Reality Bites

The village always wore a colourful look in summer. Reds and bright greens and plastic bangles that showered the hundred hot hues of the midday sun were seen on every mud road by day. At night the lanterns were shaded with coloured paper and painted each street in their light: hence the names of the streets - Red Street, Blue Street and so on.

Electricity was not unheard of but not always available at the flipping of a switch and most other amenities that are taken for granted in a big city were not even luxuries here. There was a hospital that took in the sick and those wounded attending to their laborious tasks in the fields, the outlying mines or the household work; but it was ill-equipped and the villagers usually preferred country medicine. There was also a school that taught kids until they were old enough to work their fathers' trade or be married to some lusty young farmer or labourer. Sewage and drinking water both mingled at the local lake that was dry seven months a year on average. There were scores of troubles to be settled everyday and just three policemen and the trusted village elders, who lived in the adjacent town and met on weekends under the huge banyan tree, to resolve them. But life went on and except for the odd disorderly young man who went to the big city with his pockets full of dreams, people were contented with making kids, neighbourly gossip, monthly cinemas and the traditional festivals.

This year though there was unrest on an unheard of scale and the panchayats started meeting every other evening and the police station was full of bustling men and women who had landed in the village on big jeeps and vans from the city. A big filmmaker had heard of the village and had decided to base his next film in the colourful village. A host of top movie stars and 'extras' had come overnight with the panchayat chiefs and had persuaded the villagers gently to move out of their houses for a month so the shooting could be conducted in a smooth manner. The villagers were addicted to obedience and left with the few things they possessed on their backs to the tents outside the village that had been erected for them by the producer.

The first few days went by quickly as the villagers were treated to special dinners and special screenings of their favourite movies in the old cinema-tent. They also got to see their favourite idols in person and some were lucky enough to talk to them. The peculiarities of the movie-making business also awed them to an extent.

The director was one of those modern types who had studied abroad and wanted to make a movie steeped in reality. He was not one to be satisfied with sets and had persuaded his producer to rent the entire village for a month or two. He had also wanted a whole truckload of 'extras' for the villager parts and had conducted an audition all round the country to get the right people for the parts. The producer was the old fox who had made loads of money in real estate and hotels and had jumped into the film business at the right moment. He had a few hits behind him already and was now experimenting with serious cinema. He understood the workings of inner country villages and had obtained the whole village for the director for next to nothing.

Given the number of stars and the characters of the producer and the director, it was inevitable that fights should start and the days dragged on and the movie was nowhere near getting complete. People kept stepping on exposed nerves and whole days were lost to mysterious illnesses. The villagers were initially out of this all as they resumed their daily routine after the first few days of an embarrassing courtship. Slowly, however, the movie-makers started infiltrating the village camps. The extras came first, complaining to the womenfolk about how they were being treated and regaled them with accounts of stars getting it all from the director. The girls of the village were excited by tales of what this hero or that heroine did on their last birthdays, and the kids, whose school was being used to house the equipment, played with the kids who had come to play the parts of village urchins. City fashions moved in slowly as the womenfolk learnt to question what their husbands had done after work that day and asked the tired-out men to help with the cooking. The men too learnt to say big words like 'enlightenment', 'democracy', and smoke costly beedis with big brand names from the male extras who caught them on their way back from work for small talk. The 'stars' too came to the tents with the director and the producer to learn how village people behaved normally. They were of course gawked at and in spite of the director's strict orders and the producer's pleas that they continue with their routine work, large crowds of women and kids surrounded the entourage photographing them with their eyes.

After two months had passed the shooting was still not done and the extras were leaving in small groups. The producer was getting more and more anxious but the director assured him that he needed only a week and then a final 'surprise' scene which would make the film complete. The theme, he explained, of a village's slow urbanization leading to its losing the powerful roots of tradition due to the influx of foreign ideas unsuited for an undeveloped soil and the subsequent annihilation of the entire superstructures on which life in poverty is based, viz., need and immediate satisfaction, hope and resignation, had to be handled carefully. He assured him the climax was near and the final scene will be etched into the history of film-making. The producer was sceptical but he was satified with the promise of a week.

That week was the worst in the village's history. Nights were growing warmer and the children were crying more often as tempers frayed along the long lines of underclad villagers jostling each other to watch their favourite movie stars in action. The men had stopped working completely as soon as they heard the 'stars' were leaving in a week; and the women just kept badgering them for being irresponsible. The tents were now shabby and the rains were due very soon. A lot of mischief was happening that people did not really like and the 'extras' were no longer allowed near the tents. Old disputes were remembered when children fought for tops and the elders only egged termagants on. Blows that had not been seen and words that had not been heard were exchanged and panchayats were beginning to be shouted down. The farms were left to the winds and the mines had started recruiting men from other villages. Food was scarce and water rarely available. The one doctor in the old hospital had left the village when his warnings were not heeded by the villagers and the schoolmaster was anyway an old fart. The sick were left to their own devices and births and deaths were treated as irritants by the respective families. All emotions were tied up in their village houses where they had lived forever and which were now sanctified by the occupation of the filmstars. And so it went on for fifteen days, beyond what the director had promised the producer and beyond all that simple men from a simple village could bear.

