Aman is having an earnest conversation with his estranged girlfriend, when Nanaji switches the television on. Whatever Aman is trying to say to Diya gets submerged as booms and guns spill into his room. Diya wastes no time and cuts their conversation short.
In this bloody country, there’s nowhere to escape. What chance do young people stand, when the tyrannical old reign supreme everywhere? Fuming, Aman marches up to the hall where the old man is sitting before a 40-inch television. Wrinkles pooled over brow, three fingers under a stubbled chin, he is watching Sholay again. On full volume.
Irritated, Aman, pulls out the plug and says he needs to have a talk. ‘Grandpa, in the seven days since I’ve come, you have watched Julie four times, Sholay thrice. That too without headphones. I can understand that the old have nothing better to do and need to pass the time. But because of you, the first love of my life is getting decimated. And if I lose her, I won’t be able to do anything, and my internship is starting in a couple of days. I don’t know how to cope. My whole life is getting destroyed. And then you put on Sholay. ’
If he were to move an inch closer, Aman’s index finger would have jabbed his Nana ji. He is screaming at a pitch higher than Basanti’s. But he has persuaded himself that his bad manners are the right way to talk to partially deaf old people
His grandfather’s chin quivers. Aman realizes that he is laughing noiselessly. This incenses the boy further. ‘Nanaji, let me tell you something. Your problem is boredom. Boredom with life. You had an arranged marriage, a cushy job, you never had to face uncertainty and bleakness like us. You never struggled in life. You never fell in love. And now that Nani is no more, you fill the empty hours with mindless bingeing. Instead of watching Julie and Sholay on a loop, maybe you need to start dating some old lady. Seriously, you must experience falling in love and the pain of losing love. The pain which can be quietened only by shedding silent tears. ’
‘Love has made you quite a poet son.’ The old man pats the sofa and pulls the boy down. ‘Do you want to know about my love and struggle son? You want to know what my times were like? Let me tell you about the love of my youth. Come sit next to me.
’Despite himself, Aman is intrigued.
‘Those were Emergency days. Emergency meaning, the Prime minister all over. Inescapable. Omnipresent. Like God, dust, fear. Beyond right or wrong. Forever marking you. Sounds familiar?
You want to know how things are different now? You must listen, because politics always infects love. You need to understand that. Well back then, Emergency was only as long as a movie interval. Not a Netflix series with countless seasons. Season I, season II, III, IV, a Netflix Series that drones on and on. Just as these days we have the tricolour fluttering all over, back then, the inverted red triangle of Family Planning in a sea of cautionary yellow sat on every surface. The Prime Minister’s steely gaze followed citizens from every light pole, the trains turned punctual. Reprieve could be found only in the dark womb of a cinema hall. That summer, on the one hand there was Emergency, on the other, blockbusters broke box-office records.
The other day, someone sent me the link of a YouTube panel discussion. An earnest khadi clad lady professor. So earnest. No, no I don’t have anything against earnestness. But at times I do get overwhelmed with big words. Like masculinity crisis. She was saying that the masculinity crisis engendered by the Government’s nasbandi campaign during Emergency made a certain kind of movie successful. Terms like these make me smile.
You are nineteen now, I am nearing seventy-five. We are both adults. The truth is, Indira Gandhi had us men by the balls. Only cinema allowed us to act out that tilmilahat. You understand what tilmilahat is? That feeling when big Ashok smashed your brother Sahil’s Phone, and neither you nor your tall, handsome brother could do a thing. Remember?
Your Bombay cousin, the one who works in Netflix, was telling me that the highest grossers of recent years are all about balls. Mind you, not Balls to the System, but Balls saluting the System. In our times, respectable Ball-hood required giving it to the System. But today everyone knows that parading imaginary triumphs of long dead kings over long dead Mughals will keep the Balls in thrall and also help make a quick buck. Gareebi, mahangai, berozgari are nowhere on the list of concerns. That’s why you feel so bleak and anxious. Because what you feel is not getting reflected anywhere. But back then, we saw our frustration in Amitabh Bachhan’s rage.
But I was telling about my first job…”
‘Your first love nanaji, please come to the point, I am hungry.” Aman is both interested and eager to go.
