Shashi Tharoor - Show Business

“But it’s only a film, Dad!” I whispered. And he would say, “But even in a film, things have got to make sense. Why aren’t there other candidates in this election, in a country with two hundred and fifty-seven registered political parties and no shortage of aspiring Independents? How is it that the field is left to a thug and an upstart?” Or again, at the ridiculous climax, “Which idiot politician would provide an unknown rival with a free platform like that?” Pranay’s strategy in a race like this would obviously be to ignore his rival rather than give him such a major buildup and have to kidnap him — I mean, really, Ashok-bhai, how ridiculous can you get. But again, there you are, Hindi films. Only in Hindi films would a politician choose such a roundabout way to eliminate an ill-equipped rival and then choose to leave him locked up with one decrepit guard at a predictable address. Where do people leave their brains when they go to see this nonsense?

Forget the political stuff for a moment: how about the rest? Can you imagine for a second a real Indian mechanic in a romantic entanglement with a real Mehnaz Elahi? It’s impossible: all these rich girl-poor boy fantasies the Hindi films churn out fly in the face of every single class, caste, and social consideration of the real India. “Just giving the lower classes the wrong ideas,” Dad growled, not entirely in jest. After all, the dramatic rise in what the papers call Eve-teasing, which is really nothing less than the sexual harassment of women in the street, isn’t entirely unconnected with Hindi films. Where else could all these lower-class Romeos have picked up the idea that the well-dressed women they once wouldn’t have dared to look at are suddenly accessible to them?

So, thanks to the kind of roles you play, the lout thinks he’ll get the rich girl just as you do in the movies. Except that in real life, the rich girl won’t look at him, let alone sing duets with him. In real life, there isn’t a lout who looks, talks, or for that matter smells like Ashok Banjara. These louts are a different species, dear brother, and yet you play them as if they were just like us. They aren’t just like us, even if it might suit you to make your living pretending that they are.

There, too, I guess one can say, “It’s only a film.” But even by the standards of your films, Mechanic was a bust, and not just at the box office. If Pranay was going to take the trouble to send thugs to bash up Ashok in the garage the first time, why wouldn’t he send them back to finish the job they didn’t complete? And when Mehnaz goes off to the slum with Ashok — who could believe she doesn’t have other friends to stay with? Maybe even a boyfriend? Why is it necessary to make her an adopted daughter suddenly, toward the end? Some of the great Greek myths are about daughters who betray their fathers because of their love for the resplendent hero: you could have been the Theseus to Pranay’s Minos. But no, our audiences can swallow any amount of improbable crap in the plot, but not the idea that blood can possibly betray blood. No wonder even our Prime Ministers believe the only people in politics they can trust are their sons.

And why, while we’re about it, did your sidekick have to have my name? A comically frightened Sancho Panza-type buffoon who gets Ashok out of trouble — is that what “Ashwin” conjures up in your mind, Ashok-bhai? Don’t tell me you didn’t write the script — you were vain enough to add yourself to the story credits. What would it have cost you to at least change the name of this sidey, for God’s sake?

I know, I know: you didn’t mean to offend me. In fact, you might even have intended, with typical sensitivity, to be paying me a tribute of some sort. Thanks, but no thanks, brother. The only tribute I ever wanted from you was your withdrawal from the seat that was rightfully mine. Instead of which you took it from me and made it impossible for me ever to have it again.

Will you, to whom nothing much matters, ever understand what my political life meant to me? All those years spent in the constituency, all those elections fought, petitions received, complaints heard, problems solved or sympathized with, homes visited, calculations worked out, promises made and largely kept — what were they for? I was building up a life, Ashok-bhai, I was creating a sense of what I was that had nothing to do with you, but would do everything for me. I was doing it first of all for Dad, to help him, and then I realized I was doing it to show him that I could be what he’d hoped you’d be, his true son and heir. And then, slowly, I began doing it for myself. I became not just a son, not just a brother, but Ashwin Banjara, political worker — and almost certain inheritor of the constituency when Dad finally decided he’d had enough. I even spurned all thought of marriage because I wanted nothing to distract me from pursuing my cause and my ambition. Wedded to politics: that’s what I was. With a worm’s-eye view of the political world, crawling toward my own little morsel. Till you swooped down from the heavens and carried it away just as I was reaching out to touch it.

Even then, Ashok-bhai, though not without difficulty, I accepted reality, learned to live with my role. I sort of told myself that being right-hand man to Ashok Banjara was probably just as good a way to matter in national politics. And in due course, with your prominence and your exalted connections, you would ensure I was well looked after — an adjoining constituency, perhaps, or a Rajya Sabha seat, or perhaps even your own when you moved on to bigger and better things. But you destroyed all that, Ashok-bhai, destroyed your career and mine, and now you’ve all but destroyed yourself.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be cruel. I’m dreadfully upset about your accident, you know that, don’t you? I want you to get well soon. The whole nation is praying for your recovery.

Isn’t that incredible? After everything, when all seemed lost, just as you seemed to have embarked on a long and inevitable decline, to become again the focus of national attention through an accident? If you surv? — when you come out of this, Ashok-bhai, you’ll again be the hottest property in the history of Bollywood. There are prayer meetings at street corners, Ashok-bhai; the louts are taking time off from Eve-teasing to pray for your health; little boys are neglecting their homework to ask Heaven to intercede on your behalf. Your old films, even Dil Ek Qila, are being rereleased to bumper crowds. You’re Number One again, Ashok-bhai, not just at the box office but in India’s hearts. Maybe this is when you should have joined politics.

It’s sort of like what happened in Madras, in 1967, when the fading screen hero MGR, swashbuckling star of a hundred Tamil films, was shot, really shot, by the established film villain — and a former mentor — M. R. Radha. He was taken to the hospital and the Tamil-speaking world stopped turning. Men and women wept openly in the streets, commerce came to a standstill as shops closed, crowds of more than half a lakh waited patiently outside the hospital for hourly bulletins as the great man fought for his life. A delegation of rick-shawallahs, who were the epitome of the common man as portrayed by MGR in his films, pulled their vehicles all the way to Madras to be by his bedside. Poor people from the streets came to pay their respects; so did VIPs from their air-conditioned homes. The only difference from what’s happening with you today is that MGR’s fans didn’t pray for his recovery, since, like all members of his anti-Brahmin DMK party, he was a declared atheist. However, some folks who found it hard to shake off their old habits prayed to portraits of MGR himself. You try and figure that one out. On second thought, in your condition, don’t.