5

‘I told him to his face—he was the biggest producer in those days, mind you, but still I told him ki, Zaveri bhai, things have changed. I won’t demand a full script, that much trust and respect I have for you, but you have to at least tell me the basic story of the film before I say yes and assign you my dates. Don’t mind, but everybody is saying ki aap mujhe For Granted lete ho!’

‘Imagine that,’ says Samar politely.

‘So then he said ki arrey AK saab, of course I will tell you story of the fillum, I will tell you full story of the fillum! He used to say fillum, you know, instead of film, poor chap, had absolutely no class, bless his soul!’

‘And the story?’ Samar prompts dutifully.

‘Story is quite simple, he said. Bilkul James Bond type. Basically, right through the fillum, you have one hand on your gun and one hand on your lund.’

Samar, who is sipping water, chokes.

‘When the villain comes, you whip out your gun, dhish-kiyaaooooon! When the heroine comes, you whip out your lund, dhish-kiyaaoooon!’

‘Superb,’ manages Samar. ‘Just brilliant.’

AK collapses into gales of happy laughter. ‘That’s how we made cinema in the old days! We kept it strong and simple. Now look at you chaps, dithering and waffling and tying yourself into knots over nuance and motivation and character graphs! RRRRRubbish! All a film needs is heart.’

‘Maybe you’re right, sir,’ is Samar’s response. ‘Uh, where’s Zeeshan?’

‘Must be at the gym. Speaking of strong and simple, that’s a perfect description of young Zeeshan. Chalo, nice talking to you, Samar—and do take my advice—stick in a catchy item song and put this film out in the market, phataphat. People will lap it up. G’night.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

AK exits the dubbing studio even as Zeeshan Khan makes an entry, a vision made radiant with eagerness, facials and hair gel. His hair is short and spiky for a film in which he’s playing second lieutenant in the Indian Army, his clothes fit his chiselled body like a glove, and enough of his chest is visible for oglers to note that it is freshly waxed and gleaming. He strides up to Samar and embraces him soberly.

‘So sorry, bro.’

‘Thanks,’ is Samar’s terse response. ‘It was…quick and painless. He’s in a good place now.’

‘I wish you could’ve shown him the film, though.’

‘Yeah, well. Guess it wasn’t to be. ’

Zeeshan sits down, grabs three seaweed-covered bundles from the sushi platter that’s been waiting for him, and wolfs them down, all at once

‘So, like, what’s the plan now? We carry on dubbing on the same edit?’

‘I guess.’

Zeeshan chews, eyeing Samar assessingly.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Samar shrugs. ‘AK just spent the last hour telling me I’m over-thinking the film.’

‘AK’s a chutiya.’ And thus Zeeshan dismisses the industry’s most senior star. Then he adds, with a tentative sideways glance at Samar, ‘Though Dad says Indians love stories where the hero reforms because of the heroine’s good influence. The whole love-of-a-good-woman-reforms-the-rake syndrome. He thinks we have a perfect film. He says you’re just wanking around for no reason.’

Samar’s eyes smoulder but he doesn’t say anything.

‘But then,’ Zeeshan continues quickly, ‘unlike me, neither he nor AK knows how personal this whole story is for you. So you can’t expect him to be sympathetic.’

Samar turns on him, bristling. ‘Bastard, you want brownie points for being sympathetic?’

‘No-no,’ Zeeshan denies this hastily. ‘Of course not. I just…hey, I just want some more details on the hot cousin, that’s all. Give!’

Samar glowers. ‘You’re a one-track minded dog.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the best track, so why get off it?’ is Zeeshan’s reasonable reply. ‘Gimme deets, bro.’

‘There’s nothing to give,’ his friend growls reluctantly. ‘She’s my stepmom’s niece, that’s all. And she’s…’ He pauses before admitting softly, ‘interesting.’

‘Sweet!’ Zeeshan slaps his muscled thigh, looking extremely pleased. ‘But what will Adam say?’

Samar winces. ‘Don’t call her Adam.’

