Auteur, madarchod!
filed under
incidents,
joke falls,
Movies,
ramblings
When you are in bed all day, wrapped in a bedsheet in the sultriness of Madras, knocked out by a fever, wavering ever so subtly between sleep and waking until you don't know which is which, your brain starts functioning in a zone of its own. Time becomes fuzzy, even irrelevant. Fungible. Ah, yes. That's the word, fungible! I like that word, it's so cuddly, so flexible.
Your brain thinks thoughts, your brain reaches startling conclusions, and when you try retracing the steps you went through to reach there, you find the breadcrumbs eaten away by the demon-like birds in your head.
The little iPod embedded in my brain, constantly buzzing, always on shuffle, sings now in Anu Malik's voice, "She gives me fever, fever, fever." His distinctive inflection, his fake not-Bombay-not-America accent, his slight tunelessness at the end of each line, all ring clearly in my head. This hasn't happened in a while. I open my eyes, and find my neck drenched in fevered sweat, the fan groaning while it whirs unenthusiastically, and vague sounds of a Tamil serial from the adjacent room. I reach out to the bottle of water on the bedside table and drink a rather large gulp. When that water break morphs back into my febrile sleep, I hear that voice again. Anu Malik. That paragon of frivolousness. That antonym of mellifluousness. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh."
My closed palms feel warm, my feet feel cold. I shiver a little.
The song makes it way to the core of my existence, it consumes my soul, it kindles the flame within, and it unearths a curious memory that lies buried deep, deep within.
I am now in the summer of 2000. My friend and I have been packed off to Trichy to spend some time with his aunt. The mornings and evenings, we spend cycling in and around the little town. We unexpectedly run into some girls in a park. We make nervous conversation with them. The voices in this conversation seem to come from a well -- there is a slight reverberation about them. Like dream sequences in the movies. The girls ask us if we want to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's End of Days in a theatre nearby. I hold one of the girls' hands throughout the movie and kiss it just before the climax. She blushes.
The kiss wakes me up. I am back in the present, and I realise that my brain just added its own cinematic masala to a rather monotonous holiday. I smile. I doze off again.
Now we are in my friend's aunt's house in Trichy. It is a dreary, meandering, dull, drooping, dreadful, afternoon. We are channel-flipping between vague Bollywood music channels. And we discover this song. The anthem of my fever. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh." A pre-Big Brother, pre-UP-Bihar-lootne, pre-yoga-in-extreme-tights Shilpa Shetty, looking extremely desirable, canoodling a drugged-out Sanjay Dutt on an uncomfortably shaped sofa in a dingy set. And in the background, off-key women chorus singers going "Whose that girl with the lovely, lovely smile...", soon to be joined by Anu Malik trying to sound lovelorn and horny at once.
The movie, I finally recall, is Jung.
I am not in that drawing room anymore. I am now in Kalpana Theatre, Udupi, and the moth eaten seats bring a flood of memories. Of the the jail-like ticket queue, of Rs. 18 balcony seats, of drinking local cool drink Ba-Jal during the interval, of vague art deco construction, of actually kissing a girl in the the darkened halls while watching Mission Impossible 2 in Hindi.
"She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh," Anu Malik continues singing, now in surround sound. Shilpa curves and cavorts around Sanjay Dutt and the sofa. I am not sure which of the two is luckier. My friend's hands are not where they should be. Our verdict, "Shilpa Shetty has come out good, man!" She scorches our senses and blanks out the rest of the movie.
(I am now reminded of Sanjay Gupta's previous outing, Khauff, which I watch in the same theatre with the same friend. Until the movie starts, I think I have come for an English movie called Cough.)
As Jung hurtles towards its laborious climax, I hear a threatening baritone from my left. I turn around to see a dark, bulky, french-bearded figure bearing down on me, asking, "You must be a fan. You seem to have seen all my movies."
It dawns on me. The new entrant is Sanjay Gupta himself. I reply, in a voice that isn't my own, "Not all. I missed Aatish: Feel the Fire. Although I must admit, of all your movies, that one has the most thrilling title."
He smiles, "You lucky bastard. Imagine how many times I must have seen it during editing."
"That explains the mindnumbing Hameshaa. I knew it couldn't have come from a straight-thinking mind," I console him. "Your expertise always lay in remaking Hollywood movies, featuring silly, overloud comedy, steamy song sequences, desperate posturing, a bored Sanjay Dutt and faux grittiness."
"Thank you for reducing my life's work to a stereotype," he says.
"Oh, come on. I'm telling you that you're an auteur," I offer, "A French word, monsieur. That must make you feel posh."
