A PIPSQUEAK FOR THE REST

It was a scene being filmed for an Indian picture; the scene being a shameless straight lift from an American thriller. It was a pity that the Indian actor was no less an artist of emotional expressions than his Hollywood counterpart. Nevertheless, he was plagiarizing and was helplessly trying to sew his soul into the scene with his repeated failures. Then ignoring the soul, he just stepped out of his dilemma and put his anatomy to slide in the pirated raceways and slots of cinema leading to consummation of scene.

While travelling back from the outdoor shooting that day, he remembered how he himself had enjoyed the original scene from the Bond film one and a half decade before. In Hollywood they had delved hard to build up concept and construction of the scene, resourcing for ensuring minute details to make it a real cause, enriching the scene to cast spell on curiosity and speculation of the audience, and thus fully fortified, the Bond actor had no trouble to link himself with the scene so that it reflected his having full belongingness to scene. The speculations of seeing eyes in the theatre were moored without a break to Bond’s vulnerability and to genuine hostility of the ferocious crocodiles taking annihilating pace to have a real prey . It was now up to Bond what he did to escape and survive. Then the Hero, tense and busy, thinking his thoughts with alacrity was seen doing acts one by one in succession with esoteric cogitation and plans, his completing one step allowing the cryptic but visibly sought aftermath sinking into his mind to ebb out some of the twisting squeeze; the hinged eyes of theatre watchers too seeing his manoeuvres and actions would feel relieved and elated without knowing what was in store further.

And with years elapsed since then, the plagiarizing actor was imitating for the same with all features banished- the thrill, the tearing tensions, the ingenuity of escaping actions. More should be said to do justice to the narration but let us put it this way: It was like the badly inferior and cheap used/repaired tire wheels of a motor car that needed clear and reliable identification marks to put them always on front axle of the car as well as to tell them doubtlessly from the sturdy wheels earmarked for the real axle.

This was however not the only self-affronting act that the Indian Hero had to perform to entertain his audience; he would await a day when some kind of real art would be on schedule. This latter used to exist in this Hero’s times in films in a mix of some 20 percent with the remainder 80 percent being repetitive popular cinema. The Hero would quite often think that he could eat of his choice only two days in a week.

The Hero was obviously an intelligent person. He could sense that his 20 percent was on the decline. He knew that he had a limited time period upon attrition of which he would be replaced by others – who could work harder than him in Jims.

And then one after another, his future qualms unfolded into live happenings in the works; the hero dispelled from the film gossips and grapevines was left with his limited half a dozen films becoming all that cine-goers remembered and wanted to listen about the hero. This actor, one would say like this, means hero’s film no 1(1980), film no 2(1980), _ _ _film no 6 (1984) and then a precipitous fiasco bottoming the hero into a pipsqueak, a blighter for the rest. The preposterousness of paucity of number in the segue of hero’s outstanding achievements followed by a lifelong hackneyed and disarmed elusive ill luck was something never witnessed before in Indian cinema . It appears fit to say not bothering here a little dramatic tongue that the actor’s brevity of success and a certain badly lacking metro rail network would make a passable pair for presenting a redoubtable resemblance; in this metro rail network, only at one important station, subways led to all important passengers destination exits; in all other stations of the routes thereafter, this branching and access of subways remained only on paper and never materialized.

The actor had however married in 1984; the marriage broke into a divorce soon. Then the long spell of loneliness slipped into his life. A lone man with no occupation and with depleting bank accounts is expected to live in which manner? Perhaps he should drink and every morning on awakening latch his day’s hook to the tow bolt of a slithering equipage of time. He should sleep disregarding the hour of the day; eat when hungry; throw the morning newspaper after reading few headlines; no eyes want to see his unshaven face; none wants to say a good morning to him; his former friends on espying him on the road quickly stop by at a roadside ice cream wala's to eschew saying a hello to him when two men would come closer and pass past each other on the road. Even the barman wants, from the Hero, the bill in advance.

This story would be a book missing a bulk of arrant details if 25 years of actor’s life shackled in a sequestered survival and gnawing personal slights in an open slather, is not inked in this penultimate paragraph. You would like to know how the loneliness and snatched earth of accomplished feats rendered fainéant the trusses and struts of the actor’s sangfroid and composure? If these latter ever managed to sneak out in him in his post fiasco appearances , an immediate conspicuous uncapped stink would spray a mud of unrestrained mockery declaring the hero's attributes a folderol and an ersatz exhibit on his countenance . So the actor would immediately withdraw and proscribe his insignia of the old again into a hideout amidst his dilapidations.

When he would awaken every afternoon from the sleep arrived at on the previous late night hours, the first grains of thoughts mutilated under the duress of his slaughtered spirits would be afflicted with the fear and the tearing agony at the sight of a fresh truck load of inflated hours of the day thrown before him in huge bundles to be carried away by him like a coolie. Then it would be a now quotidian trudge through labyrinth of unfamiliar escape routes that would wedge in slopes to unbind him, allowing him immunity from resignation to floor into a verticality. Then he would in bits prepare himself to gradually dismantle the bricks of the day’s encapsulating and incarcerating wall to consummate his struggle to reach out for the day's end. And he had to go through the mill everyday for the remnant days that put together comprised 25 years.

So it was not before 2 and a half decades until when he fell fatally ill and was taken to the hospital. What would happen of his bungalow in Juhu if he succumbed to his illness? So a family from a nowhere came forward to see him in the hospital. And the actor’s dead body was taken for final ceremonies. And well, here his story winds up.