On the sixteenth day from the director's promise, he started his last scene. He had brought in special technicians from the city a couple of days earlier and had made rubber dummies of all the actors in the film. Nobody knew what the final scene was supposed to be but the actors and villagers were all asked to keep some distance. Even the people in the film were bemused but the crowd of villagers thronging the outskirts of their village watched on in a mixture of agony and ecstasy as the final act unfolded. There were no sharp words now; they were beyond all that. Each man of the village hated every other man and the women didn't even care any more. The kids were now really urchins and could pull a few sly tricks. The panchayat chiefs were back from the city for today and had made a grand speech everyone had slept through, in the morning.

At noon, there was a roar from somewhere and the director was seen shooting from the top of a hillock some distance away. Dust was everywhere and as the spate of coughs ended and the dust cleared, the villagers heard an unfamiliar sound. Bulldozers were moving in and as they watched, their houses were demolished one by one. The school was lost to rubbish but when they saw their god in the temple losing his hold on eternity, they started running in. Just then the bulldozer stopped and the men in it ran away towards the other end of the city. There were lots of shouts and screams and in that moment all enmities of the past week were forgotten as the prospect of a collective loss loomed. People hugged each other and there were tears and smiles; there was wrath too but now they wanted to first get together. Then the earth rumbled and a deafening roar split the sky. A few more shocks followed and then smoke and fire and the debris of a ruined dream showered on those who had been living a moment ago. A few cries were heard by the stunned movie-people, who were still standing outside village limits on the director's orders, and then there was nothing. A small child grasping in her little arms the sooty doll with a disfigured nose mourned her untimely end as reality was summed up in a few edgy takes.

The movie opened to great applause and a new hero was seen in the director who took realism to great heights. People claimed they had heard of such a village in the north or the west or the south of the country and a few doubters claimed the movie could not have been made except by really slaughtering a whole village. Many awards were won and the director signed several autographs and a few new movies. People wrote in saying they were touched by the movie and as the final feather on its crown, the film won the National Award and was selected to be sent as the official representative at the Oscars. And the producer hanged himself a few days later.

Much is lost but much retained.

Road Trip

Summer scents. Flowers and leaves floating on the wind. The wind knocking on reinforced glass. And the occassional stream. A few cars, trucks, motorbikes. Loud music and meaningless conversation. A long road with rest areas every tens of miles. Two kids staring out of a window passing into the past and future. Bright light. No end in sight. Troubled looks and green, black, red lines on maps. A destination. Food stops and stretched legs. Water bottles passed back and forth. Coke cans emptied and onto the road. Claustrophobic laughs and snores. Sleep. Home.

Pottering about diagonally

Free Verse Now

You know the way smoke bends
When it comes out of a hidden chimney
Taking on forms of people you know
And talking to you in silent whispers
Conspiring with the setting day
And the beauty you have drunk to excess
It makes you think of forgotten days
When there were flowers by the road
And children playing on the streets
With tops and balls and all that
And there were pretty maidens getting back
From the well carrying their pitchers
It fogs your brain - the smoke i mean
And makes you think of those huge trees
With place to sit beneath and talk to your love
Of dreams that you knew would never come true
It makes you believe in forgotten vows
How you will build your home and buy a car
How you will go to the movies every weekend
And take your kids to Disneyland
And have fun at the beach every month
It makes real those dream-enchanted eyes
That looked with innocence as you waxed high
And declared you will love to the end of days
Those sweet tender lips that you so wanted to kiss
Those small firm breasts you ached to press
It makes real that half-feigned smile
That lighted on her lips when you brandished a stick
And waved it about destroying enemies of air
Killing destroying the wicked and being the good Hero
To her gentle Heroine sweet and coy
It makes real those tearful goodbyes
When you had to go from home in search of Life
And all those promises to keep and those locks of hair
Sweet remembrances of haylofts and caresses
Or are they dreams
And then the hard work the toil
It brings to mind the mindless days
When you went from sickness to sickness
A crumbling home to a cruel shop
Killing you slowly draining life out of you
Making you do things you didnt know you could
Bringing down the playhouses of children
Destroying their innocence
Making the barren world an image of yourself
Living unto death a machines life
And holding in one hand the ales stink
Making the rounds of a maddening world
And entering alleys that lead underground
Where smoke comes from chimneys too well hidden
To know what is real and what is in your dreams