AASHA RANI BECOMES A STAR
Shobhaa Dé
Two pieces by Shobhaa Dé? But this is one of Shobhaa Dé’s most readable novels, largely because it surveys the seamy territory of Bollywood with a curious mixture of disgust and compassion. We all know these people (or at least we think we do): the starlet who has become a star, the man who she is outgrowing, the man she is growing up to. And we know, in the same way that we know so much about Bollywood, without evidence and without worrying about it, that Asha Rani, the Queen of Hope, was a portrait of … Never mind, we know who.
On the evening of the party Kishenbhai had organized for Aasha Rani after Nagin Ki Kasam, Amirchand had had eyes only for one woman. The tall, dusky girl in a white and gold sari. Enquiries had revealed she was Kishenbhai’s new find—an actress poised for a mega-break and a mega-career. Amirchand had sized her up. Definitely big-time maal. Why was she wasting her talents on a chhota-mota like Kishenbhai? At best he could make her a B-grade heroine. But this girl had A-grade potential. She needed a backer. Someone with muscle. And money. He decided to find out more about her. All he needed was one private meeting.
Aasha Rani was most flattered when the summons from Amirchand’s office arrived. Totally lacking finesse, his minion had delivered the message bluntly, crudely and explicitly: ‘Shethji ne bulaya hai, Shethji bola aaneko. Paisa-vaisa bad mey vasool.’ Amma had been even more thrilled. She had run to break the news to Kishenbhai. When he heard what the Shethji wanted, Kishenbhai’s face paled. He didn’t say anything. He was shocked that the Shethji had made such a request in the first place. How could he? It was against ethics to make a play for someone else’s moll. The Shethji was poaching. And he was blatantly taking advantage of his superior position. Kishenbhai was in a fix. He knew that Amirchand was aware about him and Aasha Rani. But how could he refuse to comply? The heavies would be at his doorstep the next morning. They were capable of anything. Kidnapping his child; throwing acid in Aasha Rani’s face. He was also furious with Amma. She knew how fond he was of her Baby. She was aware of the fact that he didn’t promote any and every hopeful he came across. Not with such zeal. Did she really think he’d exult at the news?
Amma had feigned injured innocence, ‘But surely, Kishenbhai, you didn’t think I knew about your feelings for Baby? Does she feel the same way? I don’t mean to hurt you, but even supposing I believe you are sincere towards my daughter does she have a future with you? Can you … will you … make your wife? Give her respect? Treat her well? No. The answer is no. You have your own family—your own problems. We have ours. I’m interested in what is best for my daughter … for her career … her future. I want to see that she has enough money. That she settles down properly. That’s all. Let her go to the Shethji and find out what he can do for her. We’ll wait and see. Theek hai?’
It wasn’t theek hai, at all. But what could Kishenbhai do? Aasha Rani—what was she to him? Not a wife over whom he had a right. There was no question of either his ‘allowing’ her to go or her seeking his ‘permission’. Supposing he were to put his foot down and express his displeasure? What would happen? She would laugh in his face and go right ahead with whatever it was she wanted to do. Ridiculous. Never before had Kishenbhai found himself in such an absurd position. He felt impotent and small. He was also certain that Aasha Rani would capitalize on the opportunity, which, of course, she did.
Sheth Amirchand’s mansion crawled with bodyguards and armed toughies who lurked around trying to look dangerous. Aasha Rani had smiled at them, but they’d remained sullenly expressionless. She had dressed with care—wearing one of her two imported bra and panty sets. The pink, lacy one. She’d considered wearing a black outfit but Amma had dissuaded her saying, ‘No, no, no, Baby—you will look very dark. Wear some light colour … wear yellow … golden yellow.’ This time Aasha Rani had decided against a sari. She wanted to look youthful and different. The salwar-kameez she chose was a flattering one with a snug bodice that showed her curves to advantage. She wore heels. Some men liked them, some didn’t. She calculated that the Shethji would get impressed since he wasn’t very tall himself. She brushed her teeth with neem, rubbed Black Monkey brand tooth powder over her gums, tucked a cardamom pod into the corner of her mouth and looked at herself in the mirror. Nice, she thought, before adding a glittering golden bindi to her forehead. On an impulse, she grabbed a stick of disco-dust and rubbed some spangles between her breasts. Over her shoulders. Around her navel. And between her thighs. The spangles had shone on her skin like a thousand stars in a moonless sky. Perfect. She could take on the Shethji … and half-a-dozen others.
