The Royal Ghosts, page 8
The weather gay.
Somewhere, I’m afraid,
I’ll lose my way.
The scene was so simple, so filled with a kind of artistic innocence, that Ranjit grew melancholy.
“Remember, Papa, how people used to call you the Nepali Dilip Kumar?” Chanda asked.
“Yes, those were some strange days,” Ranjit said, slightly embarrassed. People had compared him to Dilip Kumar after his performance of a jilted lover in Memento. At that time, Ranjit had been pleased at the comparison, but so much time had passed it seemed like ancient history. Besides, it was an exaggeration—Dilip Kumar was in a different league altogether, with so many awards and blockbusters to his credit. Ranjit had won only one award. In his day, Nepali cinema was in its infancy—Indian movies were the rage. Still, many magazines did run interviews and photos of him, and he had been invited to the royal palace for lunch with the king and queen. People often whispered and pointed at him in the streets.
That evening at home, Ranjit rehearsed some of his upcoming scenes after Kamala went to bed. He practiced in front of the mirror in his study so he could observe the movements of his face. He went over the scenes again and again, trying to perfect each expression, each hand gesture. After a while he began to think of Dilip Kumar, of how effortless his acting was, and Ranjit couldn’t help but be dissatisfied with his own performance. Had he lost his touch?
This feeling remained with him when he reached the set two days later, and became more acute when he learned that Diwakar had already gone ahead and shot the scene featuring Mukesh and Priyanka in the father’s bed. “It went well,” Diwakar said. “It’s a pretty sexy scene.”
Ranjit laughed. “It’ll be a sexy movie, eh, Diwakarji? So what’s an old man like me doing in a film like this?”
“Don’t underestimate your role, Ranjit Sir,” Diwakar said. “And anyway, your name will carry this movie.” He leaned closer. “Mukesh and Priyanka aren’t the big names they think they are. But you, of course, are a legend. That’s why, as soon as I learned that you and Shiva were good friends, I asked that you be given the role of the father. You know, Shiva had his eyes on someone else.”
“This was not his idea?”
“No, no,” Diwakar said, clapping Ranjit on the back. “When I was in college, I went to see your Darling of My Eyes five times at the Patan Cinema Hall. I cut classes for it.”
Ranjit was so unsettled by this news that he had a hard time concentrating on his acting. “What’s wrong, Ranjit Sir?” Diwakar asked at one point. “You not feeling well today?”
In the scene they were shooting, the girl’s mother was trying to persuade him not to force their daughter into marriage without her consent. Ranjit knew he wasn’t being emphatic enough in the face of her arguments, but he couldn’t seem to muster up the energy. Now he shrugged at Diwakar, who threw up his hands in frustration. “I’m not sure it’s going to work today, Ranjit Sir. Somehow you’re not letting it happen.”
“Maybe I’ve lost my touch,” Ranjit muttered.
“If actors like you lose your touch,” Diwakar said, “there’s no hope for us.” He repeatedly ran his hands through his hair, and Ranjit could tell that he was trying not to get annoyed at having to stop early today, and the strain on the budget it would undoubtedly cause.
“I need a drink,” Diwakar said. “Care to join me, Ranjit Sir? Maybe a drink or two would relax you.”
“I stopped drinking years ago.”
“You can still come.”
All Ranjit wanted to do was go home and lie down, but he couldn’t say no to Diwakar. The assistant director and the cinematographer decided to join them, and Diwakar persuaded Mukesh and Priyanka, who hadn’t brought her daughter to the set that day, to come along too.
At a large table in the Shanker Hotel restaurant they ordered drinks and pakoras and sushi. When Ranjit ordered lemon tea for himself, the others objected, saying they wouldn’t let him off the hook without at least one drink. Too defeated to put up a fight, he told the waiter, “A small peg of whiskey, please.”
Soon the buzz from the whiskey lifted his mood, and he chatted with Priyanka, who was seated next to him. “I personally think your scene was better than the new one,” she whispered to him, “but how can you argue with the director?”
