Fallen Leaves - Chapter 7
Adam Ayub
She pointed to the bed and said:-“This is where I sleep… alone”.
“Then where does the ayah sleep?” I asked.
“She sleeps on the floor” she replied.
We were alone in that building at that time. As she was showing me around, her body brushed against mine several times. It seemed deliberate.
“Aren’t you scared, staying here alone?” I asked her for something to say.
“No” She said. “I feel lonely at times, but I prefer it this way”
She spoke in an unusually soft and husky voice. By this time, we had reached the head of the stairs. She stopped there. I stopped too. She faced me. I looked into her eyes. They were aflame with passion! She was too short for my five feet ten inches height. She rose onto her toes and lifted up her head offering her pouting lips to me. Our lips were only inches apart, when the Ayah’s voice rang out in the hall below. “Rajani….”
Startled, we drew back and looked down. The Ayah was standing at the foot of the stairs looking up at us.
We regained our composure; I scurried down the steps, embarrassed.
Then the Ayah took me to a row of dinghy one bedroom houses. The surroundings were very dirty. The people staying in those houses appeared to be shady characters. A couple in an adjacent house seemed to be having a loud verbal argument. On the whole, the atmosphere was very disgusting. I told the Ayah I would inform my decision to Rajani. But I did not go back to her house. I hurried back to my room. The next day, Rajani did not talk to me. She did not even inquire whether I had liked the house. Her attitude was very stiff. I remembered the words of my philosopher friend, “It is a coward who runs away when a woman makes her advances”. Perhaps Rajani thought I was a coward when I did not seize the opportunity she had offered. I vowed that, next time, I would abide by my friend’s advice. It is a strange fact of my life that, though I had never had a lot of money, there had never been any dearth of female attention. Whenever I had tried to follow my friend’s advice it had often landed me in trouble!
My accommodation problem was finally resolved when my classmates from Karnataka invited me to join them at the Arun Hotel in Aminjikarai. As I could converse fluently in English, Hindi and Tamil, I was close with students from all the other three South Indian states. The Kannada students were good friends; so I moved in with them. Arun Hotel was a hotel with a bar which also had cabaret dances at weekends. It was three storeys high. Only the first and second floors were given out on daily rent. The third floor was given on monthly rent. It was decently furnished and had an attached bathroom. Though the rent was slightly higher than my previous residences, it was very clean and sophisticated.
My Kannada friends were Venu (who became a successful actor in Kannada cinema with the screen name Ashok), Ravi (who became a director), Krishna Swamy (who became famous as actor Satheesh) and last but not the least, Shivaji Rao Gaekwad (who became super star Rajaneekanth). Shivaji and I became very close friends. There were many reasons for this. Both of us came from poor financial backgrounds while all the others had affluent families back home. Both of us had no Godfathers in the industry. Since Shivaji had a Maharashtrian origin, he spoke Hindi well, and so we conversed in Hindi. We bonded well. Though we stayed in adjacent rooms, he always spent his free time in my room.
At that point in time, he was working as a conductor in the Karnataka Road Transport Corporation. He used to take prolonged leave of absences from his job to attend classes. During the vacations, he used to go and work as a bus conductor in Bangalore. He told me that his duty was on a regular fixed route. It was from a residential area to a commercial area. So the commuters were all regular guys and hence they did not insist on a ticket. He used to pocket some money this way when he went home for vacations. His family could not support his education. In fact, his education was financed by his fellow conductors and drivers. He used to get several money orders at the beginning of each month, all comprising of small amounts like five rupees or ten rupees. They were sent by his colleagues. On getting a money order from home, his affluent friends used to celebrate with a bottle of beer. But Shivaji had to be content with illicit hooch from the nearby slum. As far as I was concerned, I had no money even to eat, so where was the inclination to drink!
My struggle in the film industry had started at the institute itself as my Father was finding it very difficult to finance my studies. The condition at home was bad enough. My Father had lost everything in the transport contract business as his partner had cheated him. There was no income for the family. We were selling our movable and immovable properties one by one to make both ends meet. It was in these hard times that I had chosen to join the film institute. When all my friends received large money orders at the beginning of every month, Shivaji received many small ones and I received none.
Meanwhile, my brother Akbar had joined the Mazagon Docks,Bombay as a marine engineer trainee. My brother in law sent some money. I understood it was due to my father’s request that he sent me the money. I did not receive money orders every month on a regular basis. There were long intervals between my money orders unlike my other friends who received money regularly during the first week of every month. Consequently, I could never pay my rent or fees on time. But I took extreme care to see that my poverty was hidden from my friends. They thought that my parsimony was due to my dislike of ostentatious living.
My mother used to write very long letters to me. She had a flair for writing. She had a literary bent of mind though she had studied only up to the 10th standard. Her letters were always very poignant, describing the situation at home in detail. It always touched a painful chord in my heart. I could bear my hunger but I could not bear the thought of my parents and sisters suffering so much due to the paucity of funds at home. Until the course was over, I could not even start trying for an opening in the industry. Whenever I went to bed on an empty stomach, I always consoled myself, “It’s always darkest before dawn; the darker the night, the brighter the morning will be!”
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