Shashi Tharoor - Show Business

But even at the height of my disapproval, I never ceased to be your father, Ashok. I know you always accused me of never having lifted a finger to help you. I did not deny the charge. Why should I? You chose this disreputable profession, knowing full well what my views on the matter were. Why should you have expected any help? “My son neither gets any help,” I declared to anyone who asked, “nor does he expect any.” And I said those last words with pride, though God knows you had not given me much by then to be proud of.

But you didn’t know, Ashok, that a father never switches off his fatherhood, whatever his son may do. In those early days in Bombay, when you were still shamefacedly “borrowing” money from your mother to make ends meet — money, incidentally, that you have not remembered to repay her, though she would never mention it — I received the visit of an oily creature named Jagannath Choubey. He did not come to my office at Kapadia Bhawan, where I was then Minister of State for Minor Textiles, but to the house, during the hours I kept for visitors who are not personal friends. In fact, the only reason I gave him an appointment at all was because he said he was calling on me at your suggestion. You never wrote or telephoned much in those days, so I had no way of disproving this, and any contact with you, however indirect, was welcome. So I told him to come.

This Choubey sat corpulently opposite me and presented himself as your great benefactor. “Your poor boy,” he said, “has been badly treated”; and he went on to list a long series of disappointments you had had, parts you had sought and been turned down for, petty indignities you had been made to suffer at the hands of producers until he, Choubey, had come by like a porcine knight in shining armor and rescued you by offering you a part in his film. You can imagine, Ashok, the rage I felt building up inside me as this unctuous fellow tried to slip me into his debt for having done you a favor he implied you did not deserve, a favor I would have much preferred him not to do in any case. But I controlled my anger and said nothing. I was waiting for the object of the exercise to make itself known.

Soon enough, Choubey came to the point. It so happened, he said, that he had a few small-scale textile mills, nothing too grand, you understand, just small operations, which unfortunately had been granted licenses up to only half of their real capacity. It would be so much better for him if he could be licensed to expand his production, well, indeed to double it. This required very little effort, just a signature, mine in fact, on a file that had been pending in a subordinate’s office for some time. He was sure that once he had explained his position to me I would see my way clear to appending that little, but very useful, signature on that minor little file whose expeditious clearance nobody would particularly notice.

He made it all sound so very simple, Ashok. “And this is why my son sent you to see me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure, you see, and I had to know.

“Well, not exactly,” he said shiftily, then — “Yes.” And I knew immediately that you had done nothing of the kind, that indeed you probably did not even know that Choubey was seeing me. And that intensified and focused my anger, till it became a pure white glow of heat inside me, directed at the overfed, oil-oozing opportunist across the table.

I leaned back in my chair. “And if I were to find myself unable to approve that proposal on the file?” I asked amiably.

He was prepared for this line of questioning. “Then I am very much afraid the financial realities of my business would not be, how you say, permitting me to continue producing my current film,” he said. “Most unfortunate this would be. Especially, I am so sad to say, for your elder son’s future.”

“You presumably have a lot of money tied up in that film already, Mr. Choubey,” I observed mildly.

“Tax write-off,” he responded smugly. “I have been looking for a few good losses to show.”

“Then you do just that, Mr. Choubey,” I advised him. “I have no desire to see you, or anyone else, advance my son’s prospects in this disgusting film world of yours. If all the inducement you need to put an end to this nonsense is my refusal to sign a file I am not at all sure I should sign anyway, I am happy to give you such an inducement. Good-bye.”

The fat little man was a picture of dismay and consternation. He sat squirming miserably in his chair, making little inarticulate noises of supplication, until I cut him short. “And I’d be careful about that tax return you submit when you cancel your film,” I added. “I intend to talk to my good friend the Minister of State for Revenue about the circumstances of your proposed write-off. I believe his department would like to look at that return very carefully indeed, as well as your returns for the last few years while they’re about it.”

“Sir,” he whined despairingly, “there seems to have been some misunderstanding. I am not at all threatening to be canceling this film or to be writing it off against taxes, no, no. There is no need at all for your good self to be mentioning anything about it to the Revenue Department.”

I agreed that if the film continued to be made and was suitably released, there would be no grounds for suspecting it to be a fraudulent venture to demonstrate losses for tax purposes.

“Oh, yes, sir, I will personally guarantee that this film is being finished most satisfactorily, sir, and given widest possible release,” he assured me.

“In that case, after that happens and the connections drawn in this unfortunate conversation have ceased to exist,” I said, “you may return to discuss the matter of your textile mills. I shall then, but only then, see what I can do.”

The little man scurried away in gratitude, his short fat legs practically tripping on his dhoti as he fled. I suspect he had the picture completed in record time thereafter. It was your first film, Ashok, and it did well. I never sought any credit for its successful completion. And when Choubey came back to me later, I did give him something of what he wanted. Not all of it, but some expansion was authorized. He was extremely grateful.

Your mother was, of course, much prouder of your cinematic accomplishments than I could be, and she would drag me off to see your films whenever they came to Delhi. Frankly, they didn’t mean much to me. I was embarrassed to see my own son doing some of the ridiculous things you were paid to do, but what astonished me more was that no one else thought any the less of you for it. Indeed, that the adulation you received for doing these absurd things was far greater than, say, I got for an impressive speech in Parliament. I am not sure my disapproval diminished immediately or at all, but it was accompanied by a grudging acknowledgment that perhaps what you were doing counted for something after all. But if you had to acquire fame as a public entertainer, I would still probably have preferred you to have been a classical sitarist or even a test-match cricketer as my colleague Bhagwat’s son became, not a fellow who earned his status by wearing drainpipe trousers and shaking his hips before the camera.

And of course you were in another world from us, or perhaps really two different worlds. What worried me the most was not just the world you inhabited, though your poor mother was constantly terrified you were going to come home married to some twice-divorced cabaret artiste, but the world you portrayed in your work. I couldn’t help feeling that whereas I and your younger brother were functioning in the real India, going out to our constituency, dealing with the real issues of politics, handling the wheelers and dealers who keep the political machinery working, you, my heir and fondest hope, were lost in a never-never land that bore no relation to any accurate perception of the India in which we live.