‘But she’s got a dick!’ Zeeshan protests. ‘I swear it! You just have to look at her face to know. One of these nights she’s gonna haul it out and put it on the bed between the two of you and then whatchu-gonna-do, Mr I’m-too-nice-to-dump-anybody, huh, whatchu-gonna-do?’

‘You’re crass and disgusting. Goodnight.’

Zeeshan looks indignant. ‘Fucker, you kissed another girl while having a girlfriend and I’m disgusting? Arrey, what the hell, Samar! Sunn toh yaar—you can’t just lea—!’

But Samar has already slapped him on the back, stalked out of Tamasha, the quaintly named studio at Bandstand, and made for home.

Traffic, the greatest leveller in Mumbai, ensures that he reaches his apartment a good hour later and in a foul mood. Mind solely focused on a cold shower and a long drink of water, he opens the front door, only to be hit by the scent of Thierry Mugler’s Angel.

Samar freezes.

It was just a kiss, he tells himself. Okay, a few kisses. These things happen.

For one craven moment, he thinks of turning around and walking out of the apartment again. Then he takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, flat-palms the door to his large, wooden-floored bedroom, and enters smilingly.

‘Hi, babe,’ he says.

Susan Adams, clad in champagne satin pyjamas of her own design, is draped across the bed, talking on her BlackBerry, her helmet of sleek black hair half obscuring her face. She looks up at the sound of his voice, beams, blows him a kiss, and then points to her phone and makes a wrapping-it-up gesture. Samar gives her a wave and strolls into the loo to shower.

When he returns, she is sitting cross-legged upon the bed, her phone put away, her arms outstretched, her wine-red toes contrasting prettily with his pale cream sheets. ‘Hiiii, stranger!’ she beams. ‘All my friends think I should stop seeing you!’

He has just sat down on a leather lounger to towel his head but at this he looks up guiltily. Her busybody friends are a right pain and always super well-informed, but they couldn’t possibly know he’s been kissing Bonu Singh in Delhi.

‘Why?’ he asks.

‘Oh, they’re fans of your work and they think I’m distracting you, not letting you finish your film. They’re desperate to see it, you know.’

‘I want to see it too,’ Samar says whimsically.

‘Oh, but so much has been going on in your life, Samar. Cut yourself some slack. How’s things at your grandfather’s?’

‘Okay, I suppose. I have to go back to Delhi next week to wrap up some of his paperwork.’

‘I’m so sorry—it’s a cliché, I know, but it really is a blessed release. And at least you got to say goodbye to him. It’s almost like he was waiting to meet you.’

‘Oh, that he was,’ Samar agrees. ‘He was worried about the house—he’s put me in-charge of the selling and division of it.’

‘You were his favourite grandson?’

‘Oh no,’ the denial comes quickly. ‘I think he just trusted me more than my slightly dodgy cousin Bonu Singh, who was the only other relative in the room when BJ died.’

‘How old is he?’

Samar looks at her blankly.

‘Who?’

‘Arrey, your cousin Bonu!’

There’s the oddest little pause. Then Samar mutters, ‘Twenty-six.’

‘So you’re the eldest. And the house is on Hailey Road, right? That must be worth a lot today.’

‘A lot,’ Samar says briefly.

‘How many square yards is it?’

He shrugs. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘How’s the rewriting going?’

‘What’s with the inquisition?’ he demands.

‘It’s called catching up with your loved ones,’ she says, her voice trembling a little.

Samar immediately feels like a jerk.

He sinks down onto the bed and pulls her close. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, resting his chin on her shoulder. ‘The re-scripting’s going fine. Well, actually, it’s not, but I’ll figure it out. I just want it to be authentic, you know.’

Susan’s eyes brighten. Authentic is one of her favourite words. She is all for authenticity. She sources all her materials scrupulously; her weaves, motifs and materials are all one hundred per cent pure. She never settles for shortcuts or fakes. Her competition suggests snidely that this is because she is rigid and lacks imagination, but that is just routine bitchiness. Her obsession with authenticity is mostly the reason her clothes are so expensive.

‘And it’s not authentic?’

