year, and hordes of people—45,000, roughly—were pouring into the stadium. Ajay began aggressively biting his nails and Bipasha threw up. Even Amitabh felt a little dizzy and had to sit.
“They never told us there would be so many people. When did they tell us? Nobody told us,” Bipasha said. Twinkle had been attempting to calm her down but gave up. “What did you think was going to happen in this massive stadium? A kitty party?”
Amitabh was nearby taking slow deep breaths. He was ashamed that he, too, was nervous because of the size of the crowd. Five people or five lakh people, he said to himself, the job is the same. He jumped to his feet and gathered the actors to run through the opening number one last time. “Who are we to cower?” Amitabh intoned “We are the lovers on mountaintops, the frolickers in waterfalls, the fist fighters, the motorcycle riders, the synchronized dancers, bold and bright. We reenact our nation’s history, we tackle social issues, we sing on top of trains. The comedic and the star-crossed, the romantic and the dramatic, we are villains, we are heroes, we are everything at once. We are Bollywood!”
Roused by Amitabh’s speech, the performers pumped their fists and cheered. Akshaye whispered, “I thought we are not supposed to use that word, ‘Bollywood,’” and Kajol whispered, “It is not about that right now.” Salman threw aside his biryani, and Bipasha stopped throwing up. Even the sideys—now called “supporting dancers”—were galvanized.
The show went on. No one had seen anything like it before, and they knew as they were watching they would never see its like again. The stars left everything of themselves on the stage that night, and with each roar of the wild and adoring crowd, they gave more. The ladies’ sensual semiclassical performance incited the audience to a frenzy, then Amitabh’s soliloquy brought them to tears. The gents nailed the gents-only number, and applause reached a fever pitch with the unrestrained rowdiness of “Koi Kahe.” By the time they took their final bows, Amitabh was drenched in sweat and out of breath. As he closed his eyes and let the clapping, the whistles, the sustained growl of the audience wash over him, he felt as he did in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar; alive and young once more.
Backstage, the drinking began. The cast was giddy and the smoking rampant. VVIP audience members with their $1,500 passes were ushered in for meet-and-greets with the stars, and the sponsors from HSBC were standing by with briefcases and satisfied looks. Still feeling a bit winded, Amitabh took a seat in the hospitality suite. The room was crowded with young people, brimming with vitality despite some questionable health habits. They would reach his age one day and realize that no matter the size of the audiences or the horizontality of their fans, they were still mortal. No one was immune.
After the booze dwindled and the VVIPs were adequately met-and-greeted, Prem made a speech. The performers watched him struggle to find his balance atop a wobbly table. He really does not seem like a big-shot producer, Amitabh thought. He is more like a personal secretary. Prem kept it short, commending them for a job professionally, excellently done. The cleanup work had already begun down on the field, and Amitabh recognized the hum of motors and things being dismantled and driven away. A faint whiff of gasoline drifted through, and something in Amitabh’s memory was triggered: he knew then that he had met Prem before, right here in New Jersey, long ago.
“Tell me something,” Amitabh said to Prem after he came down from the table.
“Amitji,” Prem began with some hesitance, “it has been the great honor of my life—”
“Yes, thank you, I also am honored, the show was a triumph, but tell me, Mr. Prem Kumar, did you by chance ever work at a petrol pump?”
A flash of surprise crossed Prem’s face as he pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and pressed it into Amitabh’s hand. “Sir, I believe I owe you this.”
“Oh, my manager handles—” Amitabh said, attempting to refuse it.
But Prem had already disappeared into the wild crowd. Amitabh opened the envelope and was dumbfounded. Inside was a check for the remainder of his payment, but with something he’d never before seen in this context: an extra one dollar. It all came flooding back to him—the Exxon, the extra-one conversation, the man with the too-much-henna hair—and he was relieved; his memory was just fine. No, it was great! “I knew he didn’t seem like a big-shot producer,” Amitabh smiled.