He collapses into the seat next to me, and says, "You know. It's funny you use that word -- auteur. It's become famous in India these days." There is a gleam in his eyes, as he turns around to the projection room and shouts, "Projectionist! Start from the beginning!"
I look at Sanjay in horror, "Dude, I cannot go through this movie again."
"I merely want to refresh your memory, pal," Sanjay says. The 'pal' proves he watches too much cheap Hollywood for his own good.
The titles are now on the screen. Familiar names whizz past me. Jackie Shroff, Sanjay Dutt, Raveena Tandon, Anu Malik... And at one point, he stands up and screams again, "Projectionist, pause!"
I stare at the screen in shock at the name on it. Anurag Kashyap. Yes, that very same Anurag Kashyap -- the Hindi New Wave hero, the man they call the saviour of Indian cinema, the toast of the Cannes Directors' Fortnight -- is involved in writing an embarrassing rip-off of a middling Hollywood film called Desperate Measures.
Sanjay roars with laughter, "But Anurag is an honourable man!"
I am dismayed. I ask into the void of Kalpana Theatre, "Et tu, Anurag?"
A pair of dark-rimmed spectacles appears on the screen. Soon these are filled by large, keen, black eyes. A round, stocky face forms itself around the spectacles, and an uneven beard grows. In a barely masked North Indian accent, the face speaks, "I can explain myself!"
"Admit it, Anurag!" Sanjay hollers, "You did this once more. This movie called Paisa Vasool."
I ask, utterly disappointed, "Anurag, you wrote that cinematic excreta also?"
"No, no. Wait," Anurag tries.
But Sanjay interjects again, "Anurag is an honourable man! Hahahaha. You see, young fellow, where Gangs of Wasseypur comes from? It's not him going nudge-nudge-wink-wink at masala. He's just making what he knows how to make, and people are attributing nudges and winks. Auteur, saala madarchod!"
"Order, order," I shout, my legal instincts coming to the fore, "We must allow the accused to present his case."
"Milaard," Anurag starts, "Around 1999, there was this series on TV called Darr starring Kay Kay Menon and Irrfan Khan. Neither actor was well known then -- their career defining roles still more than half a decade away."
I remember it being a fairly gripping series about a dope-head serial killer (Irrfan) called, if my memory serves me right, "Desi Jallad" engaged in a battle of wits with a policeman (Kay Kay). I wonder where the accused is going with this.
"It was directed by my brother, Abhinav Kashyap, and the two of us co-wrote it. At some point during the series, my name stopped appearing in the credits, and the series turned a little less edgy and a little more melodramatic." He pauses, catches his breath, and asks, "You want to know the truth?"
"Yes," I say.
"You can't handle the truth," he says, his voice acquiring a stentorian quality.
"Dude, too many movie references. Stick to your story."
"Sorry, milaard," he says. "The truth is, I never wrote Darr. My brother wrote it, he directed it."
Sanjay laughs. I make notes in my notebook, and say, "Yes, Mr. Accused. Go on."
"You see, Satya was out by this time, and he only wanted me to lend my name to it. You know how far a name goes in show business. And I did this only for my brother. My own brother. My own blood. Same mother. Same father also. Mere bhai ke liye main itna bhi nahin kar sakta kya? We both came from Uttar Pradesh searching for jobs. We slept on benches, footpaths, beaches. We often ate Tiger biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner because you got nothing more wholesome for Rs. 3. Sometimes, we didn't even have enough money for that... Is what I did wrong? My hunger did this, milaard. My desperation did this."
Sanjay wipes a tear off his cheek.
I think for a while and pronounce judgment, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.' "
Anurag says, "Saale, milaard ke bacche, you think only you've read The Great Gatsby? Even Bachchan Amitabh has read it now."
I smile sheepishly. "Wait. You haven't explained Paisa Vasool. Your co-writer (and director) on Paisa Vasool was a man called Srinivas Bhashyam. He can't be your brother. Even if he his, he's definitely not same mother, same father."
"You must understand. Bhashyam's greatest achievements at that point were that he was Assistant Director on the hilarious Tamil classic Magalir Mattum and Second Unit Director of Mani Ratnam's blockbuster Bombay. He was making a Bollywood debut with Paisa Vasool. I was helping him out... After all, even an artist needs to eat some light Indian breads with lentil soup twice a day, no?"
"Srinivas Bhashyam sounds like he would prefer rice and mulligatawny soup."
I hear a distant voice. It is my grandmother's. Anurag, Sanjay, my friend, the theatre, all dissolve into my bedroom, now bathed in a dim yellow light from a distant bulb. My grandmother says, "Wake up, kanna. Eat some rasam saadam. It will do you good."