‘Yes, yes, the same thing. All I can recall from my first job is the crisis of my own masculinity. Yes, yes there was a girl. I had taken the Howrah Mail to Delhi. I wanted to get as far away from the stepmother and my drunkard father as possible. Your great grandfather was nice when not drunk, but after his retirement he had all the time to drink and yell at his wife, who in turn yelled at me. We were rice Christians. During the great famine of forties, my father, like many poor brahmins from rural Bengal, converted to Christianity, and everyone got a bag of rice as the baptism gift. More than the bag of rice, coming to Christianity gave my family, me and my brothers access to education and medicine…But my bhadrolok classmates mocked me. They called us the rice bags. Miss Rosie, the Irish sister in Jadhavpur Convent who taught us English, would console me. She would say, ‘Roy if you learn to speak flawless English, every sin will be washed away. Your classmates would covet you. Mark my words.’
For a motherless boy like me, she seemed to be no less than Mother Maryam herself. Another thing I imbibed from her was to always show people how you could be of help to them, if you wanted to go up in life.
In that train, the Howrah express, I met KK—Kartar Singh Kohli—the owner of Golcha cinema. Kohli was also the Hindi film distributor for the Northern territory. Train journeys were long those days; it took full thirty hours to reach Delhi. I was passing time by reading out the Times to a half-blind Major. KK was looking at me admiringly.
Sitting cooped together for so long made you a good judge of fellowmen. From my battered tin trunk, ragged holdall, and absence of a big steel tiffin, KK assessed that I was a young man in need. I also realized that he liked me and wanted something from me. Kohli shared his tiffin with me and conversationally ascertained my education, caste, family background. He then began dropping hints that he needed a good English typist. I offered my services.
Dar ji, as KK liked to be addressed, told me that for a salary of one hundred and fifty per month, my duties would be to ‘make into English’ the letters he would dictate to me in Punjabi, type them out and mail them. Likewise, the letters received in English would have to be explained to him and his orders obtained. Apart from this I would also get to watch first shows of philims in his thetar for free. But I would have to give him a report, What I liked about the pikchar and why? And what was not so good.
I couldn’t believe my luck and thanked the lord for setting me up even before setting foot in Delhi.”’
*
The unlettered KK ran his empire like a seasoned politician, making a show of taking advise from everyone—wife, kids, paan-wala, rickshaw-walas—but when he set heart on something, he liked to push his way Indira Gandhi style.
And I was not fearless like you, beta, but a timid, obedient young man happy to be earning keep.
My troubles began when Mrs. Kohli directed that I train the two Kohli girls, seventeen-year-old Guneet and the nineteen-year-old Jas, in English diction. One day, Madam walked into my cabin and began her tirade. ‘Do you know mister Rai (she could never pronounce Roy) last year only, Mrs. Chibber got a London wala dulha for her Roopkiran. Imagine! London groom for that snot nosed chit of a girl. She is not a patch on our tall, honey-hued Jasleen. But while Roopkiran has average looks, it cannot be denied that she has lurrnt convent angrezi and speaks like a motor car. That must have made the boy’s side say yes at once. That’s how it goes these days. Express engagement, instant wedding. And now the two are in vilayat! And people like me can only stare empty handed. Do you understand or not mister Rai?’
Understanding nothing, I made the right noises and called for tea.
‘Madam maybe the Chibbers gave a big dowry as well.’
This incensed her. “What do you mean? Do you think, we cannot afford a very big dowry? We can. A bigger one. The biggest. For my apple babies. But that’s not the point mister Rai. The thing is, I cannot afford to sleep in peace anymore. Nothing less than a London groom would do for my girls. A London wala Khatri. But without preparation, how can I make this dream come true?”
I decided to keep nodding my head.
‘But those kudis! They care not a whit about speaking English. No interest in polishing the tongue. Only you can help me mister Rai.
’Light dawned. Mrs. Kohli wanted me to tutor her daughters in spoken English.
Steeped in Punjabi, the girls’ tongues would either insert an extra vowel wherever two consonants sat together, or gobble up a legit vowel between consonants. Bulb became Balab. Speak, Sapeek. Correct, krrect. Select, Slekt.
Somehow, they had passed the class ten exams in English medium and were now done with English. From the start, they treated me like the Grinch with a grudge. Teaching diction meant joyless nitpicking over pronunciation. Which bored them. On verge of womanhood, their head was in clouds, their eyes dreamy. They were teenagers and not wide-eyed nine-year-olds as I had been when Miss Rose set about smoothening the Bh’s and O’s ( bhery good Bonana) from my tongue into ‘O-less V’s (very good banana). Lessening the ‘ouieght’ of Bangla in my ‘bhokabulary.’