35
As Prem stumbled in late, exuding an objectionable whiskey stench for the third time in a week, the Singhs began to worry. Their paying guest had, in all the years he had slept on their mattress, never shown any proclivity toward alcohol or controlled substances or women or anything; in fact, in recent years, they had wondered if he ever had any fun at all. His only irresistible need appeared to be paan, which he had been consuming more avidly lately, as evidenced by the brownish-orange betel-juice drool stains on his pillow. Back when he enjoyed only the occasional paan from Beena Joshi’s purse stash, he had always been particular about brushing his teeth afterward to ensure they did not stain; but these days, with paan available every ten feet on Oak Tree Road, where the sidewalks were splotched orange with paan spit, he had it all the time and seemed entirely unconcerned about his teeth.
“Twenty-four and seven he is drinking,” Iqbal whispered to his wife next to him in bed.
“No, no, he is okay,” Amarleen replied. “He pukes in the kitchen sink and shouts in the night, but he is okay.”
“He is needing help, he needs to go in a rehabilitation program.”
“You are right, I will go help him.”
“No, no, no, he is just fine.”
Beyond being disheveled and drunk with orange teeth, Prem was retreating further and further into himself. He hardly spent time with Lucky and Deepak and the gang anymore, and even Beena Joshi had stopped making him food. Despite his career success and the respect it garnered, he was moving to the fringes of Edison society, doing things like standing outside the skating rink for hours and petting a ball of hair. Some dismissed his eccentricities as the mark of entrepreneurial genius; others labeled him as odd. If Prem caught wind of this buzz, he didn’t show it. He continued down his path of deterioration, cycling around town in his night clothes, cradling a mixtape that Leena had once made for him.
It was the end of May 2002. Prem had just produced his biggest, most ostentatious show yet. For almost a year, he had worked harder than was even required. His supererogation was fueled by the knowledge that once all of the tickets were sold; the vendors, stadium, crew, and talent were compensated; and he had paid himself, he would surpass the monetary goal that Hemant had set for him all those years ago. Though it was an empty goal now, with no heroic victory lap attached, no getting of the girl, still it would be a triumphant moment, an exceptional achievement in his life. The added bonus, of course, was that he could pay the Mumbai mobsters, who did not like to be kept waiting.
During the glorious few weeks of rehearsal that Prem got to spend in close proximity to his screen idol, he deliberately maintained a respectful distance from Amitabh. He didn’t want to be like one of those boastful producers who paraded their actors around to friends and family like trophies. He contented himself with ogling the star from afar, watching in amazement as he sipped his warm milk and blew on his soup. On the night of the show, amidst the bustle and the putting out of last-minute fires, Prem took a minute to stand in the wings and watch his hero on stage. The legendary actor began his performance of “Ke Pag Ghunghroo Bandh,” the opening words of which were “The elders have requested: show us you can stand on your own feet, and this world will be yours.” Prem realized then that he had lived those words, and in that shining moment, he felt the lights and applause were just for him.
He reflected on Amitabh’s talismanic dollar and came to the realization that he had done the thing he had set out to do, which was hardly ever the case in his life. How fitting that this second coming of Amitabh Bachchan was the thing that had put him over the top. He should try in the coming days to rest in this glory, he told himself, before resuming his usual routine of longing and despair, but he didn’t have the chance to try this. The next night, a significant setback surfaced from an unexpected origin.
Lucky was behaving oddly that morning. The tenants of 3D were enjoying a lazy Sunday morning, having stayed out late after the show the night before. Amarleen was getting the chai going, and the TV was already humming with Hindi music videos. One by one, they moved in and out of the bathroom in a half-sleep state, all except for Lucky, who was inexplicably revved up and fidgeting with the CD player while chattering on about how good the show was.
“Too good,” he said. “Really, who could imagine Akshay and Twinkle on the same stage? And Ajay and Kajol? And Amitabh singing? He sang well, didn’t he sing well? I think he sang well. And the big dance number in the end? First class, absolutely.”
“Take a breath, yaar,” Deepak said.
Lucky settled in next to Prem, who was still horizontal. “Hey, man, what are you doing? Why don’t you go on your own mattress?” Prem said.
“I’m so proud of you, yaar, how are you feeling today? You must be happy, are you so happy?”
“I’m tired, man,” Prem said, rolling over on his other side.
“So, what are you doing today to celebrate, you know, because everything was so good?”
“Nothing. I have to go to the hotel then the office.”
“Then back here?”