Samar sighs. ‘Let’s just drop it.’ He pulls her closer. ‘How were the shows in Milan?’

Susan purses her lips and shakes her head.

‘Derivative. No new ideas—they were all recycling the same-old same-old.’

‘Really?’

‘Really!’ She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s just so lazy of creative people—especially the ones supposed to be at the cutting edge of design—to do stuff that’s already been done! I mean, they have a responsibility to the rest of the industry! We look to them to provide excitement and inspiration. Every single thing they put up on the ramp could’ve been hashtagged “done before”.’

Samar has started to zone out. He tends to, when she talks shop. Clothes, unlike cinematography and writing and direction, are just not his thing—that’s part of the reason he’d been so relieved to have her as the designer on this film. The stars had been terribly fussy about their ‘look’, and Susan handled them brilliantly. Even Zeeshan, who doesn’t like her personally, admitted that she knew her job.

Now she is dimming the lights. The scent of Angel—pretty, sparkling, a bouquet of dancing, dew-kissed wildflowers—is everywhere. It was what had attracted him to her in the first place.

‘I missed you,’ she whispers, reaching for him.

Samar gives her a quick hug, then sits up, brightening the lights.

‘Are you sure you want to do me?’ he grins, getting out of bed and gently chucking a pillow at her. ‘After all, I can also be hashtagged “done before”.’

She stares at him for a moment, then laughs.

‘Idiot!’ she says. ‘Come back here.’

But he blows her a kiss and walks out backwards towards the study. ‘Later, babe,’ he says, his deep voice laced with regret. ‘Gotta prepare for the big meeting tomorrow. You cuddle down and sleep well.’

He arrives at the glass-walled conference room on the seventh floor of the massive Sonix office at nine o’clock the next morning to find them all grim-faced and dark-suited, sipping the green tea that is so good for their acid reflux. Random whispers waft into his ears as he pushes back the heavy double doors.

‘Prima donna…’

‘Unhinged…’

‘Overrated.’

‘Pressure of the spotlight…’

‘Bloody idiot…’

The combined blast of their aftershave and their hostility is almost enough to knock him right off his feet. But he squares his shoulders and slides his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, even as the expression on his face changes to decidedly sardonic. Lord, what had he been thinking, getting involved with this bunch of bitchy, fretful old women?

‘Morning,’ he says lightly. ‘I’d like a bottle of cold water, please.’

Cougar Malhotra gets creakily to his feet.

‘Hullo hullo,’ he says before turning to address the room in his soft, rasping voice. ‘Gentlemen, ladies, all stake-holders are finally in the house! We can now begin. I’d just like to lay down a few ground rules. This meeting is meant to be constructive. So no blame-gaming or I-told-you-so-ing. Is that clear?’

‘Well, thank you, Cougar, for putting ideas in their heads that perhaps weren’t even there yet,’ Samar says lazily. ‘Now that we’ve clearly laid down what this session isn’t about, could we please get it over with?’

Cougar blinks his hard little eyes several times and begins.

‘Tharki Thakur is delayed—and it’s way over-budget. Fact.’

Samar chokes on his water.

‘Excuse me, did you just say Tharki Thakur?’

‘Well, as you haven’t come up with a name yet, we’ve started calling it TT internally,’ Cougar replies mildly. ‘It’s a working title, an affectionate nickname. But that isn’t important—what’s important is that it’s, like I already mentioned, delayed and over-budget. Has there been any progress on the rewrites?’

Samar shakes his head. ‘No.’

‘But I don’t understand…’ a brown, podgy individual breaks in querulously. ‘Ki why we are not sticking to thee ending detailed in thee virginal bound script? It was cunceived as an Epic Human Drama, narrated to everybody as a potential Sparkler Award winner—they all signed their contracts on basis of that virginal cuncept and ending—now how can we change it?’

Samar leans forward. ‘Nobody’s talking of changing anything. I am only requesting you to let me think over this a little—and then maybe reshoot a tiny chunk. I’m concerned that the Thakur’s character is so evil that his repentance in the end is unconvincing. Both Zeeshan and AK have had so much fun playing the asshole to the hilt that when he becomes all goody-goody at the end, it looks fake.’