I say, "One minute, Paati. Coming."
I start my laptop, open Youtube, find the song, and listen to it.
Your brain thinks thoughts, your brain reaches startling conclusions, and when you try retracing the steps you went through to reach there, you find the breadcrumbs eaten away by the demon-like birds in your head.
The little iPod embedded in my brain, constantly buzzing, always on shuffle, sings now in Anu Malik's voice, "She gives me fever, fever, fever." His distinctive inflection, his fake not-Bombay-not-America accent, his slight tunelessness at the end of each line, all ring clearly in my head. This hasn't happened in a while. I open my eyes, and find my neck drenched in fevered sweat, the fan groaning while it whirs unenthusiastically, and vague sounds of a Tamil serial from the adjacent room. I reach out to the bottle of water on the bedside table and drink a rather large gulp. When that water break morphs back into my febrile sleep, I hear that voice again. Anu Malik. That paragon of frivolousness. That antonym of mellifluousness. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh."
My closed palms feel warm, my feet feel cold. I shiver a little.
The song makes it way to the core of my existence, it consumes my soul, it kindles the flame within, and it unearths a curious memory that lies buried deep, deep within.
I am now in the summer of 2000. My friend and I have been packed off to Trichy to spend some time with his aunt. The mornings and evenings, we spend cycling in and around the little town. We unexpectedly run into some girls in a park. We make nervous conversation with them. The voices in this conversation seem to come from a well -- there is a slight reverberation about them. Like dream sequences in the movies. The girls ask us if we want to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's End of Days in a theatre nearby. I hold one of the girls' hands throughout the movie and kiss it just before the climax. She blushes.
The kiss wakes me up. I am back in the present, and I realise that my brain just added its own cinematic masala to a rather monotonous holiday. I smile. I doze off again.
Now we are in my friend's aunt's house in Trichy. It is a dreary, meandering, dull, drooping, dreadful, afternoon. We are channel-flipping between vague Bollywood music channels. And we discover this song. The anthem of my fever. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh." A pre-Big Brother, pre-UP-Bihar-lootne, pre-yoga-in-extreme-tights Shilpa Shetty, looking extremely desirable, canoodling a drugged-out Sanjay Dutt on an uncomfortably shaped sofa in a dingy set. And in the background, off-key women chorus singers going "Whose that girl with the lovely, lovely smile...", soon to be joined by Anu Malik trying to sound lovelorn and horny at once.
The movie, I finally recall, is Jung.
I am not in that drawing room anymore. I am now in Kalpana Theatre, Udupi, and the moth eaten seats bring a flood of memories. Of the the jail-like ticket queue, of Rs. 18 balcony seats, of drinking local cool drink Ba-Jal during the interval, of vague art deco construction, of actually kissing a girl in the the darkened halls while watching Mission Impossible 2 in Hindi.
"She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh," Anu Malik continues singing, now in surround sound. Shilpa curves and cavorts around Sanjay Dutt and the sofa. I am not sure which of the two is luckier. My friend's hands are not where they should be. Our verdict, "Shilpa Shetty has come out good, man!" She scorches our senses and blanks out the rest of the movie.
(I am now reminded of Sanjay Gupta's previous outing, Khauff, which I watch in the same theatre with the same friend. Until the movie starts, I think I have come for an English movie called Cough.)
As Jung hurtles towards its laborious climax, I hear a threatening baritone from my left. I turn around to see a dark, bulky, french-bearded figure bearing down on me, asking, "You must be a fan. You seem to have seen all my movies."
It dawns on me. The new entrant is Sanjay Gupta himself. I reply, in a voice that isn't my own, "Not all. I missed Aatish: Feel the Fire. Although I must admit, of all your movies, that one has the most thrilling title."
He smiles, "You lucky bastard. Imagine how many times I must have seen it during editing."
"That explains the mindnumbing Hameshaa. I knew it couldn't have come from a straight-thinking mind," I console him. "Your expertise always lay in remaking Hollywood movies, featuring silly, overloud comedy, steamy song sequences, desperate posturing, a bored Sanjay Dutt and faux grittiness."
"Thank you for reducing my life's work to a stereotype," he says.
"Oh, come on. I'm telling you that you're an auteur," I offer, "A French word, monsieur. That must make you feel posh."
He collapses into the seat next to me, and says, "You know. It's funny you use that word -- auteur. It's become famous in India these days." There is a gleam in his eyes, as he turns around to the projection room and shouts, "Projectionist! Start from the beginning!"
