Friends
Movie, June 1982
By B. R. Sharan
Bang!
That's what their conversations go off with.
“Actually that's how he starts off every time he meets me – he points his finger at me like a revolver barrel and goes ‘bang’!” says the silver-maned U. G., rolling his eyes.
“Oh, no,” Mahesh bursts out, “I don't. I sprawl on my back, look up at him and say, ‘U. G., may I ask you a question?’ And he says, ‘Yes, Mahesh,’ and I ask, ‘What is…’” “‘…the purpose of life?’” U. G. completes.
“He always completes the question that way! Always! Always!” Mahesh chortles, pleased as a kid who's pulled off Jack-and-Jill for a visiting Uncle.
It's a wonder that these friends – Mahesh Bhatt and U. G. Krishnamurti, use their tongues at all. Their minds leap over shared experiences of joy, pain and flights of philosophical fancy …and in the present, over unseen words, so that each knows exactly what the other is thinking. They're always cutting in, completing sentences, insulting each other with teenage abandon, chuckling – invariably chuckling – over private jokes…
“We can't do this photo session at Goldie's place, Mahesh – too many memories of your ‘ex’, sir!”
“Yes, sir, my ‘ex’ and your ‘present’!”
For all their shared ‘past’ and ‘present’, there can't be two more dissimilar friends. Talking to Mahesh is a bit like wrestling in a huge box of feathers. The talk is ticklish, all fluffed up with amateurish intensity, but the weight is there alright.
As U. G. says, “When he's on his back and talking, he isn't actually addressing me, he doesn't need me around to tell him the ‘purpose of life’. He's talking to himself.”
Mahesh: You mean, I'm mad?
U. G.: Borderline, sir, borderline. All those you collect around you are half gone. Your place is a funny farm. Don't you realise, instead of beating your brains to come up with the solution to life, your whole purpose in life could be to take your newborn son, Sonny Mahomet, for a walk?
Yelling “Sonny Mahomet! Sonny Mahomet!” Mahesh bounds out of the room, his pouchy gut trembling at the kangaroo hop.
Contrasting with the jeans-clad Mahesh, the kurta pajama-clad U. G. – who's nearly twice Mahesh's age, tackles the small, cranky, troublesome aspects of being alive these days and, with a few nudges here and there, muscles up newly ‘profound’ insights – actually, he's a reasonable explicator of that often confusing body of knowledge we glibly call common sense.
U. G. gives the feeling that he's passed life by. And that, if people didn't ask him about the ‘purpose of life’, he'd much rather travel around the world, stay with friends, cook exotic dishes and come up with ironical asides in his hybridised South Indian-burra-saab-Yankee twang. Like: “Godmen chappies serve the social need, sir.” Pause. “So do prostitutes!”
It is this same laid-back attitude that allows him to reduce the Mahesh-Parveen contretemps, in which he played a prominent part, to ‘exes’ and ‘presents’. Friendship is measured in commonplace terms.
U. G. drawls, “Why click him only eating idlis? You should've caught him clearing the table. It's something he's taken to doing only after meeting me. Like he's learnt to make tea. Or take walks…”
Mahesh cackles, “Yeah, and he learnt to see films…otherwise, he'd only freak out over mythologicals, flying Hanumans…”
U. G.: I've only seen four films, sir, since I met you…
Mahesh: Four and a half…
U. G.: Oh yes, I walked out midway through your Lahu Ke Do Rang. It was atrocious. And I sat through Arth only because Smita (Patil) was sitting next to me. Mahesh made me see films but the one time I could have been part of his film, he cut me out!
Mahesh: I shot Arth at home, and I have U. G.'s photograph in my drawing room. I merely removed it for the shooting.
U. G.: He treated me like a lizard on the wall – shooing me away when he didn't want me. Otherwise, barely tolerating me. He's not my friend. He's my enemy!
Mahesh: But sir, you've always said my friendship is a form of revenge…
U. G.: Most certainly! You must hate me – otherwise you wouldn't have done what you did to me. You left Rajneesh because of me – and so many others followed. D'you know, Rajneesh devoted five lectures to cursing me?
Mahesh: Yeah, four in English, one in Hindi.
U. G.: I remember the way you met me…in saffron robes, with a lot of malas…
Mahesh: Destiny, sir, destiny. I'd gone to meet Vinod Khanna who was shooting at some bungalow. The owner of the place, Pratap, asked me if I'd like to meet a Krishnamurti – not the well-known J. but a U. G. I said, why not. One day, the phone rang…and I went to meet this U. G. I talked to him for two hours flat. He was mind-blowing!
U. G.: And he came back the next day with Goldie (Anand), another Rajneesh bhakt. Both soon walked out of the Poona ashram. But the way Mahesh renounced sannyas was dramatic.
Mahesh: It happened in Mahabaleshwar. Satyadev Dubey and I sat up all night, when suddenly he said, ‘This U. G. of yours. He said we could drop in any time, right? Let's take him up on his word.’ So we went right up to U. G.'s room…
U. G.: At 5 a.m.! And drunk! Dead drunk!
Mahesh: And he met us without a flicker of irritation. I tore the Rajneesh mala from my neck and flushed it down the toilet.
U. G.: Even though everyone cautioned you that Rajneesh would curse you and evil would befall you.
Mahesh: Wasn't meeting you evil enough? And, remember, I had to shell out a hundred bucks to clear the drains. It was all destiny, sir. If you hadn't welcomed us that morning with open arms…know what Dubey and I had discussed all night? Love!
People have so many problems with ‘friendship’, ‘love’, ‘relationship’, always looking for someone to be their Rock of Gibraltar, their soufflé that can't fall. There should be a course in KG on the three. (And Lesson No. 1 from the Mahesh-U. G. textbook on ‘friendship’: never grow up!).
But then, maybe it works out just as well because if you really knew the whole story on relationships, you wouldn't have anything to think about for the rest of your life, and you might go crazy, having nothing to think about. And, anyway, ‘relationships’ in the film industry are merely business.
Filmi friends: bodies encased in frills, desperate smiles, the wretched couple frozen in a gibber of happiness. A kind of orderliness you see in machines or corpses.
But the arranging of bones into patterns is useless. Anarchy is more like it. Anarchy, bangs, cocked revolvers, hatred…
“Love,” murmurs U. G., “Remember, sir, you brought Kabir and Parveen to meet me? They, too, talked of love, love, love…but I could see it was all made up. I told them so. They didn't believe me then, but within the week, they had broken up. Which left Parveen free…”
U. G. continues, “And then, of course, you…”
Silence.
Still. Continuing. Hesitantly: “You must hate me, Mahesh!”
Silence.
It's such a secret place, that land of tears, as the ‘Little Prince’ says.
Only friends know the way.