“It’s not a big thing, really,” Ranjit said. The whiskey was making him expansive, and he began to feel warmly toward Priyanka. It was hard for a woman, he knew, to be an actress while raising a young daughter. “The scene will be good for your career, though,” he said to her softly. “It’s a memorable scene, even if it’s a bit risqué. But that’s what the public wants these days, isn’t it?”
“Sir, sir,” the cinematographer was suddenly shouting from the other end of the table. “When you were in What Happened, How It Happened, did you have to work out a lot for the role?”
The conversation quickly turned to Ranjit’s acting days, and they flooded him with questions. Did that actress really commit suicide while the film was only halfway done? Was it true that the Indian director Raj Kapoor had invited Ranjit to come to Bollywood? More whiskey was poured, glasses were clinked, and Ranjit talked about the old days with relish. The others were transfixed—they gazed at him in admiration and affection. Laughter. Nodding. Groaning and moaning at the recollection of some small but spicy details. He hadn’t felt this beloved in a long time. Diwakar was quietly smiling at him from a corner of the table, as if Ranjit were a product of his own creation, as if he were the one who’d turned Ranjit into a star and now could step back and let his great actor bask in this limelight. Ranjit smiled back at Diwakar, not caring whether the director might have been taking too much credit. After all, he had withstood Ranjit’s miserable performance today. Tomorrow I’ll do much better, Ranjit thought, and this thought seemed to be buoyed by the smiling faces around him.
“I have only one complaint, Ranjit Sir,” someone said. “You never danced in your movies. What’s a movie without some thrilling dance routines?”
Ranjit was about to say that he was not much of a dancer when Diwakar said, raising a finger, “Ranjit Sir danced in Shakti. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t do too well.”
“I bet he hasn’t forgotten the moves, though,” Priyanka said.
The group erupted, cajoling him into showing them his dancing. Ranjit kept insisting that he barely remembered the moves from Shakti, or why he danced in that film in the first place, but they didn’t let up, and Priyanka hauled him onto the small dance floor. The restaurant manager was summoned to change the soft music to something more upbeat, and soon the thump-thump-thump of a well-known Hindi song reverberated in the restaurant.
Ranjit and Priyanka moved around the dance floor, shaking their bodies this way and that. She was a nimble dancer, deftly sliding in and out of his mock grasp. The crowd screamed for Ranjit to reenact the dance from Shakti, and suddenly, without thinking, he did a series of struts, the moves coming smoothly as if he were a young actor again. Priyanka matched his steps, and she reminded him of Charu Thapaliya, who had been the heartthrob of young Nepalis. He recalled what a mesmerizing dancer Charu had been, and although she and Ranjit had never acted together, he’d always had a small crush on her. He grabbed Priyanka’s hand and twirled her around, causing the others to clap and hoot.
As the evening wore on, Ranjit, though still tipsy, began to feel embarrassed at the way he’d let loose. But as they left the hotel, everyone around him remained upbeat, and he tried not to dwell on it.
At home, Kamala opened the door and immediately leaned back. “Oooph! Did you drink tonight? What came over you?”
“I couldn’t say no.” He propped himself against the wall. “They kept insisting.”
She shook her head and laughed. “I don’t think I know you anymore. All these years you don’t drink, then you come home reeking. So, I guess our vegetarian days are over too?”
Briefly, Ranjit stopped breathing. Had he eaten meat at the hotel? So many dishes were passed around the table in the course of the evening that he couldn’t remember what he ate. A wave of nausea rose in his throat. “No, no, Kamala, of course not,” he managed to say after a moment. “Let’s go to bed. I’m tired.”