Aasha Rani was asked to wait in a small, air-conditioned room with padded walls, thick carpeting, two telephones, an intercom and a low, velvet-covered settee. As she sat down, she noticed the mirrored ceiling and a cleverly concealed door which blended with the wall. After fifteen minutes, a woman walked in. At least she thought it was a woman till a gruff voice informed her, ‘Shethji raah dekh rahe hain … he has sent me to prepare you for him.’ Aasha Rani’s puzzled expression led the person on, ‘Arrey bhai, don’t stare like this. Haven’t you seen a hijda before? Don’t waste time. Let me get ready. Remove your clothes quickly. I have to check whether you are free of skin infection. Shethji is very particular about cleanliness. Then I have to rub you down with diluted Dettol, check your vagina and insert a diaphragm. No jhanjhats here. All you women are the same—screw a thousand men, get your womb filled by one of them and then come and phasao the richest one. No time to waste now.’
Aasha Rani felt his coarse hands on her. There was no point resisting. She sat down passively and began removing her clothes. She felt sorriest about the shiny disco-dust that would come off with the antiseptic scrub.
The hijda disappeared briefly and returned with a jar of petroleum jelly and a new-looking housecoat. Expertly, he inserted the diaphragm after asking her to lie back holding her knees in her hands. Then he told her to turn over. ‘Why?’ she blurted her curiosity getting the better of her. ‘I have to make sure your body is ready to receive Shethji wherever the mood takes him,’ said the hijda and inserted a fingerful of jelly into her anus. ‘Put on the housecoat and come with me. Your belongings will be waiting for you in this room later. So will a car, just outside. Don’t ask me when. All that depends on Shethji. The longer you take to satisfy him, the better. Oh yes, one more thing—he will offer you whisky. But don’t drink it. He has a solid nafrat against girls who drink. That is his way of testing you.’ Aasha Rani looked at his ugly, lipsticked face and followed him meekly.
The Shethji’s room was white all over. Like a hospital room; only more plush and crammed with electronic toys. Aasha Rani held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of an enormous chandelier that hung in the centre of the room. The Shethji, clad in a spotless white dhoti-kurta, was busy issuing instructions over a white cordless phone. Without sparing her a glance he waved her to a chair beside him. Aasha Rani bent down and touched his feet. For a moment he was thrown off-balance and stopped midsentence to stare at her. She smiled sweetly and ran her long, lacquered nails along the length of his arm. The Shethji ended his phone conversation abruptly and lunged at her, his dhoti flying.
He has surprisingly soft hands, like buttered pao, Aasha Rani thought. His nails were neat and obviously pampered. He began sniffing her all over like a frisky dog. After a minute, he explained, ‘Allergies. I can’t stand perfume, sandalwood, soap, attar, talcum powders. I was checking whether Mastaan has done his job.’ Her housecoat was wide open and she was lying back languorously against velvet bolsters; her mind wandering as it always did when she’d handed over her body to a man. It didn’t matter who he was and what he was doing to her—it all felt the same. But her mind remained her own and she guarded that jealously hoping she wouldn’t have to make conversation. The Shethji, however, clamoured for more. Savagely, he jerked her out of her reverie and commanded, ‘Gandi baatey karo mere saath.’ One of those ones, Aasha Rani thought tiredly. He wanted her to talk dirty. As if it wasn’t enough that she was acting dirty. And she with her language problem. She hadn’t mastered the art of erotic talk in Hindi. She began haltingly and it seemed to excite the Shethji. ‘Aur bolo, aur bolo,’ he urged. She thought of her blue-film days and smiled ironically at the memory. Kid-stuff …
It must have been around five in the morning when she woke up wondering where she was, what she was doing and with whom. There was nobody in the room, just an eerie, blue nightlamp glowing. Was she in a nursing home? She smelt of Dettol. Her body ached and felt sore. What had happened? Generally she remembered all her sexual encounters vividly. This one was a blank. Her head felt heavy and her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton-wool. Funny, she couldn’t recall a thing. She groped around in the dark and found her dressing gown. How was she supposed to find her way out of this hell? She staggered towards the blue glow and found some switches. Blindly, she punched a few buttons and the chandelier exploded in a burst of blinding light.
