The Super Hit

“The next big hit is just round the corner,” the man in white held forth, raising the cup of tea to his lips as others on the table waited with their cups in their hand, their destinies about to unfold. “All you need is belief in yourself,” he finished with a flourish as if divulging some great secret of success. He then took a sip from the cup and put it down decisively as if making a point and everyone else took a sip, their faiths having just received a booster.

No one knew who the man was; a writer, a director, a producer or a financier who had run out of money – for the successful never came here. He would come every day dressed completely in white including white shoes that had begun to come out at the seams. Even his hair had grown totally white as if in reverence to his penchant for that color. One could find him always surrounded by a group of hopefuls not much younger in age, for again the young never came here. He fed them stories of hope and they paid for his tea, a barometer of hierarchy in the strange ecosystem that existed under that makeshift shed that carried out its business as a hotel without even a semblance of a name board.

Raj sat alone at an adjacent table and listened to the man with mild amusement, his gaze fixed firmly at the entrance. He had always had belief in himself and today was going to be his day to turn round the corner where everyone seemed to be waiting endlessly. He shifted through his script – a murder mystery in the backdrop of great human drama, appreciating the nuances of his own storytelling as he waited for Kumar to arrive.

Two months ago he and Kumar had been invited by the renowned director of old times, Ravi Khanna, who was looking out for a fresh script to make a comeback. When Raj had sat face-to-face with ‘the’ Ravi Khanna and narrated his own script it seemed as if all those years writing tepid family soap operas and horrifying horror scripts with a hope that one of them would get to the filming stage were all preparation for this one great moment. For the only thing Raj had wanted in life was to be part of a movie unit, to see something he had written being played on the big screen. Story, Screenplay, Dialogues – Raj Joshi. As the titles would play on the large screen one day, he would sit back in the chair and be ready to die. His life goal would have been accomplished.

For a month he had survived on this dream, waiting for a call from Ravi Khanna and then it began to take that familiar dreaded route of silence and no response – as if you had never existed and your script, nurtured and grown with the pain of a doting child, was only good enough to dust in some forgotten drawer along with papers to be sold to the local scrap dealer.

And then suddenly, last evening he received a call from Kumar. Kumar had been called by Khanna’s office at Pali Hill, for a meeting today afternoon. From there he would take a train to Grant Road where they would meet at this ramshackle hotel which had been their regular rendezvous point for the last two and a half years and discuss the way forward.

Raj looked around the hotel as he waited for Kumar - half a dozen rectangular wooden tables set up in a compound with benches without any backrest for seating, as if any form of luxury would make the place seem inappropriate for its frugal occupants whose only investment was belief. A dark blue tarpaulin sheet stretched tight over a bamboo scaffolding and served as the roof. The kitchen was a stove in the corner with a large brass vessel with continuously boiling tea from which the cook kept on pouring cups and a single waiter in a yellowed white vest and loose khaki shorts with a smelly rag on his shoulder served the customers, cleaning tables that had not ordered tea for long.

Adjoining it was the famous Naaz building that housed the offices of the Kapoor’s and the Barjatya’s; the successful production houses. If you sat on a wooden bench and looked up, you could, if you were lucky, catch a glimpse of them in a window, chatting over mobiles – the men who had made it. But down here Raj was sitting amongst those who hadn’t, graying, bald men discussing million dollar script ideas sipping tea one-by-two, each waiting for that one super hit that would propel him fifty yards away into a new stratosphere – their hope sustained by that one thought that those up there had one day sat on these very benches and sipped this very tea.

Raj was young and he was not going to spend his life here like them. He looked up impatiently and saw Kumar walking in. A huge sense of anticipation overcame him, like an actor on a Friday morning.

Kumar sat and ordered two cups of tea. Raj always felt proud at getting his own full cup; it distinguished him from the rest of the crowd. Kumar was in his late fifties. Sometime in his youth he had produced a hit. That success, long begotten had left its mark, like a deformity and today after having squandered all that money on a dozen odd forgotten or shelved movies and serials he still carried that success with him like a limp carries a crutch. Clean shaven and neatly dressed he looked strangely out of place in that decrepit shed, like a man who had wrongly boarded the luggage compartment of a local train. He finished the tea and quickly came to the point.

"Actually Khanna liked your script a lot."

Raj smiled and immediately knew it was all over. In two and half years of living in this make believe world he had learnt enough to know this actually meant that Khanna had rejected his script. This was his dream script and he had worked hard with the immense satisfaction of having done justice to a subject that deserved it. And now it was not worth making.

"Khanna is looking for some light subject, a David Dhawan style comedy. He feels our subject is too serious."

Raj felt a sudden depression overcome him. It was like a mother being told that her child was not good enough. One lived with personal rejection but one couldn’t live with the rejection of a loved one. He must have been crazy, he thought, to believe that sitting here amongst failures he would be a success himself. Like quicksand, they would suck him in their morass till there would be no hope for survival.

Kumar didn’t seem much affected. After three decades in the industry you did not worry about your dream not being realized, you worried about waking up; because that would mean having to face reality. And reality provided no promise of grandeur, no succor for the future.

"I have an interesting proposal," Kumar said pushing closer, his tone suddenly dropping, as if discussing a conspiracy and Raj, driven by habit, moved forward in anticipation. It was a trade practice to discuss any new idea in whispers; the first step towards the jackpot.

"I met Pandey, the UP distributor. He has an excellent idea." Kumar’s face beamed like a fortuneteller about to announce a windfall. "A Bhojpuri film. It has great demand in Central Territory."

"A Bhojpuri film?" Raj felt the disappointment return.

"Arrey you don’t worry about the language. It is 80% Hindi," Kumar assured, quick to note the disappointment. "But the returns are assured and he has got a financier and a nice subject too."

Raj, despite the disappointment, couldn’t help smiling at the order of things. Kumar continued to speak, subsumed by his own enthusiasm, unmindful of that mocking gesture.

"Two brothers. Elder educated, married to city girl. Younger one a simpleton. Father dies. Elder brother under influence of wife takes all the fields and leaves barren land for the younger. And then, the twist."

Kumar paused for effect, the whisper dropping a notch.

"The barren land has a diamond mine." Kumar’s face suddenly glowed as if he had discovered the mine himself, that all those diamonds were going to be his. "The audience will go crazy. Claps, whistles, it is a super hit." He held Raj’s hands and Raj could feel them tremble.

"You start working on it immediately. I have fixed a meeting with Pandey next week."

A meeting to discuss a script, his script. Raj felt a surge of excitement. It was a Bhojpuri film and an ordinary story, but it was a film after all. That mattered and nothing else. He looked around at the bald, graying men talking in whispers and felt a sudden sense of solidarity, a oneness. They all shared a common dream and that dream, unspoken and unrealized bound them, like the secret code of a Mafia gang. Every evening all their life they had assembled here unfailingly just to be a part of that dream, and over a period of time the dreaming itself had become as important as the realization.

Raj was not going to give up. He looked at Kumar, his mind dissecting the various possibilities in the story.

"I have an idea," he said, "The brothers have a younger sister."