‘If we are making a high-budget pretend movie, and we need a crackling script for it, who do we go to?’
Every time this question is asked in Teluguland, meaning Andhra, Telangana and the US — and it is being asked a lot, trust me — the first name that pops up is mine.
Because in the last 10 years I have nearly written more scripts for more imaginary movies than you can imagine.
Cut to pre-lockdown. I was in Hyderabad regarding a script for an actual web series. A friend, coincidentally, asked me at the same time if I had a good script for a film or web series that friends of his, two gentlemen from the Bay Area (where else) were interested in making.
They were staying at a posh five-star, and my meeting was at 11 am. I arrived promptly. (On my way, though, I couldn’t quite figure the odour in the vehicle they had sent to pick me up.)
I knocked. I heard a voice say, ‘Come in.’
‘Make yourself comfy, we’ll be out in a minute,’ came the voice again, in a Cupertino-to-Chandrampalem accent.
I wanted to. But how does one do that at a site that looked like Keith Richards and Charlie Sheen had had a debate over whether Kangana or Tapsee was the better actress?
Six liquor bottles of varying size and shape — the very indigenous kind, mind you — were artfully placed on the TV, the bed, inside a half-open drawer, and on the floor. Two boxes of Kotaiah’s kajas, open, with a lone fly flitting between them, lay on the table. A pair of ancient Jockeys hung from the headboard of the bed. The carpet was speckled evenly with mixture, chips and something that may or may not have been ketchup. In a corner, lay two piles of plates with bones of an unidentifiable animal.
Then my would-be producers made a joint entry. One was wearing a lungi and nothing else. The other, a T-shirt just long enough for someone to get away without wearing anything underneath.
‘We loved your script,’ the lungi man said. I’d mailed a synopsis earlier.
‘Eat a kaja,’ said the other man, proffering the famed Kakinada sweetmeat with a suspicious green sheen from the seemingly long-open box.
I refused politely.
‘Your script has all the things we believe in. It’s subtle. It’s clean. It’s classy. It gives agency to its women characters. And so witty.’
I thanked them.
‘How soon can you finish it?’ said T-shirt guy.
‘Three months.’
Eating the green-edged kaja I had refused with great relish, lungi man shook my hand vigorously.
‘We should celebrate,’ said the man who could have been going commando.
I declined, saying I had a plane to catch.
‘I see a long fruitful relationship,’ said lungi guy. ‘We should aim to make films for an international audience. We will transfer your advance first thing Monday morning.’
On my way back to the hotel, I decided to ask the driver what the smell was.
‘Oh, that-aa?’ he said, stopping the car and gesturing me to follow him. He opened the boot. Inside were two large, very dead roosters.
‘Boss’ birds,’ he said. ‘They died in the cockfight in Ravupalem. He lost one crore. Wants to have them stuffed to leave in his uncle’s house as souvenirs.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘So when he comes back next season, he can show his new roosters what happens to them if they lose,’ said the driver.
I didn’t get my advance on Monday.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist. He has written four books and edited an anthology.