Good God! So that’s where she was! She remembered a few details—the Shethji sniffing her armpits, the Shethji asking her to repeat a few words whose meaning she did not know, and asking her to perform acts she had not performed before. She remembered him sticking his big toe into her mouth and it hurting, crushed ice on her breasts, but that was before the drinks—a small sherbet for her and a tumbler full of whisky for him. That was it, the sherbet—God knows what it had been laced with. But it had transported Aasha Rani into a hallucinatory world. She was weightless and floating. Her head was full of colours and sounds. Her senses had been heightened to an extent that she experienced no pain even when the Shethji entered her savagely from behind and whipped her with a small leather thong. She was far away in some distant world, listening to bird calls and looking at a dozen rainbows …
She noticed an envelope lying on the settee. On it, neatly typed, was the amount inside—Rs 30,000. For services rendered. Not a bad market price, she thought. She had had to work much harder for just a thousand in the past. And Rs 30,000 is what she had earned for ten blue films, shot over a month, in filthy hotel rooms. She knew she didn’t have to count the money. She knew she wasn’t going to take it either. Amma would be furious, but Aasha Rani had it all worked out. She wasn’t prepared to settle for just Rs 30,000 with this man and call it quits. She wanted more. Much more. And she’d get it. But first, she’d have to forfeit the notes lying invitingly in front of her. Money she badly needed. But she’d recover it from the Shethji twenty times over. Later, Aasha Rani was confident of that much. Confident that he’d need her again. And again.
Her gamble paid off almost immediately. The Shethji’s man arrived at her house the next day to demand an explanation. She didn’t want Amma to handle this one. She decided to deal with it personally. ‘Please tell Shethji I consider it my duty to please him. It gives me pleasure to see him happy. There is no price for such a joy. I will be there for him whenever he wants me. In fact, I’ll be waiting for his hukum …’
The Shethji sent for her that night itself. This time, he took a few minutes off to actually chat with her. He told her she had played her cards well. ‘Shabaash ladki,’ he laughed. ‘You are a cunning little fox—I like that. The other girls have no brains. They grab whatever I throw in their direction and run. But you, you knew that this was nothing. Not even a baksheesh. You realized it was a test. Smart woman. You will go far. Fame will come to you if you have any talent, which I believe you do. I will watch you, watch your every move. I have not decided yet whether to make you my permanent keep. Women create too many complications. It is easier to use them and discard them. Replacements are always more stimulating. I think you know that too. For a woman to hold a man’s interest, she has to offer more than just her body. Your mind interests me—you could be of use to me. But first I will see how you perform—not just in bed, but on the screen too. Don’t worry, I’m not a possessive man. You are free to sleep with anybody you choose. I know about your lafda with Kishenbhai. His wife had come to me to stop you from seeing her husband. I know about all the others—your past, blue films, arrey sab kuch janta hoon. Chalega. The industry is such. You have to survive.’
Aasha Rani chose not to speak and instead silently began pressing his feet, massaging his arches, cracking his toe-joints. ‘Aah,’ he moaned, ‘that feels good.’ She continued, working her way up to his ankles and calves. Then she stopped abruptly, and pressed herself against him. ‘I want to dance for you. Show you what I’m capable of, prove to you how good I am. Do you have music here?’ The Shethji opened his eyes, reached out and pressed a button. Music filled the room. But it was Hindustani classical. ‘Not this,’ Aasha Rani breathed heavily, ‘I want something sexy, something slow.’ He pressed a few more buttons and amazingly, got a Western number, an old Marilyn Monroe song, I want to be loved by you.
Aasha Rani stood up and started swaying. Her fingers moved to the top button of her housecoat. Gradually, taking her time over every motion, she began a tantalizing striptease. The Shethji sat up. His hands reached into the soft folds of his dhoti. His excitement was tangible. ‘Don’t stop,’ he begged, ‘don’t stop.’
