This is a short story about an ageing Bollywood scriptwriterBy Shevlin Sebastian
The people wore sad faces, as they offered condolences to Muzaffar Ali, in his house at Malad, Mumbai. His wife had passed away, at age 65, from a heart attack.
Muzaffar sat on a wooden chair, with a small pillow placed behind his lower back. On a wooden table near him, there was a cup of tea and a copy of the Hindi newspaper Hindustan.
The 68-year-old veteran Bollywood scriptwriter was not in the best of health. He had diabetes and high blood pressure. He had to take insulin injections and tablets to keep his pressure in control.
He was a scriptwriter whose stories were no longer accepted. “Sir, these are out-dated,” said one thirty-something director, as he stared at Muzaffar’s script resting on his lap. “People are not interested in village stories. Young people want a lot of action, sex and hi-jinks.”
Muzaffar did not feel angry. Trends change in cinema every ten years. He had been in it long enough to know that. New heroes, new concepts, and news ways of shooting.
Muzaffar was not the only one to be in this boat. Other scriptwriters of his age, his contemporaries, were twiddling their thumbs. They did not bother to write anything. But Muzaffar’s writing itch remained strong. And he worked every day. He felt he should be ready when the tide changed. But nobody knew how long that would take. He could be dead by then.
At the peak of his career, he had several hit films based on his scripts. In those times, Muzaffar went to many parties. He smoked cigars and drank Johnnie Walker whiskey. Many starlets approached him. Fluttering their eyelashes, they asked him to recommend him to directors.
Like most industry people, he took them to bed first. But unlike the others, if he felt the girl had talent, he would recommend them. A few got breaks. They were always grateful to him.
One or two told him they could lift their family out of poverty from the money they earned in the industry. Since he had not seen them on the screen, he assumed they had become high-class call girls. Later, he understood they were thanking him for giving them the access to the stars and the directors. One influential man led to another. And the currency notes poured in.
He heard stars wanted threesomes and foursomes. Some wanted to place handcuffs on them, tied to the bed’s posts.
One of South India’s top stars had a woman, with grey-black hair, and broad buttocks stationed in his van during the shooting. An ordinary-looking woman, she was supposed to be an expert in blow jobs. The star felt he acted better after she finished working on him.
The advantage was that the actor did not have to take off his costume and could return to the shoot quickly.
Of course, in these times of the #MeToo movement, it was a perilous time for actors. One tweet or a Facebook or Instagram post and their career would go up in smoke. Muzaffar knew the police could even arrest the stars. What a shame that would have brought their wives and families.
He wondered how the men tackled sexual temptations these days. A senior producer told him the starlets had to sign legal agreements which stated that the physical relationship was voluntary. But he was not sure whether this was true.
Muzaffar never imagined that one day his career would end. He had thought then that this success would continue forever. Unfortunately, that was not to be. A friend told him he was lucky to have a successful run that lasted 20 years.
He knew of many scriptwriters who had one hit and a string of flops. Thereafter, everybody avoided them like a man afflicted with chicken pox. The industry people were superstitious. They felt these scriptwriters brought bad luck. Many of them were in penury. Their families treated them with contempt because they could no longer earn a living. Most ended up as alcoholics. A couple of them committed suicide.
Muzaffar realised that in a creative industry like films, it is very difficult to have a long career. What you think is important is no longer important after a few years. The stories do not have a resonance with the audience. It was the rare artist who had a career that spanned decades.
Nowadays, desperate male stars did plastic surgery to remain young. He heard of an ageing superstar who, straight after the annual Filmfare function, had flown to London to get treated by one of England’s best cosmetic surgeons.
The doctor removed the wrinkles on the forehead, the crow’s feet around the eyes, pulled down the skin over the cheeks and lessened the neck lines.
Some stars took steroids, apart from weightlifting, to get six-pack bodies. Others went on protein-rich diets. One star, with his wife’s knowledge, installed a mistress in a nearby house so that he could feel and look young.
‘Wow,’ thought Muzaffar. ‘When you have too much money, fame, or power, you get into kinky sex.’ What about that industrialist who had sex with young boys? Muzaffar wondered whether his wife knew. The pimps always took the boys to the house. These pimps knew if they tried to blackmail this industrialist, they would end up as dead bodies floating in nearby ponds or rivers.
‘Sick,’ he thought as he shook his head and began reflecting on Bollywood once again.
He knew of many actors and actresses who had faded away. The point is when your career is over in your forties or fifties, what do you do after that? It is difficult to embark on another career. Fans would approach them in public places and ask, “Sir, when is your next film coming out?” The questioner knew very well that there were no roles to be had. This was the sadistic pleasure they got in plunging a knife into a man who was once up but was now down and out.
Most former stars would nod and walk away. If they were in a calm mood, these cold-hearted queries would ensure depression would rush in like a river in spate. It would take days before they restored their mental equilibrium. Thereafter, they avoided going out.
But there were stars who lasted for a long time. They had unmistakable charisma and talent. In Hollywood, there were people like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Tom Hanks. But they were also people who had grounded themselves, arrived on the set on time, learned their lines in advance, and behaved well.
Muzaffar remembered a video he had seen of De Niro. In it, the star said, “When things are going well, be calm. Don’t think you are on top of the world. You always gotta be wary. I have seen people come. I have seen people go. You should take what is good in your life and move forward cautiously. Everybody’s dispensable.”
Muzaffar had liked the video so much, especially the last line, that he had seen it many times. This was as true as it could get. And it was true for all professions, not only the film industry.
Like the other members of the industry, Muzaffar drank and smoked. But he did it in moderation. He had the mental discipline to control himself.
He gave his children, two sons and a daughter, an excellent education. They now lived prosperous lives in countries like Canada, the USA, and Australia. But they did not send him any money. And Muzaffar was too proud to ask for it.
But he was running out of money. Muzaffar could see the looming debt on the horizon.
On a recent morning, he did something unexpected. When he got up, he saw his wife was sleeping peacefully next to him. They had a loveless marriage. She had turned away from him because she knew he was sleeping with other women. From a marriage, it turned into a partnership.
Muzaffar got on top of her, placed a pillow over her face and pressed hard. He could feel her body struggling as she tried to push him away. But each time she did so, he felt a renewed surge of strength. In the end, it took about half an hour before she stopped breathing.
Muzaffar got off the bed and sat on the edge, his face in his hands. He could feel his entire body trembling. He couldn’t believe what he had done. But some deep, animalistic force had arisen in him and he seemed helpless in its power.
That there was a Rs 70 lakh life insurance policy in the name of his wife may have been the reason. And he was the nominee.
Muzaffar remembered the case of a woman star who had died in a pool at a five-star resort in Kuala Lumpur. It was not clear how she died because she had been an excellent swimmer. There were rumours that the husband, a producer, had got her drowned because of the huge life insurance policy in his wife’s name. His last film had flopped. He was up to his nose in debt. But nothing could be proved. In the end, family members cremated the body in Mumbai.
Muzaffar called his neighbour Dr. Homi Batliwala, who was the same age as him. When he entered the house, Muzaffar said, “It seemed my wife has suffered a heart attack.”
The doctor checked for the pulse. Then he lifted the eyelids and pointed a torch at the pupils. “It seems so,” Dr. Batliwala said. And he wrote the death certificate. Everything went smoothly after that. The burial took place within four hours, at the Kabristaan in New Mahakali Nagar. He would wait for a few months because he did not want to arouse any suspicion. Then he would cash the policy.
All’s well that ends well.
