Chapter 4: Censorship

“Why did you even risk it?” she asked, “You should’ve let it be sir, our ratings wouldn’t be much worse.”
I sighed in disappointment – it was a pity to witness the de-evolution of a supposed intelligent human being like her.
“I told you, Atty,” I told her again, “This is what people want to see. We’ve been having far better ratings since teenage boys and fat, lonely men, have started sitting in dark rooms at midnight gasping and watching BTV.”
She grimaced and looked away. “You have a wife, Mr. Shanker. And a daughter. At least pretend to be a little less sleazy.”
“Sleazy? Since when did a little gentleman’s entertainment become sleazy. It’s classy, that’s what it is. Watch – One day I’m going to be known as Varanasi’s Hugh Hefner.”
“It’s sleazy because the censor board says it is, ok.”
See, this was the problem with Atty: she was disgustingly moral. She was someone who had struggled so much during her young life that she never had time to decide right or wrong for herself. She had much bigger worries, so she had simply let the government, her parents, and the censor board set her principles for her.
Ah – the censor board – those corrupt motherfuckers.
I let my feelings be heard. “Corrupt motherfuckers,” my voice echoed in the suddenly silent office.
A few of the others in the office had stopped not working and had started to make their most useful contribution of the day, one which constituted of staring at me in amazement. I was starting to hope that they’d be used to me by now.
“Please don’t curse, sir,” Atty said with despicable professionalism.
I hated professionalism. It was too perfect. And boring. And claustrophobic.
“What’s next?” I asked, “Sahni will start banning women on TV with bikinis on. And then, soon enough, there will be no more touching on screen between the sexes. Actually, no touching at all, since Sahni will avoid any possibility of homosexuality, too. We all know what happens after that, don’t we?”
I looked at them, genuinely expecting an answer. Most of them stared at the floor blankly, while the kiss-asses actually tried to think of something to impress me. I continued.
“Woman won’t be allowed to show any skin at all. They’ll have to wear full sleeve shirts and full trousers, and gloves and socks and shoes, and those monkey masks you get in the hills. We’ll be able to see their eyes for the time being.”
“And then, someone else will get the wise idea to ban women from TV all together. Turning all the men in the world gay. And I’d have to start showing lady’s entertainment to keep making better revenues.”
I rounded off my speech, leaning on Atty’s desk in style and looking around the room, waiting for applause. None came.
Atty finally spoke, tutting and fuming in irritation. “So you still believe that they are corrupt em-effers?”
“You heard me,” I said, and then turned to the rest of my audience, “You all heard me. Corrupt mo-daa-fu-kaaz. All of them. I told you about that that Sahni, didn’t I?” I reminded them, pointing at an invisible Sahni at the office. “He was in the hospital that day. It was just chance that I walked into that room.”
It was a story that I had recounted several times, but never in Sahni’s presence. Sahni, if you’re wondering, happened to be the government’s television censor board representative in Varanasi. And he also happened to wake up every morning on the wrong side of the bed, because he had been intent in making my life hell ever since I started my movie channel.
Ok, backtrack: No, I’m not a porn kingpin. I show movies – Bollywood, Hollywood, Lollywood, etc. Now of course, some of these movies have an adult scene here and there. No problem for anyone, right? Well, anyone, except for pissed-off mummies like my wife, and of course, Sahni.
And ever since I had started BTV, he had been after me. It was like he’d found the ultimate wrong side of the bed with my channel. It wasn’t that mine was the only channel showing these movies, the others just showed their censored versions on TV. That meant no swearing, no ultra-violence, no drugs, and lord no, no sex.
I ignored the ban, mostly because for the first few months after the channel’s launch I was in a state of constant sleepless caffeine high. And then, I found a good reason to back my lack of attention – artistic freedom. A movie is a work of art, and if the director wished that snorting coke or graphically slitting a woman’s throat is what shapes the piece of art, then I wasn’t about to go and censor it.
The footnote to this, of course, is that people like to watch things that are banned. It turns them on.
So Sahni woke up on the wrong side of the bed one night, and since he couldn’t sleep, he turned on BTV. And there, in its full glory, was a stark naked woman running away from a horny werewolf. The werewolf then proceeded to grope her, bite her, and then drink some of her blood.
Before you even dare to ask why: yes, Horror-core is popular.
Of course, Sahni was less than pleased, and he began a campaign to shut my entire channel down. I was going through other troubles at the time involving Rajju and his clique. But that’s another, only slightly related tale.
And then, Niyati was born. Sahni, by coincidence, was at the same hospital that day.
“And that’s when I saw him take the money,” I recalled to the patient ears of my employees for the umpteenth time, “Corrupt motherfucker.”
“Everyone in the country is corrupt,” came the wise voice of a guard from the corner.
I responded to his enlightened theory with thunderous applause, “Bravo, bravo, what’s your name? Jai?” he nodded, “Somebody get Jai a Bharat Ratna. He’s figured it out.”
Jai shifted the weight of his body uneasily from his left leg to his right.
“‘Everyone in the country is corrupt,’” I quoted him, “That does not mean that I’m going to stand for it.” I knew that I had taken the fashionable side of the argument. There was no way that anyone was going to openly oppose me.
“He’s going to shut down our channel, Sir,” Atty, unfortunately, started to talk sense again, “Try to negotiate something with him, we may still have time.”
“Never!” I announced. The office grew eerily quiet, all except for the light music sweeping in from the television in the other room. The drama was unbearable.
For the sake of further dramatic effect, I immediately turned around and left the office, even though I knew I had more work to do. On my way home I remembered that I was driving home. Shit.
