It was Aibak, the film about Qutbuddin Aibak the first of the Slave Kings and the building of the Qutb Minar, that showed the industry that the new godfather meant business. The high-budget historical drama had been a lifetime pet project of one of the grandees of Bollywood, the producer A. Kareem, and it featured three of the “six boys and four girls” who, according to common parlance, were the ultrastars of the time. Two weeks before the commencement of principal photography Kareem received a note informing him, a Muslim himself, that the proposed film was insulting to Islam because it referred to the new ruler as a slave, and demanding that the project be canceled, or, alternatively, that a “permission slash apology fee” of one crore of rupees in used, nonsequential banknotes be paid to the representative of Z-Company who would present himself in due course. Kareem immediately called a press conference and publicly jeered at Zamzama Alankar and his gang. “These philistines think they can phuck with me?” Kareem cried, pronouncing both ph’s as powerfully plosive sounds. “So ignorant they do not know that the names by which this dynasty is known, Mamluk or Ghulam, both mean ‘slave.’ We are making a banner production here, a landmark picturization of our history. No bunch of goons can stop us.” Four days later, a small heavily armed group of men led by Zamzama’s lieutenants Big Head and Short Fingers invaded the secure lot in Mehrauli near the real Qutb Minar where the extremely elaborate set for the movie had been built, and set it on fire. The film was never made. A. Kareem complained of intense chest pains soon after the destruction of the movie set and died literally of a broken heart. Doctors examining the body said that the organ had literally burst apart inside him. Nobody ever jeered at Zamzama Alankar again.
Nero continued to invite Zamzama to parties at his home, and the movie industry’s A-list continued to attend. Zamzama himself began to throw the most lavish affairs anyone had ever seen, flying planeloads of guests to Dubai, and everyone went. This was how it must have been in the heyday of Al Capone, the dark glamour, the seduction of danger, the heady cocktail of fear and desire. The Zamzama parties were reported in all the papers, the stars glittering in their nocturnal finery. The police sat on their hands. And sometimes on the morning after a great fireworks of a celebration, there would be a knock on the door of a producer sleeping off his overindulgences in a stateroom on a Z-Company yacht, perhaps in the company of a starlet who was too stupid to know that this was never, ever the way to the top; and there would be Big Head or Little Feet with a contract for the producer to sign, giving away all the overseas rights of his latest film at highly disadvantageous terms, and there would be a large weapon pointing at his head to help persuade him, and the days of gallantry were gone, nobody told the naked starlet in the bed to make herself decent and run. Party in the front, business in the back, that was the Z-Company way. Many of Bollywood’s leading lights had to ask for, and receive, police protection, and they were never sure if it would be enough, or if the men in uniform would turn out to be beholden to Zamzama, and the guns intended to protect would point inward at the principal rather than outward toward the dangerous inscrutable city. And the law? The law turned a nearly blind eye. Small fry were sometimes thrown in jail as a sop to public opinion. The big fish swam freely in that sea.
Daughter, daughter, Nero said. I was among the worst of them, because they never tried to extort me. I willingly did their money work, and they were good to me financially, and I accepted it all, it was the way of the world, I thought, and maybe it was, but the world is a bad place, you should look for a better world than the one we have made.
He was not a victim of the extortion racket but he didn’t have to be. The threats and assassination attempts and actual killings of those years had him scared stupid. He had a lot to lose. He had expensive property, he had buildings going up all over town, he had a wife, and he had sons. He had all the weaknesses Zamzama looked for and needed. It was not necessary for the Z-Company people even to mention these weaknesses to him. They were the unspoken bond between the mob and Nero. Who was he to them? They had the dirty washing and he did their laundry. He was their dhobi. They actually called him that, Big Head the dwarf and Short Fingers with the orange hair and Little Feet who had the biggest feet anyone had ever seen. “Hey, dhobi!” they said on the phone. “Got some washing for you. Come and take it to the ghat.” When he saw them they would snap their fingers. “Get it cleaned up,” they would command. “Chop chop.” Zamzama himself was more respectful, always using terms of respect along with Nero’s real name. Sahib, ji, janab. The respect was a way of expressing contempt. The meaning of the respect was, “I own you, motherfucker, and do not forget it.” Nero didn’t need reminding. He was not a hero. He didn’t want to lose his family or his toes. There was no chance that he would forget.
The villains were spilling off the movie screens, jumping down into the cinemas larger than life, movie-sized, and charging down the aisles and out into the streets, guns blazing, and he had the guilty feeling that the industry was responsible, it had created these monsters and made them glamorous and sexy and now they were taking over the town. Bombay meri jaan, he thought, humming the song, Bombay my life, my darling, where have you gone, the girls on Marine Drive in the cool of the evening with wreaths of jasmine in their hair, the Sunday morning jazz jam sessions on Colaba Causeway or Churchgate, listening to Chic Chocolate, to Chris Perry’s saxophone and Lorna Cordeiro’s voice; Juhu beach before people like him surrounded it with buildings; Chinese food; the beautiful city, the best city in the world. But no, that was wrong, the song which was to the city what “New York, New York” was to another metropolis had always warned that it was a tough town, difficult to live in, and it was that song’s fault, too, the gamblers and the cutthroats and the thieves and the corrupt businessmen it sang about had poured out of the lyrics like the actors leaping out of the movies, and here they were now, terrifying decent folk, folk like the na?ve girl in the song who defended the great city, oh heart it’s easy to live in this town, but even she warned, look out, you will reap what you sow. You will reap just what you sow.
(Yes, it was the movies’ fault, it was the song’s fault. Yes, blame art, Nero, blame entertainment. So much easier than blaming human beings, the actual actors in the drama. So much more pleasant than blaming yourself.)
He went on doing it, the suitcases, the smurfing, the flipping. He even agreed to become one end of a big-money hawala chain, when “asked nicely” by Zamzama Alankar himself—with a little cascade of sahibs, janabs, and jis—one evening during a pool party at the Willingdon Club. They never tried to extort me. They didn’t have to. He was Zamzama’s willing pawn. He thought himself a king in the city but he was only a humble foot soldier. Zamzama Alankar was the king.
And he wasn’t completely telling the truth about the extortion. He admitted it. The truth was that they never tried to extort cash money from him. What they extorted was much, much worse.