But yes…you asked about hard times? When do they ever go in this country? They keep re-emerging in different hues. Emergency was imposed and KK started suffixing his missives (dictated in Lahori Punjabi) with forebodings. “Tasting times being ahead, we must blow twice before taking every step.” Foregoing thick paper, he forced me to adjust twenty-five paisa blue inlands into the Remington to type out correspondence.
The staff, from ticket managers Sukhlal and Khoob Chand; to sundry torch boys, ushers and guards; and even Pal jee who dispensed samosas and popcorn in the lobby; got solemn lectures: “Tightening the belt is must. No throwing paisa, only thrift, so we can keep ticket price low enough. Or will junta line up for philims like they do for sugar and kerosene?”
No one pointed to him that most of us did not have any belts to tighten. Even if we had, tightening them couldn’t have pulled the masses to the movies. But KK was never about logic. As an austerity measure, he permanently parked his sky-blue Padmini in the garage; and started taking rickshaw rides. I suspected he enjoyed them more. To his credit, he gave us our Diwali bonuses and even agreed to condone the delay in the repayment of installments on the Bajaj I had bought on loan from him.
Two months later, forsaking all belt-tightening, KK surreptitiously acquired the North India distribution rights of a over-hyped multi-starrer—Sholay—for an unheard one lakh rupees, without telling Mrs. Kohli, who blissfully continued assembling dower for her daughters before prices of gold could climb further.
The evening diction classes were an all-round misery. If they made me so miserable, what must it be for the sisters? Guneet played truant, seeing no point in twisting her tongue on nonsense like Sweet Queen Screams Blood. Chaat on the chowk was better. The younger, Jasleen would come, but hearing her mangle the same phrase everyday brought tears to my eyes.
Her favourite weapon was laughter. The back page of her English notebook was adorned with a cartoonish likeness of mine—primly oiled hair and oversized spectacles over a broad collar. I ignored it and stuck to my duty with secretarial efficiency. I was being paid a full thirty rupees for this hour. Don’t laugh son. Thirty rupees was a lot of money for an hour’s class those days.
Privately, I empathized with the girls’ impatience. Their inflections belonged to dusty Delhi lanes in a way my tongue didn’t. No matter how much I practiced the Amitabh Bacchan drawl, in Karol Bagh, my Bangla sounded wimpish and my English sterile before their vigorous Punjabi.
I was weighed down by the notion that my English competence rendered me incompetent in real life. But in the class, I would keep asserting that speaking fine English was like a Lifebuoy bath, it made you fit to take on the world. I think the lunch is waiting. Let’s continue aftr a break.’’
’‘No we can have lunch later, you finish the story first Nana ji. I want to know which girl you fell for.’‘
Only if you insist son. Soon enough, Mrs. Kohli got to know of KK’s recklessness through her Gurudwara network Acquiring a dud movie? That too without telling? She stomped into KK chamber in Golcha that day, screaming as she clacked knitting needles and stabbed multicolored balls of wool. ‘Why Dar ji? Why this Chhole Bhature movie when you could have picked up Jai Santoshi Mata? I heard that the Chibbers picked that one for just thirty thousand. That Chibberni was telling me that even if Emergency lasted for ten years, the returns on Santoshi Ma would not stop.’
‘Bibi, my instinct said so. I work by instinct. I don’t play with a child’s dice like that Chibber. I am a grown man.’ Dar ji roared back.
KK’s ‘instinct’ involved showing the first cuts of a movie to footpath crowd—scrap dealers, tonga-wallas, coolies, khalasis. I too was a part of this bunch. He would measure our noisy claps and whistles and somehow cobble it into a business decision.
‘Let me tell you daar ji, at your age, what you call instinct, I call lunacy.’ She retorted, casting a malevolent glance at the hoardings stacked in a corner. I am leaving.’
She gathered her knitting basket and stormed out. KK followed her. ‘Why say so, lucky lady? Was it not the same instinct that made me marry you? Made me swap our property on that side with Siddiqui Rahman’s Golcha in the partition of forty-seven?’
‘Yes, yes! And that also made you take all our family gold to refurbish this run-down place…To this day my eyes thirst for my triple stranded naulakha and my solid gold bangles weighing four hundred grams each. And now, you are trying to squander whatever has come our way after two plus decades of slogging? What is the meaning of such lunacy? Khushi Raaam! Take the Padmini out and drive me to bhainjee’s place in Kroll bag.’
When Mrs. KK went, she went only up to Karol Bagh. But the drama was such, one thought she was going off to the other end of the world. Dar ji was not much affected despite his protests. He in fact heaved a sigh of relief.
