Shashi Tharoor - Show Business

What a woman. My eyes travel down her neck to the disarranged bra and narrow in puzzlement. I breathe more quickly, my heart pounding like the bongos on the playback track. My fingers, with a will of their own, reach for the cups and lift the brassiere gently off her torso.

I stare in shock. For an instant, the air stops coming into my lungs. My fingers lose their will. The bra drops back into place. My hands are shaking as I turn Abha back and rehook her bra.

I can’t believe what I have just seen: breasts so shriveled and empty they are like pockets of desiccated skin, their tips drooping in dismay. Abha’s bosom is that of a ninety-year-old. The most famous bust in India is a pair of falsies.

My breathing is still uneven as I get up to leave. She sleeps on, a tranquilized smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She must be dreaming, as millions of her countrymen do in the cinema theaters of our nation. Except that they dream with their eyes open.

Exterior: Day

GODAMBO

The small plane appears at a distance against a clear blue sky. Water shimmers below, the sunlight making patterns of molten gold on the surface of the waves. As the noise of its engines becomes louder, the plane weaves unsteadily. The sound of fist landing on flesh is heard. Dishoom!

Interior: a fight is in progress. The pilot lies sprawled across the controls, a vivid red stain across his white-uniformed back. A bald villain is slugging our hero, Ashok. Ashok ducks, kicks. The villain clutches his stomach, the plane bucks, Ashok pushes the pilot aside and seizes the controls. Exterior: the plane dips, straightens itself out. Interior: the villain approaches Ashok from behind, his lips parted in a gruesome snarl. As he raises both hands to bring them down on our hero, Ashok lowers his head and in one sudden jerk smashes it backward into the villains face. Baldy grunts, clutching a bleeding nose. Ashok half rises, one hand still firmly on the plane’s controls, and with scarcely a backward glance sends his free elbow crashing into the villain’s solar plexus. Baldy doubles over and falls. Ashok, grim determination on his face, keeps the plane steady. Below, the water continues to shimmer.

The villain, lying on the floor of the cockpit, spots his gun under the pilot’s seat. His eyes glint. The gun glints. Ashok, at the controls, has his back to him. Slowly, Baldy inches forward, his bloody hand stretching out toward the gun. Close-up: Ashok, alert eyes scanning the horizon, look of grim determination still on face. Back to villain, inching steadily closer to weapon. Ashok, seemingly oblivious, looks at altimeter, fuel gauge, and assorted other indicators. Baldy s hand nears the weapon. He almost has it! Just as his fingers touch the gun metal, Ashok’s foot lands crushingly on his hand. The villain grimaces, yowling in pain. Ashok kicks away the gun, which flies to the door of the plane. The villain gets up, stumbles toward it. He reaches the gun; the plane lurches, the villain trips, falls against the door. His free hand, seeking support, grabs the first thing it can. Alas, it is the handle of the door, which flies open. Villain and gun follow each other into the void.

Long shot, in slow motion, of Baldy plummeting unceremoniously to his wet fate, punctuated by a long, plaintive, despairing scream. A resounding splash is heard; a small fountain mushrooms upward. Shark fins appear ominously in the water. Ashok smiles grimly, brings the aircraft under control. Once again, the plane is seen against the clear blue sky, but now its flying steadily and purposefully, like its pilot. The water still shimmers.

The credits appear on the screen. The sound track swells with the theme song:

I am the long arm of the law,

I’ll always show villains the door

By day or by night

I’ll handle any fight

And put all the bad men on the floor!

I am the long arm of the law,

I’ll never flinch from blood and gore,

Rapists and muggers,

Car thieves and smugglers,

Will always get it on the jaw!

I am the long arm of the law,

No one is quicker on the draw,

Injustice and corruption, Forces

of disruption, Will be the losers in this war!

Ashok taxis to a stop. A police Jeep is waiting on the tarmac. A uniformed officer with a thin mustache and fat jowls asks anxiously, “What happened? Where’s the villain?”

“He had an urgent appointment,” Ashok replies, “with destiny.”

Inside the police station more details emerge. “You were right, sir,” Ashok tells his senior officer, the ramrod-straight Iftikhar, the only filmi cop whose waistline is as thin as his mustache. “The smugglers have become even more daring. They have taken to using small private planes now.” Ashok had hidden on board with the gold biscuits, been discovered, and in the ensuing altercation Baldy had shot his own pilot by mistake. As Iftikhar regrets that neither villain is available for questioning, policemen enter with the boxes recovered from the aircraft, closely packed with the precious yellow metal. The gold glints like sunlight on shimmering water.

“Shabash,” says Iftikhar. It is his favorite word of congratulation: he has uttered it, in precisely that tone of rectitude and recognition, in more than two hundred films. Ashok acknowledges the accolade with a manly nod. “But there is much more to do. We must nab the mastermind of this operation — the dreaded Godambo.”

Interior: a huge, cavernous hall. Two nervous men walk across a marbled floor. The sound of their shoes on the marble is the only intrusion in the silence. Then the music builds: at first slow, then with mounting tempo, danger in every note. The men pass massive pillars, eerily lit in red and gold, and cast apprehensive glances at the black-clad commandos standing at attention beside each pillar, submachine guns at the ready. Each has a springing animal stitched on a badge on his sleeve, onto which is embroidered the words “Black Cheetah” in gold thread. In the center of the hall ripples a large pool flanked by ornamental fountains whose waters are also illuminated in red and gold. Gradually emerging into view beyond the pool, an imposing figure sits on a jeweled throne. He has a large domed and hairless head: not even a mustache breaks the expanse of solid flesh. He is attired in black, red, and gold; a cape flows behind him, and his feet are encased in gold maharajah shoes, their very points sharp with menace. On his lap is a baby cheetah — a live one this time — which he strokes incessantly.

The men come to a halt at the pool and look across at their master. In the water a fin appears, swirling rapidly, and disappears again. The men swallow, exchanging tense glances.

“Well?” The voice from the throne is deep and gravelly, the voice of a major villain.

The men shift uneasily from foot to foot.

“Where is my maal?” the powerful voice asks. In close-up, the villain scratches the cheetah’s neck.

“Sir — mighty Godambo, we don’t have it,” says the thinner of the two men.

“And how can that be? Who dares to deny mighty Godambo his goods?”

“Sir, the plane did not land. The police have captured it.”

“What?!” Godambo’s voice is raised in fury. The cheetah, its hairs standing on end, sits up on his lap. “You imbeciles have allowed my plane to fall into the hands of the police? Where is the agent who was on board?”

“He is dead, mighty Godambo,” the thinner man confesses. (The other man has no lines: it is cheaper that way.) “We believe that this is all the work of that CID inspector, Ashok. He has been on our trail for some time.”