ECTASY AND AGONY
D. Ranga Rao
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 back 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 backs,
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.