Tumi amako bhalobasho? Ekhono?”


“Lau, lau, lau!” He is a bit distracted, the script AD, but he tries his best. Although the lights have been set up for a while now, the artist for this scene can’t speak Bangla very well, and the AD’s job is to prep her within the hour. He did not write the dialogues. He will not call the shots. They have given him a somewhat impressive title: Monitor! The manager of Cocoon, an upscale boutique from where Aparna Sen will pick up an artifact sometime in the afternoon of the following day, a Wednesday, mistakes the novice artist for a well known face. She elbows Monitor for space across the table and volunteers to make the Bangla into Roman for the foreign artist, her eager face lapping up the shine of Elena’s radiant makeup that borders on the garish. Men in the unit surreptitiously leave their posts to check if the artist procured by the producer really stands up to the mark, the production value of the movie.

They seem to approve, because some of them suddenly grin like idiots, rapidly flick their tongues over dry lips and search the room for other pairs of eyes that might be labouring under the burden of similar thought. I am standing in a corner, waving my arms to check where I cast a shadow, checking if I can see the camera in any of the many mirrors artfully arranged around the boutique. It is an upscale sort of a place where cleverly disguised crap sells for artwork just inexpensive enough for those devoid of actual interest in art to hang and stuff and strew their living quarters with a semblance of culture. Driftwood dragged out of the sea is painted to look old, carved to look weathered; terracotta and gilt sculptures are pressed with grime and pasted into the crannies of the wood to make the whole structure organic. Lamps have been built into the sculptures, so that a seated Buddha smiles to one half of the room while casting his unkind gloom in another direction. Two men from the unit stoop to examine tin boxes for breath-mint, printed with pinup posters from the fifties in America and arranged over a faux-antique table. The manager raises an eyebrow. Her assistant, who has by now twice sprayed a jasmine scented room-freshener into my eye, transports his Babu potbelly to the table and unceremoniously removes the entire tray of glorious, nubile, buxom, sylphine ghosts from a distant land.

“Okay, okay,” says the artist, playing with her hair, eager to show how quickly she can learn the lines. “So, I say ‘love, love, love’ and run towards him?” She asks questions in Hindi and English, but the mustachioed AD answers only in Bangla. Cocoon’s manager bristles in her chair, eager to partake and please, but in her turn snubbed by those in the film fraternity. I can’t suppress a grin that flashes all too conspicuously across the room. Love, love, love! And hug the hero, a fat Bengali with too much cigarette in his breath, and be too eager to marry him. Of course, he is going to be distracted by the fleeting shape of his true love passing outside the shop window. One scene, with some six lines, to be shot from three different angles, and we are done in two hours. “You will manage,” says Devroop, first-time producer with a brown briefcase never an inch away from his body. “She will manage,” he comes over to mention to me. Perhaps he senses my skepticism. Love, love, love! Tumi amako bhalobasho? Ekhono? Do you love me, still?

The short reading progresses to a shorter rehearsal. The artist can’t remember all the nuanced consonants. The manager of the store tails her for a minute, reminding, mouthing, illustrating: “Like in rat!” Monitor stands behind the director, another potbellied man in plastic sandals, wearing the universal Kolkata scowl of someone with a digestive disorder, forever on guard against being found out at fraud as sincere artistic intellectual. Everything functions smoothly without his involvement, anyway. Two rehearsals reveal the need for prompts, cues, spoon-feeding by Monitor. The fans are shooed away from light sources and reflective surfaces, and other fans are switched off to create silence on the set. The manager quietly protests against switching off the air-conditioners, although the erratic hum of the machine is a cause for concern for the sound engineer. “Sound? Camera? ” “Rolling!”

Before the director says action, Elena runs on her toes towards Rahul, a swanlike imitation of what she must think of as cinematic elegance. She wants to be in a Bollywood movie eventually, one scene or two sufficing to round off her dream, perhaps a dance, but nothing item-like. Something with mehendi and flowers and running around trees, not a bit in a bar. “No, no,” says the director patiently before turning to the Monitor to ask what the artist’s name might be. “Action is meaning dialogue. Love, love love!” “Okay, okay, okay,” says Elena. After he nods at the cameraman, the sound-engineer, and the hero, the director barks: “Action!”

It is a Tuesday afternoon, and surely it is a Tuesday afternoon in Kathmandu, too, where, at one or two temples, Alok Nembang must have just finished bowing his head in a silent prayer. He is starting his second movie after Sano Sansar. Some people in the industry claim Sano Sansar did very well, and some people claim Sano Sansar didn’t do quite as well as it was expected to do. None of that matters now, I am sure, as Alok prepares to make similar adjustments in Kathmandu as I am watching in a boutique in Kolkata. Although, I doubt if any of his artists will have to be coached in the dialect being used, or reminded that “Action!” comes before action. I find myself wondering about where the pujas are being held for Alok’s movie. Perhaps one is at the temple of Karyabinayak, after which deity Alok has named his company. Perhaps another is a choice of the producers at Music Dot Com. I don’t know.

But the magic of cinema is the same here or there. A Bihari man wearing a bright blue shirt has found his way into the boutique. People in the unit mistake him for one of their own. He sidles over to my side. “That lady is the heroine of the film?” he asks. He drips with lust and leer. “No,” I tell him, “She is doing just one scene.” “She is not Indian,” he declares. “I don’t think so,” I say. “So she is not the heroine?” he asks. “I don’t think so.” But he clearly doesn’t believe me. He edges closer and closer towards Elena, until his toe softly knocks against a light-stand. He smiles at everyone who notices his intrusion and retreats to my side. “She will be a hit heroine,” he says. Elena looks at me across the room and smiles again. This makes the Bihari bristle. He shrinks. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile again. Monitor starts prompting Elena: “Love, love, love!”