The next morning KK summoned a staff meeting. Being son-less, he wanted his girls to learn the business. ‘Don’t be foolishly fixated on gold. Learn how to turn things to gold. Now that your mother is in Kroll baag, both of you come to office, inspect the hall, keep watch over box office kllections.’
As for Sholay, the early reports were dismal. The first two month’s collections in Bombay territory were poor. KK called a meeting. With broken voice, he appealed. ‘It seems that my instinct failed! I need your help. Let’s put our heads together and ensure that at least the money we put in is recovered. Or we will all sink.’
Folding hands was KK’s ploy of being upfront without apology. It made the staff yearn to see him win.’’’
*
The Sholay Delhi premier was six weeks later—on the third of October. We launched a three-point programme, much like the Prime minister’s Twenty Point programme to deal with the bad times.
Yes, very much like the Corona survival programme you all charted during the pandemic…Only our programme had to be implemented in the concrete world, not the virtual.
Jasleen suggested free sherbet for every ticket, courtesy, Hamdard Roohafza, a company whose office was close by. Her classmate Inayat Noor’s father worked there and after a talk with him, things sworked out so well that Roohafza saw the phillim promotion as an opportunity to wrest market from Coca Cola.
Guneet was for giving the empty second show seats to the footpath folk, to be effected fifteen minutes after the movie’s start. I had to oversee this. It would create a buzz among people who otherwise wouldn’t think of coming.
Sukhlal offered to look after the free rickshaw rides for chowk women coming to see the movie on weekends. Azhar bhai’s tonga mounted with loudspeakers, would be earmarked for publicity. KK relied on me to oversee every single thing.
That September, every evening, Khushi Lal would slow drive the Padmini through the chowk, while I and Jas sat in the backseat. Bittu LP player wala had rigged an old LP player to the car. As we drove through Chandni chowk, the songs and dialogues of the film floated in the lanes, urchins pranced and ran along us, screaming Arre O Sambha!
Perhaps a researcher will be able to tell with certainty exactly what helped.
Just as you and Diya began chatting after long zoom meetings during corona; things between Jas and me began changing when we started promoting Sholay. A charge would flare in me when she smiled, her face would light up with the thrill of making things happen. She, like her father, believed in the movie. And I believed in her. On her birthday, I gave her a Cadbury’s five star. She gifted me a mouth organ.Just like that, the teacher-student relationship turned into a friendship without a name.
Sholay premiered in Delhi on 3rd October 1975. In the initial weeks, the ticket collections rose very slowly. Remember, things travelled slow those days. Even news. Which, to think now, is not a bad thing at all. KK kept chewing nails through November. I continued monitoring the three-point programme and teaching the girls spoken English, which had now become enjoyable.
Mrs. Kohli continued sulking in Kroll Baag. Back in my room, I would stretch the vowels of her name into a sigh every night …Jusssleeeen….and play the mouth organ in a brooding Amitabh Bachhan style.‘Nanaji!’ Aman hugs him with delight and both laugh.
In November, Jas demanded that I take her to see the India-West Indies Test match that was to be played at Kotla. ‘Let’s go to see the kirkat match on the Bajaj sakooter.’
I fell in a quandary. KK’s daughter on a scooter bought on KK’s loan?
Those days, Love jihad and Bajrang dal were not needed. We all knew our place; we knew that a man and a woman couldn’t go out just like that. When your mother came of age in the late nineties, liberalization made everyone forget this. She thought nothing of marrying a Samir Ahmad. People naively started thinking that an open economy meant open minds as well. Does that ever happen?
So, I hedged.
Cleverly telling Jas, that unless she sapoke krrectly, I couldn’t take her. The face she made. Go, fetch that album…This black and white photograph. Look at the free sherbet counter. This was outside Golcha Daryaganj. ‘Free sherbet in two sizes— Amitabh Bachhan glass with balcony ticket, Jaya Bhaduri glass with upper stall.”
Notice the mountain of Yera glass tumblers? Plastic was yet to take over.’
Jas had an eye for what people liked. In less than a week, she changed the slogan from Amitabh and Jaya to ‘Gabbar glass’ and ‘Sambha glass.’ Anyone spouting a Gabbar dialogue too got a glass. Kids loved that. In a way, now things had gone beyond profit-loss. Love and self-belief had taken over. In this picture, Jas is smiling at me. The November wind tugging at her dupatta has loosened a lock of hair over her cheek—just like Asha Parekh’s. She was smiling after spouting a correct sentence in perfect English. I was scowling. My bellbottoms, checked blazer, dagger collars and thick glasses make me look thinner and uglier than I was. I was scowling because I would now have to take her to see the kirkat match on my sakooter.