That night he frequently woke up as the alcohol gradually wore off. His mind latched on to what Diwakar had said about Shiva initially not wanting him in the movie. So had Shiva concocted that whole business about the dream? Why would he need to lie about such a thing? He rarely visited the set after the first couple of weeks of shooting, and now Ranjit began to wonder if Shiva was as serious about the movie as he’d let on. After all of Shiva’s talk about making a quality movie, why hadn’t he shown more interest in it? The whole thing troubled Ranjit greatly, and he considered calling Shiva right then, at three o’clock in the morning. Eventually he calmed himself down—he’d just have to wait until a decent hour. His thoughts turned to his lackluster performance that day, and at around four o’clock, he got up and went to his study, where he tried to practice the scene that had given him so much trouble. His hands began to shake as he gesticulated, and when he spoke his lines, his breathing grew erratic. In anger and frustration, he gave up and went to the living room, where he sat on the sofa in the dark. A vigorous session of yoga right now would make him feel better. Since the shooting began, he’d compromised his yoga and meditation. Why had he disrupted his daily spiritual routine for this idiotic venture? Suddenly last night’s revelry seemed ridiculous—the attention he’d received, the singing and dancing, the feeling of camaraderie. He’d allowed himself to be seduced, even to do that mindless dance, the very thing he despised in the current movies. He had to regain control of himself.
He went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and washed his face, then headed to the study for yoga. He took a few deep breaths, then set out to do ten rounds of the Sun Salutation. He moved into other poses, feeling his body gradually relax. While performing the Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, he felt something crack in his right hip, and a piercing pain exploded in his pelvis, making his legs shake. It felt as if the lower part of his body had become unhinged. He shouted for Kamala, and soon heard her thump down the stairs. “What happened?” she shouted, and he said that he’d broken something in his body.
The doctor at Bir Hospital diagnosed a hip fracture and said he’d need surgery. “We’ll need to place a large screw in your hip to anchor the bone,” the doctor said. “It’s a common injury among the elderly.”
“I’ve always worried something like this would happen,” Kamala said. “All those crazy contortions.”
His mind hazy with painkillers, Ranjit whispered, “Someone needs to tell Diwakar.”
Later that morning, Chanda, Bimal, and Akhil visited the hospital, bearing flowers and fruit, and in the afternoon, Diwakar and Shiva appeared.
“I guess you’ll have to shorten my role even more,” Ranjit said.
“No, no,” Diwakar said. “We’ll think of something else. Right now you need to focus on resting and getting better. Don’t worry about us.”
“Why don’t you have the low-caste boy kill the father?” Kamala suggested. “It would make sense. Then the girl and the boy can live happily ever after.”
“It’s not that kind of movie, bhauju,” Shiva said.
Ranjit watched him. The urgency he’d felt last night now dissolved in light of his injury. Still, at some point in the future, he knew he’d ask Shiva what had really happened.
The surgery was performed the next morning, and afterward, Ranjit was dosed up with painkillers and moved to a private ward. The doctor told him he’d have to stay in the hospital for at least a few days. Two days later, Diwakar and Shiva visited early in the morning. The screenwriter had drafted a new screenplay with a revised ending—the father would indeed die, from a heart attack, and the rest of the movie would feature the new couple’s struggles to be accepted by the larger society, and end with the birth of their baby boy.
“I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused,” Ranjit said.
The movie was an instant hit when it was released eight months later. Newspapers and magazines raved about it, praising its groundbreaking story and talented actors. “Finally a Nepali film that actually makes a compelling statement about human affairs and how our orthodoxy suffocates us,” one critic wrote. Diwakar’s name was mentioned with awe, and Mukesh and Priyanka were soon signed up for several big-budget movies. Critics talked about a renewed career for Ranjit, praising his subtlety, his strong presence sorely lacking in contemporary cinema.
Ranjit was back in good health again, though now he had to walk with a cane. He returned to gardening and began collecting rare stones after he read a book on the subject. He spent hours looking at them through a magnifying glass, observing their detailed surfaces, comparing one to another, reading about their geological origins.
Kamala seemed immensely pleased with the movie’s reception and the praise Ranjit had garnered. And when Chanda visited one day and reminded them of her old proposal, Kamala looked at him expectantly. Clearly she wanted him to accept the offer and for the family to work together. Chanda said Bimal was determined to produce a blockbuster that starred Ranjit. He’d already been talking to screenwriters about creating a rich, emotionally complex role for Ranjit. For a brief moment Ranjit was tempted, then he reminded himself of what he’d just gone through. He told Chanda he would think about it, though he knew he wouldn’t accept.
