"I was born on the footpath, near Crawford Market. My mother had a little place there, a little hut made with plastic and two poles. The plastic was tied to a wall, underneath a sign. The sign was all broken, you know, and only two bits of two different posters were still on the wall. On one side was a little bit of a movie poster with the name Johnny written on it. Beside that one, and sticking out a bit, was a poster advertising cigars with-yes, you guessed it - only the word Cigar sticking out."
"And she liked it," I continued for him, "and she-"
"Called me Johnny Cigar. Her parents, you know, they had thrown her out. And the man who was my father had dumped her, so she absolutely refused to use either of those family names for me.
And all the way through the labour, when she gave birth to me, on that footpath, she stared at those words, Johnny Cigar, and she took it as a sign, if you'll forgive the joke. She was a very, very stubborn woman."
He looked at the little stage, watching as Jeetendra, Satish, and others lifted flat pieces of plywood onto the frame to make the floor.
"It's a good name, Johnny," I said, after a while. "I like it.
And it brought you good luck."
He smiled at me, and the smile became a laugh.
"I'm just glad it wasn't an advert for laxatives or some such!" he spluttered, causing me to laugh and spray tea at him in return.
"It's taking you guys quite a while to tie the knot," I observed when we could talk again. "What's the delay?"
"Kumar, you know, he wants to play the successful businessman, and put a dowry with each of his daughters. Prabaker and I, we told him we don't believe in all that. We don't want a dowry, you know. It's kind of old fashioned, all that stuff. Mind you, Prabaker's dad is not quite of the same opinion. He sent down a list, from the village-a list of dowry gifts he has in mind. He wants a gold watch-a Seiko automatic-and a new bicycle, among other stuff. The model of bicycle he wants, the one he picked out for himself, we told him it's too big. We told him that his legs are too damn short to reach the pedals, let alone the ground, yaar, but he's crazy for that bicycle. Anyway, we're waiting for Kumar to collect all his dowry and such. The weddings are set for the last week in October, before all the Diwali and all that."
"That'll be quite a week. My friend Vikram gets married that week, too."
"You're coming to the weddings, Lin?" he asked with a small, tight frown. Johnny was a man who granted favours to others with selfless generosity. As is often the case with such men, he couldn't ask for them, or express his wishes, with anything like the same ease.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I replied, laughing. "I'll be there with bells on. I mean that literally-when you hear the bells ringing, you'll know I'm on my way."
When I left him, he was talking to Satish. The boy listened intently and stared into his face, his eyes as expressionless as a gravestone, and I remembered how he'd clutched at my leg on the day that Karla visited me in the slum; how he'd favoured her with a shy, sincere smile. The memory sliced into my dead heart. It's said that you can never go home again, and it's true enough, of course. But the opposite is also true. You must go back, and you always go back, and you can never stop going back, no matter how hard you try.
Needing distraction, I rode my bike out to the R.K. film studios, gunning the engine and swerving too often and too fast between the cars. I'd hired eight foreigners the day before, and had sent them to Lisa. It wasn't difficult for me to find and convince foreigners to fill non-speaking roles in the Bollywood films. The same German, Swiss, Swedish, or American tourists who would've reacted with mistrust and hostility to Indian casting agents responded enthusiastically when I approached them. In the years that I'd lived in the slum and worked as a tour guide, I'd met every kind of foreign tourist. I'd developed a style in dealing with them that won their trust quickly. That style was two parts showman, two parts flatterer, and one part philanderer, combined with a hint of mischief, a sniff of condescension, and a pinch of contempt.
