Shashi Tharoor - Show Business

For six weeks the cinemagoers of Tamil Nadu held their breath. MGR survived; what is more, he conducted his campaign for the Legislative Assembly from his hospital bed. He had been given an unwinnable seat by a party chief jealous of his popularity; he went on to win by the largest majority in the electoral history of the state. What is more, he carried the state for his party as well. Photographs of the bandaged actor were splashed across the papers, with captions of him declaring: “I wanted to come to your homes to seek your votes, but I was prevented from doing so. Now I must ask for your hearts.”

He got them, of course. And their votes as well. Then he went on to split the party, unseat his chief rival, and win a state election at the head of his own version of the DMK, organized entirely around his fan associations. He was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for almost a decade, and such was the magic of his name that he continued to rule the state from a hospital bed, this time after a stroke, though he was so badly crippled he couldn’t even speak. When it was suggested that the people of Tamil Nadu were being ruled by a vegetable, his handlers put him up on a high stage before a massive crowd and ran a brief tape of one of his utterances through the sound system. Another notable first for India: the country that invented the playback singer had now come up with the played-back politician.

So you can do pretty well politically out of this accident, Ashok-bhai. They say the PM is coming to see you. Who knows, perhaps the party’d be willing to rehabilitate you. After all, the massive outpouring of grief must suggest that the people have forgiven your little peccadilloes — if they ever mattered to them. The party isn’t going to treat you as an embarrassment it’s relieved to be rid of when the great Indian public obviously holds you in such regard. This accident could actually be the rebirth of your political life. Think about it! Just uttering the words makes me feel much better. It isn’t all over yet, after all, for us. For you. The moment you can speak and respond, we must start planning your comeback.

I’m sorry about all the things I said earlier. You know how sometimes things look so bleak that one says more than one intends to. But now the political blood is tingling again in my veins. We can show them yet, Ashok-bhai. It’ll be the greatest comeback since Indira Gandhi.

Look at the bright side. Before all this happened, let’s face it, you were heading downhill like an Indian Railways train — faster than anyone would have thought possible on the way up. People were used to you; they were tired of you. The accident, the grave risk to your survival, has been a great shock, the kind of shock that galvanizes the system. It was no longer possible to be bored by you.

Of course, it’s been a shock to everyone, Ashok-bhai. And perhaps most of all to the public, whose property you’ve really been. The girls, your triplets, have taken it all rather well. Rather too well, perhaps: I’ve seen Sheela preening into a hand mirror before walking past the anxious throng into the hospital, Neela puts so much makeup on her dark face that she only looks human under flashbulbs, and Leela seems to emerge from every visit to your room with the air of someone walking out of a movie theater. None of this is more real to her than any other scene you’ve starred in, Ashok-bhai. And why should it be? You’re hardly real yourself: they’ve seen more of you on the screen than in the flesh. You haven’t spent much time with them at home or anywhere else. You even went on family holidays with a servant-maid in tow. You were, you are, a larger-than-life figure to millions, but to the few around you, you weren’t quite as large as life.

Except perhaps for the little one. Little Aashish looks so sad and bewildered by it all, standing there with his short stubby thumb in his mouth and his big black eyes round in incomprehension, nibbling at his nonexistent nails, wondering why everyone is behaving like this. It’s when I see him, your son, that I feel the greatest pain.

Sorry — hearing all this, if indeed you can, many of the things I’ve said must only make you feel worse. But you mustn’t, Ashok-bhai. Just take it as one more incentive to get well again: to win back people; to win back your political place. I’m sure it’ll gladden you to know how spontaneous the outpouring of good wishes is. People have really rallied around after the accident. You won’t believe how kind everyone’s been. Even people who’ve had their problems with you in recent years. Old Jagannath Choubey showed up with an enormous bouquet of flowers. Mohanlal came and fretted anxiously, pulling so much string off his fraying cuffs that I thought he’d unravel his entire shirt before he left. Pranay has been very solicitous, asking Maya how he could help, taking the girls out for an afternoon at the beach, commiserating with Dad and Ma. He’s not really my type, but Dad thinks Pranay’s too good a man to be associated with the Hindi film industry, and he’s a villain! Even canny Sugriva Sharma, fresh from his recapture of what used to be your seat, sent a cable. I have it here somewhere — I’ll read it to you: WISHING MOST SPEEDY RECOVERY STOP INDIA’S HEART BEATS FOR YOU STOP NATION’S SCREENS NEED YOU STOP SUGRIVA SHARMA. He released it to the press, of course, before it even got here: Parliament isn’t the place for you, but the nation’s screens are. Wily bastard.

In fact, Pranay’s really been the best of the lot. I don’t particularly like to admit it, because something about the fellow makes me uncomfortable, but he’s really taken an awful lot of trouble. He’s come every day; he must have had to cancel a shift or two to do it. And I hadn’t imagined you two were so close, though I guess you have done a lot of films together. When the doctor wanted us to talk to you like this it was Pranay who volunteered to try it first. He’s the only one who really seems to be able to console Aashish: in no time the boy climbs onto Pranay’s lap and tugs at his absurd ties and for a moment forgets his bewilderment. One day Pranay rather ostentatiously took off a florid tie and looped it around Aashish’s neck. He was delighted and wouldn’t give it back. “It’s yours, my boy,” Pranay said, “a present.” And I could have sworn I saw tears in his chronically red eyes.

Everyone is overcome by the occasion, Ashok-bhai. Your occasion.

Even that harridan Radha Sabnis. Look what she wrote in the latest Showbiz:

Darlings, isn’t it terrible what has happened to our precious Hungry Young-No-Longer Man? Cheetah hasn’t always been nice about The Banjara, but we all love him, don’t we? I’m praying and waiting for his recovery so that we can celebrate it together in a glass of Pol Roger 1969, his favorite champagne. [Funny, I didn’t even know you had a favorite champagne.] In his meteoric career Ashok Banjara has come to personify the Hindi cinema as we know it — the style, the razzle-dazzle, the energy, the charisma. As they say in the ads for runaway prodigals, come back, Ashok — all is forgiven. We need you, lover-boy. Grrrrowl…

Lover-boy? Well, she might have chosen a more appropriate epithet, but as I said to Pranay, it proves her heart is in the right place. “Who’d have thought she even had a heart?” was his rejoinder. “Perhaps Ashok was one of the very few who dug deep enough to find it.” Odd remark, that, but I suppose he was just trying to be nice about you.

I’ve talked a lot with him myself, actually, somewhat to my own surprise. Not that there’s much choice, when you’re sitting together in the waiting room. Did you know that Pranay’s some sort of closet Commie? Oh, very restrained and reflective and all that, but overflowing with conviction and jargon. “I was not surprised when Ashok entered bourgeois politics,” he said to me, well out of Dad’s hearing, thank God. Bourgeois politics — can you imagine? “After all, every Hindi film hero is ontologically a counterrevolutionary.” He said that, really, “ontologically.” I had to look it up in the dictionary afterward. And I don’t think he’s even been to college. Where do these guys pick this crap up from?