‘You wrote it,’ Cougar points out.

‘I know,’ Samar scowls. ‘And you approved it. But we’re mortals—not gods. We could be wrong.’

Silence.

Samar gets to his feet and starts to pace, then swivels to face the room.

‘Look, you guys trusted me because you liked my previous work. So trust me now.’

They sit there in their fancy chairs and look at him, their faces blank. A feeling of hopelessness starts to steal over Samar.

‘Earlier,’ Cougar wheezes, ‘you had given us to understand that Zeeshan Khan was supportive of this…rethinking—and that he refused to dub till you fixed it. But he has since communicated to us that he too is satisfied with the current film and you are the one causing the delay.’

Et tu, Zee, Samar thinks wryly. Then again, what else could he have expected? Zee’s contemporaries all have big releases this year, and if Tharki Thakur (what a name!) doesn’t release, his price, his ranking and his endorsements will all take a pounding.

‘You have deceived us!’ a cadaverous lady with a face like a sucked-up mango says shrilly. ‘Cinema is not an art, Mr Singh, with all this wishing-washing and back-tracking and moaning that the climax is fake. Cinematics is actually mathematics, and creative people are, let’s just say, not strong in maths.’

Cougar holds up one meaty arm, shaking his head and smiling benignly. Not that Samar is fooled. He knows that the bad cops at these meetings operate with Cougar’s full blessing.

‘People, people, please. We have huge respect for your talent and your instinct, Samar, but the film must be released asap. The money’s been tied up for too long.’

Everybody nods, sips green tea and avoids eye contact with Samar. Remembering how they’d all wrung his hand and sucked up to him when they green-lit the project makes him want to burst out laughing.

‘Had your say?’ he says pleasantly. ‘Now please hear me out. I’ve made a film on a two-crore budget that earned fifteen on the market. I’ve made another on a ten-crore budget that earned seventy. So I am not,’ he makes quote marks in the air, ‘“a fail” at math. You’re welcome to take the film away from me, assign one of your tame directors to finish the edit, slap on some music, stick in an item song, and put it out there before Diwali. But I won’t put my name on it as writer-director.’

Silence.

‘This film has cost too much,’ rues the cadaver finally, deftly deviating to another pet theme. ‘That original gold zari embroidery on Preetali Shroff’s lehengas for instance, three lakh rupees per running metre…’

Samar throws up his hands. ‘I didn’t ask for bloody gold zari! I don’t even know what it is!’

‘And the ruby buttons on the Thakur’s jacket.’

‘Those were real rubies?’ Even Samar is shocked.

‘The designer’s your girlfriend,’ points out Podgy.

‘Who was appointed by the star directly,’ Samar replies.

Silence. And then the mutters start again, growing louder. Do they think he’s deaf?

‘Better a tame director than a wild director.’

‘Let’s just pay him his fee and get somebody else.’

‘But why are we deviating from the virginal cuncept?’

‘Doesn’t realize that if we throw him out, no hero will work with him again. He’ll be making female-oriented comeback films for ageing heroines for the rest of his life.’

‘Please, this is getting too nasty,’ implores a Zen-like lady with large, tragic eyes. ‘Let’s keep it positive!’

‘I am positive,’ Samar says, getting to his feet. ‘Positive that I need a little more time! Support me.’

The intensity in his voice quietens the room. The suits subside, looking here and there, sipping tea and shaking their heads.

Cougar sighs and spreads out his hands.

‘Let nobody say that Sonix Studios does not back its directors. We’ll hold off the release for a month. But it can’t be longer, or we’ll clash with other big releases. This is your last chance, Samar baby. Go do your rethinking, reshoot a little, tinker with your climax if you will. I don’t need to tell you what a blow it will be to your reputation if you blow it.’

‘Then don’t tell me,’ Samar says curtly and turns to leave.

‘The item number’s non-negotiable, though,’ Cougar calls out even as the doors swing shut. ‘You’ll have to shoot it.’

Samar swears and strides away.