I look at Sanjay in horror, "Dude, I cannot go through this movie again."
"I merely want to refresh your memory, pal," Sanjay says. The 'pal' proves he watches too much cheap Hollywood for his own good.
The titles are now on the screen. Familiar names whizz past me. Jackie Shroff, Sanjay Dutt, Raveena Tandon, Anu Malik... And at one point, he stands up and screams again, "Projectionist, pause!"
I stare at the screen in shock at the name on it. Anurag Kashyap. Yes, that very same Anurag Kashyap -- the Hindi New Wave hero, the man they call the saviour of Indian cinema, the toast of the Cannes Directors' Fortnight -- is involved in writing an embarrassing rip-off of a middling Hollywood film called Desperate Measures.
Sanjay roars with laughter, "But Anurag is an honourable man!"
I am dismayed. I ask into the void of Kalpana Theatre, "Et tu, Anurag?"
A pair of dark-rimmed spectacles appears on the screen. Soon these are filled by large, keen, black eyes. A round, stocky face forms itself around the spectacles, and an uneven beard grows. In a barely masked North Indian accent, the face speaks, "I can explain myself!"
"Admit it, Anurag!" Sanjay hollers, "You did this once more. This movie called Paisa Vasool."
I ask, utterly disappointed, "Anurag, you wrote that cinematic excreta also?"
"No, no. Wait," Anurag tries.
But Sanjay interjects again, "Anurag is an honourable man! Hahahaha. You see, young fellow, where Gangs of Wasseypur comes from? It's not him going nudge-nudge-wink-wink at masala. He's just making what he knows how to make, and people are attributing nudges and winks. Auteur, saala madarchod!"
"Order, order," I shout, my legal instincts coming to the fore, "We must allow the accused to present his case."
"Milaard," Anurag starts, "Around 1999, there was this series on TV called Darr starring Kay Kay Menon and Irrfan Khan. Neither actor was well known then -- their career defining roles still more than half a decade away."
I remember it being a fairly gripping series about a dope-head serial killer (Irrfan) called, if my memory serves me right, "Desi Jallad" engaged in a battle of wits with a policeman (Kay Kay). I wonder where the accused is going with this.
"It was directed by my brother, Abhinav Kashyap, and the two of us co-wrote it. At some point during the series, my name stopped appearing in the credits, and the series turned a little less edgy and a little more melodramatic." He pauses, catches his breath, and asks, "You want to know the truth?"
"Yes," I say.
"You can't handle the truth," he says, his voice acquiring a stentorian quality.
"Dude, too many movie references. Stick to your story."
"Sorry, milaard," he says. "The truth is, I never wrote Darr. My brother wrote it, he directed it."
Sanjay laughs. I make notes in my notebook, and say, "Yes, Mr. Accused. Go on."
"You see, Satya was out by this time, and he only wanted me to lend my name to it. You know how far a name goes in show business. And I did this only for my brother. My own brother. My own blood. Same mother. Same father also. Mere bhai ke liye main itna bhi nahin kar sakta kya? We both came from Uttar Pradesh searching for jobs. We slept on benches, footpaths, beaches. We often ate Tiger biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner because you got nothing more wholesome for Rs. 3. Sometimes, we didn't even have enough money for that... Is what I did wrong? My hunger did this, milaard. My desperation did this."
Sanjay wipes a tear off his cheek.
I think for a while and pronounce judgment, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.' "
Anurag says, "Saale, milaard ke bacche, you think only you've read The Great Gatsby? Even Bachchan Amitabh has read it now."
I smile sheepishly. "Wait. You haven't explained Paisa Vasool. Your co-writer (and director) on Paisa Vasool was a man called Srinivas Bhashyam. He can't be your brother. Even if he his, he's definitely not same mother, same father."
"You must understand. Bhashyam's greatest achievements at that point were that he was Assistant Director on the hilarious Tamil classic Magalir Mattum and Second Unit Director of Mani Ratnam's blockbuster Bombay. He was making a Bollywood debut with Paisa Vasool. I was helping him out... After all, even an artist needs to eat some light Indian breads with lentil soup twice a day, no?"
"Srinivas Bhashyam sounds like he would prefer rice and mulligatawny soup."
I hear a distant voice. It is my grandmother's. Anurag, Sanjay, my friend, the theatre, all dissolve into my bedroom, now bathed in a dim yellow light from a distant bulb. My grandmother says, "Wake up, kanna. Eat some rasam saadam. It will do you good."
I say, "One minute, Paati. Coming."
I start my laptop, open Youtube, find the song, and listen to it.
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