“There’s a lot of money involved, Papa,” Chanda said, and Ranjit couldn’t help but laugh inwardly. She was thinking like a businesswoman, a fitting role for not only the wife of a successful businessman, but also someone who had now started her own business. A pashmina factory in her name had just been built outside Ring Road, and she was already talking about expanding it into a major export-import company. These days she was constantly busy, talking on her mobile phone, making deals, zooming away in her chauffeur-driven cars.
“I’ll think about it,” he lied again. He’d learned to stop butting heads with her, and was trying hard not to begrudge her her ambitions for further prosperity and power. Instead, he devoted a good deal of his time and energy to his grandson. Because his mother was more and more absent, Ranjit visited him often, called him frequently, brought him home and spent whole weekends with him. Akhil had seen Ranjit’s movie in the theater several times and had memorized most of the dialogue. ’“This wedding will happen over my dead body!’” he’d exclaim, curling his lips and snarling. Or he’d act the part of the daughter and kneel in front of Ranjit, pleading with him to accept her low-caste boyfriend. Videotaping his grandson, Ranjit always encouraged him: “Now lift your arms up as an appeal,” he’d say, or “Don’t shout, just make your voice sound tough.” Later, as they’d sit on the sofa and replay the videotape, Ranjit would praise his performance and say that with more practice he was going to be a teenage heartthrob. Excited, Akhil would study the videotape again by himself.
Ranjit would lean back against the sofa, remembering his own teenage days, years before his first movie role. He used to frequent the cinema halls to study veteran actors like Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, and in the dark of the theater he always imagined himself up there on the big screen, delivering pithy dialogue or expressing complex emotions through one raised eyebrow. He’d leave the theater with a bounce in his walk, dreaming of the moment when he’d be discovered. Ah, the magic of those years! Smiling, Ranjit would again turn his attention to Akhil, whose eyes gleamed as he watched the replay of his own performance.
Supreme Pronouncements
I MET RUMILA AT A FAIR in Bhrikuti Mandap two years ago. One of my friends knew her from college, and as they talked I couldn’t stop looking at her. She had a thin, sharp nose, but also these beautiful dark eyes that caught me staring at her and made me blush. It was she who finally asked my friend to introduce us. “This is Suresh,” my friend said. “Our master of politics.” In the past few years, starting in my college days, I had become something of a political leader. I drafted antigovernment pamphlets, incited others to burn tires on the city streets when I disagreed with the policies of the palace, and organized and led protests.
“I’ve read about you,” Rumila said. “You don’t look like your picture.” She was probably referring to the fact that I’m quite short—barely five feet tall. My height had earned me the nickname of Pudkay, or Shorty, or the Runt, among my enemies (I was constantly referred to as the Pudkay Leader in tabloid reports), and even my friends called me Pudkay when they were annoyed with me.
“Trust me, this is the same guy,” my friend told her with a sidelong glance, as if to warn her to stay away from me, but I asked her to look at my innocent face and judge for herself. She laughed, scrunching her nose.
From then on, I pursued Rumila. I waited for her outside her office at Kitab Mahal, a nongovernmental organization devoted to literacy efforts throughout the country; I telephoned her for silly reasons; I gave her romantic novels; and for a month or so she tried to put me off. “I don’t want a relationship right now,” she said. Because of my height, I was used to women turning me down, but something about Rumila urged me on, and I told her I just wanted to be a friend, hopeful that something might evolve.
In the weeks that followed, she and I began to spend more time with each other, taking long walks to the Pashupatinath temple, going to foreign films, whiling away whole afternoons cooking momos at her house. Once she even told me that she liked being with me more than her friends, who I knew were rich and convent-educated like her. “Sometimes they’re so superficial,” she told me. Still, she kept insisting that we were only friends. Occasionally, when we were going for a walk, she’d drift very close, almost touching me, then she’d clearly become aware of it and move away. A strange look would come over her, as if she were struggling with something. Sometimes, in a restaurant or at my house while we were listening to the stereo, I’d notice her staring at me, and she’d avert her eyes when I looked back at her.
