Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

So I was patient, but that bastard Kulkarni did not adjust to me or to anything else. It was amazing to me that the country's security was being handled by such a gaandu, but then I had seen gaandus rise to the top in every profession. I had to deal with this particular gaandu. Meanwhile, Mr Kumar finally slipped away into his retirement. I worked on.

* * *

We wrote the screenplay for my film between Ko Samui and Patong. I preferred the long quiet of Samui, but the boys wanted the jostling chaos of Patong. I let them have one week out of every three in the bars and on the beaches, and then turned our bows again towards peace. With Manu Tewari on board, they had something else besides endless card-playing to occupy their hours, even on the sea runs. It was exciting for them to see a story form, to feel it take on contours and characters. They discussed the narrative endlessly, badgered Manu for new scenes, and offered opinions and suggestions, and told him their own adventures. They were passionately involved with the hero of the film, and each sulked in turn when Manu refused to incorporate some turn or twist which he had thought up for this hero. A few times I had to intervene and put down a final veto on a suggestion before Manu got beaten up, or thrown off the boat. Of course our normal work and play went on as usual: I talked to Kulkarni every week, and ran his intelligence operations, found information and killed a bastard here and there for my country; I consulted Guru-ji and moved his shipments; I spoke to Jojo and laughed with her; I met Zoya and took her. But in those six months, no matter what else we did, that story threaded through our brains and bodies and obsessed each one of us. We talked about it morning and evening and night, and discussed the casting, and listened avidly to the songs as they came in from the recording studios. And we hovered over Manu Tewari.

He was middling in size, and not hard at all, but that Manu was stubborn. He would eat whatever you put on his plate, and not complain at all if you changed television channels while he was watching the news, but if you tried to interfere with his scenes, he was fierce as a yellow-toothed sow with her threatened piglets. I was his financier, and his paymaster, and after all I was Ganesh Gaitonde, but even with me he argued back and defended his decisions and debated. Sometimes the boys winced when our story sessions heated up, and our voices rose, and Manu Tewari risked rudeness. But I tolerated him, because he was a good writer. He was writing me a strong story. And besides, I was learning from him. As the weeks passed, as I argued with Manu Tewari, I began to see what he was talking about. He taught me about cinema, how a simple cut from a blown-out matchstick to a blazing desert could explode in your chest and rock you back in your seat. We watched DVDs with him, and learnt the language of extreme close-up and long shot, the release of space and the compression of time, how the simple movement of a camera down a pair of fixed tracks could say more than a thousand books. I learnt these tools, and I watched Mughal-e-Azam , and Kagaz ke Phool , and I watched them dozens of times, and I learnt how a small group of master craftsmen, a gang of purposeful madmen, could wield light and sound and space to make shimmering monuments that materialized on cloth screens, on dirty village walls, on a yacht in the southern seas. I could start to see how a good story had a certain geometry, a succession of curves, a billowing rise of crests and plateaux that led to the final explosion, and satisfaction. If you made a story that was lopsided, that was blemished, this ugliness would bring only boredom and emptiness. In beauty there was bliss.

'Exactly,' Guru-ji said to me one afternoon. 'But not only bliss. Also terror.' He had taken an unexpected delight in the slow birth of our story. I had expected he would think the whole project too cheap and childish, but yet again he surprised me. He listened to our ideas and innovations attentively, and gave advice without being domineering. And here he was, finding not only beauty but also terror in our half-finished script.

'Terror, Guru-ji?' I said. 'How?'

'Anything that is truly beautiful is also terrifying.'

I thought about that. Was Zoya terrifying? No. I felt a craving for her, and sometimes a flutter of disquiet at how strong this longing was, but I was not scared of her. Of course not. But I wouldn't argue with Guru-ji. Instead, I said, 'Guru-ji, but you said the world is beautiful because it is ordered and symmetrical. Does that mean it is frightening?'

'Yes, it is. For the ordinary person, who sees only randomness, the world is just depressing. When you move along a little, you start to see its real loveliness. Then you realize that this exquisite perfection is terrible, it is frightening. When you conquer this fear, you know that beauty and terror are the same thing, and this is as it should be. There is no need for fear. For the world to be beautiful, it must finish. For every beginning, there is an end. And for every end, there is a beginning.'

'Symmetry?'

'Yes, Ganesh. Precisely that.'

It started to make sense to me. This is why the screenplay had to move in its cycles of sequences, but inevitably towards a climax, after which there would be nothing. Or, as Guru-ji was implying, maybe something, but only after the world of the screenplay had vanished. But I was still grasping – as I often did – at the entirety of his meaning. 'I don't fully understand, Guru-ji, sorry. I see the necessity of order. But I like beauty, I don't fear it.'

He laughed, but kindly. 'Don't worry, Ganesh. You are a vira. You will climb to the top of the peak, and see the abyss. You will see both beauty and terror. But for now, what you are doing is very good. You will seduce the audience, and make lots of money.'

Yes, there was the money. And cash was what Manu argued with the boys about. He worked in the most money-minded business in the world, but he wanted the rich to give their money to the poor. He believed in state ownership of essential industries, high taxes on the middle classes and even higher taxes on the upper classes, and protection for Indian industries against multinationals and imports. The boys all came from low-income families, but every last one of them was a diehard capitalist. 'You think I'm a chutiya to give my money to the poor?' Amit said. 'You know how many bastards I had to kill to get it?' And Nitin said, 'Fifty years of state control and what do you get? Cottage industries that have been making straight losses for fifty years, a population that spends all its time and energy trying to get around the stupid rules, and massive corruption.' And Suresh said, 'Where is your precious Soviet Union now, sala? Tell me where?' And Manu Tewari argued back, and told them that capitalism would collapse because of its internal contradictions, that the march of history was inevitable, and that they were an ignorant lot who didn't and couldn't see the forces working under the surface of events. 'Our story can only have one end,' Manu said. 'The proletariat will finally rule.' To which Amit said, 'Exactly. Boss, I am the proletariat. And what I want is three Mercedes cars, three lund-lasoons a day, and lots of good butter chicken. When I get all this, who will I be? The ruler of some poor proletarian bastards.'

So Manu Tewari's political lectures didn't gain him a following of fierce comrades on my yacht. But we all listened attentively to his rules for making a good movie story, and there were a lot of rules. The boys began to call him Manu the Rule-giver. He had a rule for every occasion, for every scene and situation, and examples for support. He told us the villain must be stronger than the hero, and also somehow attractive. And that two songs must never be put next to each other, except when Sooraj Barjatya does it. And the heroine must be very sexy, but she can never have sex. And the first one or two scenes after the interval must be unimportant throwaway scenes, because your viewers take a few minutes to come back in from the lobby, with their samosas and drinks. And once you're at the climax, move it along fast, because the audience is going to get up and start leaving so that they can beat the traffic jam outside. And the hero's mother must be introduced early, and our love for her must be total. At this last one, I had to object. 'Why do we have to have a mother cluttering up the film?' I said. 'The screenplay's too long anyway, and we have to cut scenes. She'll just eat up screen-time.'