“Here he comes,” Anita’s cheerful, torturous voice greeted me, “My husband,” she said, turning to her fat sister, “A man without a cell of decency in his body.”
“Bubble, please leave,” I said to my sister-in-law, “I have to talk to my wife.”
“She can stay where she is,” Anita appointed herself as Bubble’s representative spokesperson again.
“No, she can’t. I’m sure you have food at home. Go empty your own kitchen, Bubble.”
Bubble looked hurt – her fat cheeks turned a cute shade of red as she frowned like a baby.
“Don’t you dare talk to my sister like that!” Anita continued, “Bubble, you stay right there – I’ll make you something to eat.”
I laughed when I saw Bubble’s face brighten up again. Fat Bitch.
When I finally got a moment alone with Anita that night, I didn’t feel like talking to her anymore.
“What are we going to do, Azad?” her voice crumbled without the heavy support and backbone of her sister, “The censors aren’t going to shut down the channel, are they?”
“They probably are.” I shifted away from her in the bed.
“So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“So think of something.”
“Goodnight.”
I dreamt of the mafia and that dead dog.

My phone rang early the following morning, and it was Sahni. He shot further warnings of shutting me down, which I was too sleepy to aggressively respond to.
I drudged awake and dragged myself into the dining room. Niyati came running in to hug my knees, pleasantly unaware that her father was about to lose his edge. For me, this was going to be another decisive and stressful day which I would have rather slept through. For her, it was simply Friday. I worried about my sanity and my funds, those out to murder me and extort me, and those getting away with murder and extortion under our very noses. She worried about her English homework and the size of the sandwiches in her lunchbox.
I worried about her. She is a smart girl, and she doesn’t deserve a rumoured sleaze for a father. Especially if this sleaze was soon to be unemployed.
The ‘joy’ of fatherhood has long been over-exaggerated. It hadn’t been easy trying to provide adequate time, inspiration, and finances for my daughter, but I had consoled myself with the feeling that I had at least fathered Niyati better than my father did me.
Anita welcomed me to the new day by returning to her characteristic unpleasantness.
“Can you ask Ramu to make me a cup of tea?” I requested her.
“Go ask him yourself, you sleaze,” she said, “Why do I have to do the talking for you?”
Ramu made me a cup of tea. He would definitely have to be fired. There’s no way that we’ll be able to afford a cook without BTV. We would probably have to disconnect the internet. And for good riddance, I’ll disconnect the television, too. Do I really have any other skills? Where’s my degree? What did I get it in?
I took a sip of the tea. Aaaaaah! I sighed.
And within moments it stopped. All the pressure and hesitation about waking up to another dodgy day flew away. The tea… Oh, the tea! Oh, it was good!
There is something magical about a good cup of tea. A good cup of tea gives you exactly what you need. If you’re feeling sleepy, the tea wakes you up. If you can’t sleep, the tea relaxes you. If you’re having a hangover, a cup of tea is recommended to kick away those headaches. If you’ve had a meal that may be a bit too large for your own capacity, the tea makes you feel light again.
And if a few innocent adult scenes in a movie have forced members of the community to call you an immoral porn kingpin, the tea makes you feel pure and blameless again.
This morning, Ramu’s perfect cup of tea did exactly what I needed it to. It was a catalyst for an unexpected feeling of optimism and rejuvenation.
“Papa, what are you thinking?” Niyati asked me.
“Nothing, nothing,” I smiled, “I love tea.”
So of course I spoke to Ramu the magical tea wizard before I left home. He decided to take this opportunity to continue basking in his new-found limelight by making me a suggestion. He told me that, if I continued being this anxious and worried, then I should go and sit by the river at the ghats and temples to calm down and clear my head. I had never been religious or hippie enough to spend too much time around there, but it was Ramu’s Magical Tea Day today, so I promised to think about the old cook’s advice.
Driving to work that day, I felt more determined to face Sahni and the censors than ever before. The earlier stress was now replaced with vengeance.
My phone rang – it was Atty.
“Sir, they’re here.”
“Who’s where?”
“Here!”
“Where?”
“Sir, they are here at the office!”
I exhaled slowly, prohibiting my brain from thinking of the inevitable.
“Who’s there at the office?” I asked her after a moment’s silence.
“The censors, Sir! The fucking censors.” She shouted, before slamming the phone down. Wow. I hadn’t ever heard Atty curse before – it was strangely appealing.
So Sahni and his squad of joy-killers had finally raided the office. I wrote a mental apology letter to every pervy teenager that has lost sleep watching a two-hour long movie after midnight, just to catch five minutes of a sex scene. I also addressed this letter to each frustrated man in his mid-life crisis, looking for nothing more than some explicit and unapologetic violence so he could mentally vent all of his own stress. The audience will go and so will the advertisers. It was over. BTV was finally going to come to an end.
I turned the final corner to see the censors standing outside the office, waiting for me. No, I changed my mind – I was in no mood for this today. I quickly turned the car back around.
Anita called.
“That secretary of yours called looking for you,” she said, “She sounded scared. What’s going on?”
“They’re going to shut us down. And they’re after me.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she wept. A little too quickly, I thought.
“Now listen to me Anita. I don’t want the censors to bother you if they come home looking for me. Take Niyati and go…”
“Oh, oh, Jesus,” she interrupted.
“… Take Niyati and go to Bubble’s. I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”
“Jesus, what are we going to do?” she asked Him.
“Jesus, just go!” I answered on her Messiah’s behalf.
I hung up the phone and switched if off. I needed an answer to this. I needed an answer to everything – to all this bullshit I’ve gone through just to survive on this planet in semi-decency. It couldn’t have all been my luck, could it? And if so, I wanted to confirm it.
I turned left and into the thin street that led towards the ghats.