Amirchand was so pleased with Aasha Rani’s performance that he decided to do something about her non-existent career. A few strings strategically pulled, a few words of gentle persuasion from the Shethji himself, and Niteshji was falling over himself to get Aasha Rani to play the lead in his latest spectacular extravaganza. The title song of the film—‘Love, love, kiss, kiss—’turned out to be the biggest hit song of the decade, and with it, Aasha Rani’s career swung into the fastest track in filmdom. The popularity of the song, and Aasha Rani, took everybody by surprise. There was nothing much to the storyline either. It was standard boy-meetsgirl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl stuff. A normal masaledar formula film. But that one song catapulted Taraazu into becoming the biggest money-grosser of all time, shattering several box-office records in the process.
Aasha Rani was as astonished by its runaway success as the rest. As she was by the avalanche of publicity that came in its wake. Fan mail arrived in sacks. And each time she stepped out of her house, she heard the opening bars serenade her from everywhere: ‘Love, love … sigh … sigh … kiss … kiss … click … click’. What was it about the song that drove a nation wild? The lyrics were simplistic at best and far from suggestive. Was it the beat that did it? Or the sharp ‘click click’ of fingers snapping in between the words? Perhaps it was the throaty sex appeal of the singer’s voice—an unknown college girl called Neeta (whose destiny was soon to change with the release of the song). Whatever it was, love, love … had become such a countrywide craze that it was impossible to get away from its beat. Street-corner Romeos teased young girls as they passed by; urchins cleaned windscreens at traffic lights with the song on their lips; lovers crooned it across compounds; street bands played off-key versions at wedding baraats. Swinging teenagers discoed to it in fashionable night clubs. And it was Aasha Rani who walked away with the credit.
Overnight her price sky-rocketed to eight lakhs per film and offers for Taraazu clones poured in. Aasha Rani shrewdly refused to duplicate either the film or her hit song. The movies she signed on, in the wake of her stupendous success, were those that showcased her versatility. Three swift hits followed. One of them, Mein Khoon Karoongi, was a crime thriller that had Aasha Rani dressed like a cross between a female Lone Ranger and Rambo. Armed with a submachine gun she shot her way to the top of the charts, while Khoon raked it in at the box office. Two other songs written especially for her busted the pop charts.
The producers decided to capitalize on the Aasha Rani craze by organizing ‘Love, love, kiss, kiss’ entertainment nights all over India, starting with Bombay. They decided to invite Sheth Amirchand as the chief guest. Aasha Rani was expected to be present, but not on stage. The number was to be danced by young unknowns. Naturally, there was a cause involved, she forgot what it was—the Blind, Mentally Handicapped, Spastic—whatever.
Amirchand was known to patronize several charities. His favourite one was a school for orphans. He often said that orphans were the most deprived, the poorest of the poor on earth, and no amount of money was generous enough to compensate them for the loss of their parents. It was said that Amirchand was an orphan himself. But nobody knew for sure, especially as he spoke very little, preferring to let the other person do all the talking. His largesse was reserved for people who touched some unknown chord in him. It was impossible to find out just who would win the jackpot, when and for what reason.
What appeared like arbitrary, erratic behaviour to outsiders was, in fact, a methodical plan known only to Amirchand and his two trusted lieutenants. Even though Aasha Rani was still in favour, and he sent for her frequently, he rarely allowed her to ask him any questions, particularly about his past. This suited her fine since she didn’t encourage questions about her past either. He’d been generous with Aasha Rani after that first meeting. And pretty kind too. Diamond sets to wear to her first big premiere night, a couple of lakhs in a fixed deposit account, and the best gift of all—a deluxe, air-conditioned make-up van to take her to and from the studios! Her gleaming, refurbished, remodelled Isuzu had become the envy of the other stars. It was as sleek as it was functional. And she loved it. As she sped down the highway, beyond the airport, on the way to Film City, she’d relax on the foam bed at the back, switch on her favourite ghazals and dream of a marble palace by the sea. Except that in her dream the sea was not the Arabian Sea that surrounds Bombay, but the Bay of Bengal that laps the shores of Madras.
Extracted from Starry Nights, published in the US and UK as Bollywood Nights.