Ecstasy and Agony

ECTASY AND AGONYtc "ECTASY AND AGONY"

Fortune smiled in her wayward manner on me, a balding teacher in my fifties, when an offer to play the leading man in a movie of mammoth proportions came my way recently.  An old student, my admirer, who is now a movie moghal made the offer to me in gratitude as  I had introduced him to the stage in a college play offering him a beggar’s role.  This movie magnate told me excitedly that the film he was going to make was a multi-lingual tragi-comic, socio-historical folklore with a generous mixture of science fiction and mythology.  He said the movie will be of epic dimensions.  The story was yet to be completed.  As the leading man I was offered a figure, which pardon me, I will not disclose, a palatial mansion and other fringe benefits as ‘gurudakshina’. The film has two heroines, one of them the reigning queen of the celluloid and the other a teenager of sweet sixteens.  There was of course, the inevitable villain with his stooges.

My disciple who is the producer cum script cum story writer cum music composer and dance master cum dialogue writer cum director wanted me to improve my build and physique in the first place and has put me through a rigorous regimen in the most modern gym in the city before the commencement of shooting.  I have to delight my heroines and the audiences with my bulging muscles more than the histrionic talents which I possess in plenty.

My entire being was filled with ecstasy at the prospect of making a debut in that crazily-sought after-but-difficult to reach wonder world of make-believe as the matinee idol and heart throb of millions of film goers.  I began to weave visions.

The citation which extolled my “social sense of histrionic abilities coupled with a sound physic which reflected an unsullied spirit of courage and intense nationalism, sense of service and sacrifice to the noble cause of moral upliftment and the greater good of mankind by personal example as an exemplary educationist and artist, not of this country alone but as a citizen of the world………..” at the award of Padma Bhushan to me by the `missile man’ President, was ringing in my ears as I drove down the drive of my magnificent mansion in a brightly coloured sports car to the low bowings of my liveried servants.  In an hour I was leaving on a tour of five foreign countries as the cultural ambassador of India to lecture on Indian cultural heritage and its effects on the world as a global village.  The tour will culminate in America where I would receive the Best Actor award having co-starred the Miss Universe of the new millennium in an inter-national co-operative venture that took the world by storm recently.  On my return an ambassadorial assignment was waiting for me round the corner.  Half a dozen premier Universities of the country had put my name down for the award of the honorary doctoral degree to be conferred on me, approved by the Governor Chancellors. A national cultural organisation had got ready a diamond studed crown to be presented to me and coufer on me the title “All India Nata Martanda” on my return. The major national political parties of the country vied with each other offering to make me the Chief Minister of any State, nay, even the Prime Minister of the country, if only I gave the nod.

Apart from the excruciating pains all over my body as a result of the gym rigours I have to face at least three major problems that bother me once the shooting starts.

The first is the super star of the silver screen, heroine number one, a breath-taking beauty no doubt, who has a hundred film hits to her credit and weighs as many kilos.  I have to make love to this ever green heroine naturally and convincingly, trot by the side of her heaviness, keep time with my steps to the tapping music like a dance horse, roll along with her on glassy slopes without being rolled over, play hide and seek with her in mango topes and casurina groves, over rugged rocks and gorgeous gorges, along the sands on sea shores and icy mountain sides, singing and smiling all the while.  The worst part of it all is the prospect of my having to lift on occasions as the script demands, my screen lady on to my shoulders or as the case may be and with my sweet charge thus hoisted run down slippery mountain walks in the first flush of gushing romantic love.  Tears well into my eyes when I think of holding in my bachelor arms this painted woman, this Gargantua in a tight love knot.

My role with the second heroine, a thin whiff of a girl, skin and bones and nothing else except her being in teens and a ‘new face’ to the screen has its own problems.  Of course I will be made up as a teenager to hide my ‘fatherly’ years. The script demands this feather weight beauty to chase me no end over vales and dales and finally win my reluctant heart only to marry the villain, who, by a twist of events gets transformed into a mahatma.  I have yet to know what my fate will be in the movie at the end.  I have at least half a dozen jig-jog drill dance sequences with this girl wherein I have to twist and turn my body and limbs in circus acrobatics, jerk my joints and rattle my bones at every turn, kicking and sawing the air with my legs and arms in studio managed rains and thunder showers, dressed in heavy leather jerkins in the hot African sun or in vests and briefs in cold Alps with an army of extras, both men and women, who appear suddenly from no where and join us in the dance sequences, mountain or forest, ocean or sky.  Of course this sweet little heroine will be in mini, semi, demy two piece bikini all the time, sun rain, hail or snow.

The third object of my dread is the villain; “the bloody, bawdy villain, lecherous, treacherous kindless villain”, with his steel muscles, hating eyes, crooked thoughts, shaven head and Bachchan beard. I have a number of bouts with him, fight him and his stooges with all my might mercilessly, no holds barred and save my two sweet hearts from his cruel clutches and establish moral order on this “blighted planet”.

For a teacher who seldom used a cane, I will have to wield monstrous looking murder weapons, instruments of war and destruction of all shapes and sizes, grunt and groan in nerve-racking torture chambers.  I must be a boxer, a wrestler and a karate king of all styles and no style.  My admirers may expect me to lift this confirmed screen villain, this man mountain, off his feet high over my head and propel him in mid air as did Hercules of yore the giant Antaeas and as did Dara Singh the Indian wrestler a few decades ago his opponents and throw him into abysmal depths of black chaos to rid the world of his malicious machinations.

In my pursuit of rooting out evil in society symbolized by this villain, I will have to jump down high cliffs, sky scrappers and tall tree tops, ride wild horses, perch precariously on foot boards of speeding trains piercing through pitch dark nights, hang on to high flying helicopters and rockets hurtling through space at incredible speeds and emerge triumphant at the end of this breath-taking, suspense packed, hair raising feats of deadly fray without suffering as much as a single scratch. I will have to swing from tree to tree like Tarzan of yester years and tame the beasts of the wild with my eyes like the present day Beast Master.  And then I have to contend with fire-belching pre-historic monsters, long and large, ride on their scaly s, saw and slash their rubbery limbs with electrically charged swords, guns and rifles, dive into deeps of the seas to kill the “sea-shouldering” whales and menacing man eating sharks to save my screen ladies, fly into the skies like the Super Man or crawl aloft hundred storied buildings like the Spider Man followed by or escape from airborne many headed winged creatures, the hydras of heavens which under the spell of the villain attack me.

I only hope that my mentor will not be realism crazy as the stage director in the story who wanted to administer real poison to the actor in the death scene but studio manage most of my stunts with graphics, appoint dummies, dupes and my doubles whenever I tend to faint or swoon in my scenes with the villain or even my screen ladies.

Tomorrow I go to sets with a heart full of confidence that my students, numbering tens of thousands in India and abroad, will attend the movie when it is released, again and again and again with family and friends so that the film runs into its hundredth day at hundred centres all over the globe.

In the meanwhile God bless my mark. Amen.