My scowl hid both fear and delight. My friend Sebastian’s words rang in my mind, ‘Watch Julie and Bobby to heart’s content, but remember they are only make-believe. No one likes their daughter marrying outside religion and caste. Which rich Khatri Sardar will ever take a rice-Christian Bengali typist as son-in-law? The minute your intentions come to light; your throat will be slit. Don’t even try.’
I didn’t. I lent the Bajaj to Garry paaji, Jasleen’s cousin brother, and bought twenty rupees worth of tickets for them from my salary.
Back then too, this wedding obsessed city, prohibited love, hated lovers.
Things changed for Sholay and for us. By mid-December a scramble began for prints. Demand started pouring in—from Bhatinda, Ropar, Fazilka. If not 70mm, 35mm. Anything. Fresh orders were received by trunk call. Every show went Housefull—not just in Delhi—but in the entire Northern territory. Everyone was spouting Sholay dialogues. Everyone knew what was going to happen next, still they watched every reel with bated breath. The three-point programme was no longer required. With great reluctance I got the sherbet kiosk removed, unhooked the LP player and returned it to Bittu.
On December 31st, Mrs. Kohli arranged a celebratory Sholay langar in Sheeshganj Gurudwara. It made everyone forget Mrs. Chibber’s daughter’s wedding langar.
Sholay ran non-stop for six months in Golcha alone.
Mrs. Kohli came back in Daecember and took to saying that she knew all along that Sholay was a winner. KK became the new star in business circles. Matches for Jas’s hand poured from far and near.
Diction classes were taken over by wedding shopping. In this respect Delhi has still not changed one bit. Money and power remain the only measures of a man. Your friend Diya is not wrong in breaking up with you. You may be half Muslim, one fourth Christian and one fourth Hindu. But your name reduces you to nothing but a Muslim. Who knows tomorrow someone might…which woman needs such a headache in her life? To get over her, you need to learn how to turn destiny into gold. Enough people have done it. Only restlessness is needed. Though I am hardly the right person top preach.
But I got over Jas
‘But What happened then?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s crazy Nananji. You had a love life and then nothing?’
‘Well, she did come one last time. Saying listen, Roy. I have one doubt. How to krrectly pronounce Aeylope? Is it Aey or ee-lope?’
‘No…no…not aey-lope; not ee-lope. It’s a softer—æ.’ I mumbled.
She flashed her Madhubala smile. ‘So many krrect sounds you know to make. What abaut meanings?
’I hung my head.
She went out and did not look back.
I began looking for a new job. Unlike KK, instincts continue to scare and confuse me, even today.
To own the instinct, dear boy, one must either be very poor or very rich. With nothing to lose or with so much to lose that a leap in the unknown is safer. A lower middle-class man nervously adding losses and risks, dangles perpetually in the middle. Only in the make-believe of movies can he let his feelings take over.
You have heard of Trishanku? No? You did not get to hear your grandmother’s stories …your parents were constantly changing cities and jobs. Or you would have known. And now she’s no more…By the time, I met your Hindu grandmother—a true Allahbadi, she knew her Ramyana and loved singing thumri—I was wealthy enough to have the courage to approach her through her parents.
Even so, things were not simple. A Kayasth marrying a Christian? Ram-ram! But I didn’t have to contend with mobs and goons. Things are never simple in our society. If one crosses one hurdle, another looms up.
That’s all about my first job and first love. The first time, I got both together, but because I wanted to bolster myself with money I didn’t dare to love. Switch off the lights. I am feeling sleepy now.’
‘Nana my counsellor says, in the first job one should work only for love?’
‘What? Your counsellor who earns a fat salary in a fortune five hundred company, says that interns should work not for money but for love? What can I say son? A fair question to ask is, do you have choice? Why does it have to either love/or money? Your times I think are worse, you may not have the choice even between two no’s.’
And he begins snoring softly.
Aman tenderly spreads a duvet over the old man and tiptoes out.
He carries his daal-chawal to bed and sits before the laptop watching Sholay.
Varsha Tiwary is a Delhi based writer and translator. Her translation of the Hindi novel, Rambhakt Rangbaz, has been brought out under the title 1990, Aramganj (Westland).