Strangely, the same car which had snatched his sleep also ensured he got some. My friends would come over at all odd hours. So Shamas would often go downstairs and sleep in the parked car in peace without being disturbed. Then at the crack of dawn, he would come upstairs to bathe and get dressed for work. We kept the car as a fond souvenir well until 2015 when it finally stopped working and simply had to be disposed of.
Today, we have come a full circle, with him directing me in an ad film and me producing his film. But even now, we shudder when we recall those days of the struggle to pay rent and buy food.
16Aaliya
She came out of nowhere. Not unlike the darkness that follows twilight, creeping in, in the blink of an eye; or the stars that suddenly appear out of nowhere on that ebony canvas of darkness, setting it alive. That’s how Anjali entered my life.
She was actually Shamas’s friend. Like so many of us, she too was in Mumbai as a struggling actress. She hails from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. Shamas and she worked together in Wounded, a film about dacoits. It was shot in what we call daaku (dacoit) land, in two parts. Anjali was playing the lead in the first half, as a teenager. In real life, she was about twenty-four. During the first leg of shooting, they were completely caught up in work and did not get any time to talk. In the second part of the shoot, they had some leeway, some free time to get acquainted. They chatted and got along so well that they became buddies. There were three of them actually: Shamas, Anjali and another actor called Awadesh. Till today, the three of them remain cronies.
After Wounded wrapped up, they returned to Mumbai and met on and off, not very often. Shamas was especially unavailable because he had shifted to TV by then, and as we all know, shooting in TV is a non-stop job. Then one day, out of the blue, Anjali called Shamas at 2.30 a.m. I woke up too, wondering what kind of a girl was calling at this hour. But it was an emergency. You see, the plight of struggling actresses is a lot worse than that of actors’. There is no scarcity of sadistic people who refuse to rent out flats to girls who are in the film business, and if they do, then they make their life difficult with all kinds of questions about late nights, etc. Anjali too was in a similar plight. She had gotten into an awful fight with her ‘PG’ Aunty—the landlady at whose house she was staying as a paying guest—over returning late at night from shoots.
‘Bhaijaan, she is my friend. She is on the street at Manish Nagar, Four Bungalows,’ he explained. ‘It is 2.30. Is it all right if she comes over?
‘Gosh, Shamas. She is a girl. Look at the hour. Get her here now!’ I said urgently, worried about her safety.
So that is how Anjali came over to stay at our house. A ‘friend’ of the opposite sex is sometimes just that, but sometimes there’s a grey spectrum to it. Not knowing that it was a platonic friendship, I left the two alone and went to stay at a friend’s place. I did not want to meddle. I assumed she was his girlfriend or at least there were romantic inclinations, but there were none. When I did not return for four or five days, Shamas was furious. ‘Due to you, my brother is getting troubled. Pack up now and leave,’ he was shouting angrily at Anjali. I happened to enter just then, back for some fresh clothes. On noticing me, Shamas declared, ‘Bhaijaan, she is leaving. Please come back.’
I was upset at Shamas. Had he lost it! Here was a girl, that too his friend, who had nowhere to go. How could he be so heartless! ‘No way, Shamas. Ladki hai. (It’s a girl.) Her safety is most important. She should not have any problems,’ I told him.
Meanwhile, Shamas and Anjali made some calls. It turned out that their friend Awadesh had bought his own flat in MHADA Four Bungalows itself. She asked him if she could come over. Of course, he agreed. And so she packed up and went to Awadesh’s and stayed there for about three months.
Imagine Shamas’s shock when he found her returning to our house, that too with all her baggage! ‘Ajeeb ho. Phir aa gayee tum! Kyon? (You’re a strange one. You have come here again! Why?),’ he demanded. While he was busy working non-stop, he had not realized that Anjali and I had been in constant touch. We had fallen in love. She took great care of me. Sometimes the presence of a girl lights up your life, like a festival cannot. I was happy. I simply told Shamas, ‘Call her Bhabhi.’
This time it was Shamas who left without saying a word for the same reasons that I had. He packed his clothes and took off to his friend’s house in Hiranandani, close to the location of his shoot. Not wanting to bother the couple or, as we say, be an annoying kebab mein haddi (a bone in the kebab), he stayed at his friend’s for nine months. It was the longest we had been apart.
Anjali and I continued to live together. We were madly in love but it was a tumultuous relationship, the course of which changed randomly,
