Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'It's a dangerous business, this shooting,' I said.

'And tiring. And so slow, so very long, bhai,' Zoya said. 'I feel like I've been doing this film for ever. But it's been a lot of fun. There are such specimens on that set.'

Then she got up and imitated Dheeraj Kapur exhorting the cinematographer to go faster with his lighting, 'Please, sir, already we are thirty-four per cent over budget, and thirty days over.' She had him exactly, his paunchy walk and his Punjabi heartiness, his delicate way of holding a cigarette with his middle finger and thumb, and even the shortness of his upper lip, which gave him the look of a mildly ferocious dog. She came alive when she was acting, my Zoya. When she was Dheeraj Kapur, there was none of that distance that usually separated Zoya Mirza from the outside world and those of us who lived in it. She was not deep behind the black shine of her eyes, unreachable. She was there, in the downy surfaces of her forearms, in the large, ambling gait of the producer. Her life sparkled and sparked, here, here, for me. I laughed and pulled her down into my lap, until she got up to do someone else. She could do a perfect Manu Tewari. She made me see his square, communistic beard, the way he fingered it when he was trying to appear impressively thoughtful. I don't know quite how, but she made me feel his labouring seriousness, his hair-dissecting scalpel of a mind, his eager belief in fairy tales about the future. I suppose that is what a great actress should do. She made you want to believe, and so you did.

When I finally took her to bed, I had no doubt. I was whole. In our talking, and the laughter that had passed between us, I found my strength again. I went into her four times that day, and she came into me. I did not distrust her pleasure, or mine. It was all one. And my penis was heroic. I did not point out my growth to her, there was no need. Her moans as she took her satisfaction were all the proof I needed.

* * *

International Dhamaka flopped. After all that publicity, after all the money pumped into MTV song clips and gigantic six-sheeter hoardings and Dhamaka lunch boxes in bright red plastic, nobody came to see it. On the first day itself, collections were sixty per cent in Bombay, and lower outside. The critics were cruel to the film, but we had half-expected that, and nobody in the film industry really cared what the critics had to say, if the people came. If the public paid for tickets. But, by the middle of the second week, ticket sales were lower than forty per cent nationwide. The foreign markets, where we had expected the film to be a full-speed hit, treated us only slightly better. The maderchod NRIs didn't come either. I was on the phone to Dheeraj Kapoor day and night, we put up new hoardings in the metros, we increased the frequency of the TV spots, with added titles that invited the public to see 'Superhit International Dhamaka '. We told them to be part of the magic. We tempted them to see the world.

But the gaandus wouldn't come. We cut seven scenes, edited down fourteen others and shot a new song, with not one or two but three top models wearing hardly more than fluorescent bikinis and some gauze. We had this item song in the cinemas in Bombay and Delhi in a record thirteen days, but still the bastard public wouldn't come. By the end of the third week, the trade papers fearlessly and unanimously listed International Dhamaka as a flop. I couldn't deny this. It was a flop.

Until now Dheeraj Kapoor had counselled patience, faith, stamina. He had told me stories of how G.P. Sippy had kept Sholay in the cinemas for a month, while the industry mocked him, while he lost money. Finally, word of mouth about Gabbar Singh had made the difference, and the audience had packed into the cinemas, and kept Sholay showing for five continuous and enormously profitable years. But now, even Dheeraj Kapoor admitted that International Dhamaka was a flop. It was his film as much as mine, but in that fourth week he let it go. 'No more, bhai,' he said to me on the phone late one night. 'You've spent too much already. We have to accept. We have to adjust.'

So I let it pass out of the cinemas. I had to confront the truth: International Dhamaka was a flop. I couldn't put a pistol to the audience's head and make them sit in the cinemas, so International Dhamaka was a flop. But it was a good film. I had seen it so often that I think I could hardly see what was on the screen any more, I was so sunk in the details of framing and sound and pacing. Now I watched it again. Yes, it was a good film. You couldn't doubt that. It had action, love, patriotism and unforgettable songs. It was beautiful and perfect. So why had it been rejected? Why was the public flocking in to see Tera Mera Pyaar , which was a nonsensical, badly shot little piece of romantic boy-loses-girl-and-cries-and-cries rubbish, made with three crores and unknown actors? 'We can't know,' Dheeraj Kapoor said. 'You can't ever know, bhai. The audience is a bastard. Every chutiya in the industry will now give you thirty-six reasons our film didn't work, but during the preview shows they all loved it. All the analyses after a film is released are useless. You can't tell the future. And you can't really tell the past. We can't know.'

I wanted to know, I had to know. I asked Guru-ji. He was in South Africa at the time, giving a series of lectures, but he made time to call me. He knew I was in trouble, he knew how sad and helpless I was. He understood that I had never been this helpless, so he took care of me. He was more than a father, he was motherly. I knew he had been unable to see into the future of this film, but I asked him to look into its past. 'It had everything, Guru-ji,' I said to him. 'It had every element that a viewer looks for. So why didn't it work?'

'You want a reason?'

'Yes, I want a reason, Guru-ji.'

'That is the trouble, that you want one reason.'

'But, Guru-ji, you are the one who keeps telling me that the world is not chaos. You gave a lecture yesterday to seven thousand people about the cycles of time, and how we are moving steadily towards a new age.'

'I said that?'

He had that roomy grin on, I could tell, that flash in his eye that just ate up your confusion. 'Yes, you said that. I read your lecture on the website. You said that what we do has a purpose.'

'I did say that, beta. The fault is in your question. When you ask for a reason.'

I stopped, I thought. I still couldn't grasp what he was moving me towards. 'I don't understand, Guru-ji. Please tell me.'

'You ask for a reason, for one reason. But there are hundreds of reasons, thousands of them. There is not only one immediate cause. There are many. All these reasons meet each other and cross each other, and flow forward in the service of the grand purpose. And you stand at the place of the crossing of these thousands of reasons, and ask for one.'

'So maybe the reason was not in the film at all.'

'Yes. Maybe the time needed something else. Maybe the flow was moving in a certain direction when your film released.'

'Was it? Was it?' My mind was too small to see this intermingling of velocities, to encompass all of it without rupturing like a bulging paper bag. But he was Guru-ji, and I needed this from him. He could see all of it, and I wanted him to give me some faith in this flow I was being tossed by. 'Please, Guru-ji. Tell me.'

'Yes, Ganesh,' he said. 'There were many reasons which had nothing to do with the film itself. You told the truth, but right now the public is comforting itself with young love. They will wake up to your truth, but not now. And, Ganesh, why do you worry only about reasons? There are many purposes. Attracting an audience into the cinemas and making money exist as purposes only in the immediate sense. Your film will find its dharma in the long future, in the net of consequences that grow from its release. You have succeeded, you just don't know it yet.'