Superstar

Tyres squealed and grit flew as Anjaan Kumar swerved his pajero to miss the sleeping labourers. He’d almost mowed down the migrant road diggers, sprawled like you’d think their fathers owned the pavement.

Awful evening. Damn the launch party. Damn the squeezie who’d played hard to get, only to vanish when it was time to go home. Her name was Pallavi, he’d wheedled out her number and stored it on his cell. He tried to recall the way she swayed and the lilt of her laughter. But after a few shots of molten gold they all seemed the same.

He winced as he realized he’d have to wake up in two hours for an early shoot. Nursing a solid hangover he’d still have to smile, switch on that boyish charm and parrot his lines. After all, he was THE Anjaan Kumar, heartthrob and billboard king.

He braked and reversed when he saw that the Carter Road approach to his sea-facing duplex was a concrete mess. He’d have to duck into a no entry lane for just a bit, but at three in the morning it shouldn’t matter. What was that? A lone cop on a bike signaling him to stop? Didn’t he know who he was? How dare he! But he would soon put the bumbling goon right. Why, he’d call up the commissioner and have this idiot packed off to some obscure hamlet!
~
(235)

Beat constable Pandu Athale was tired.

This new commissioner had strange notions, patrol the lanes and bylanes of Bandra as if this was some village, not the place where big people lived. Important people with empty minds. Brawls, car rage, windscreens smashed by ditched mistresses, screaming matches, gangs of rich brats vandalizing walls. An occasional suicide or petty theft.

He’d had enough of all this. One more hour and he could go home.

Not that things were any better at home. Pallavi, his daughter was acting up, or so he’d noticed for some time. She’d answer back, had chopped off her hair in defiance, and stayed overnight at her friend’s house all the time - to study - she said, but he knew better. It was all because of this Mumbai-culture. He just wished he could pack her off to his village in Ratnagiri, and get her married off to some good boy who’d keep her in check.

He stiffened as he noticed a pajero lurching from side to side, coming from the wrong direction. Yet one more boorish idiot who thought he owned the law. Drunk, no doubt, with tinted glasses rolled up as if his father wrote the rules. Why, he’d set him right! He’d take away his cell, license and then see what connections the man could drum up. He smiled as he signaled for the car to stop.

(235)



( for sub, cue: two points of view)