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A writer called ROOKS
Apr1, 1990
PROLIFIC writers are, like cultured pearls, a cultivated breed. They perfect the habit of writing to a reflex action. They wait for no inspiration. The very compulsion of constant scribbling is both the seed and the fruit of their labours.
I met a writer from Manhattan in Calcutta and visited him in NYC. We were friends. Not quite bosom. But more than coffee-house acquaintances and perceptibly less than soul mates. Rooks, Ronald Jonathan Rooks. He was an egotist. Infirm in hygiene. He was corpulent. But in a handsome way. His face was chubby and disarming. Clean.
He had a slight (very slight) limp, which gave his walk the swing of an elephantine stroll. He smoked a pipe. This dignified his personality and disinfected the atmosphere in the vicinity of his person.
His staple diet seemed to be black coffee and Bourbon. No one, just nobody ever had observed him to imbibe any form of solid diet. But this was a public illusion. His apartment on 22nd and Broadway was a sleep-in bread basket.
Everywhere - on his bed, in his books, in the toilet, atop the television set, and perhaps also in his kitchenette several generations of unfinished sandwiches dotted the landscape in chaotic abandon.
At last, the theorem of his majestic corpulence could be finalized. The arithmetic of umpteen calories of unfinished nutrition pointed out to the logic of the many kilograms domiciled in Rooks' ample trousers.
Rooks was a devout eater. Just as he was a maniac writer. Indefatigable. Potent. Prolific. He wrote at all times of the day. And night. He wrote everywhere. On table tops, ticket stubs, inside regular exercise books; and of course on yellow note paper.
The subjects of his prose were varied, diverse and several. He was always discursive. Often also disjointed. But never dull. He published as copiously as he wrote. He burned the money he earned from his published writing.
In the late Seventies downtown Manhattan continued to be the melting pot of dissident talent. Also the garbage can for drop outs and junkies. Homosexuality was rife. And openly done. At that stage, a brilliant attorney Rajan Pillai joined with a group of middle-aged lawyers and launched an intellectuals movement (of sorts) in support of equal rights to fags.
Rooks jumped into the fray for the kicks of it. But from conviction. He said society must accept what it cannot effectively and successfully obliterate. Besides you cannot outlaw an act which does the general public no harm. At that time, AIDS was unheard of too. Rape is a crime. You can punish the rapist or the raper. But you cannot outlaw heterosexual congress.
Homosexuality is sanctified by practice and usage in a manner of speaking. Rooks researched into historic sodomites and self-confessed contemporaries. He came out with a catalogue of distinguished names. He published his thesis and supported his arguments with irrefutable forensic logic.
He made a plausible case for punishing not the practicing or professed homosexuals, but those who discriminated against them. The plot thickened. Time magazine featured this agitation. When the movement peaked into a cause célèbre, Rooks moved out and over to other pastures such as the Jewish domination of the media and their inroads into the political machinery of the USA.
Everywhere, he researched his subject and amplified his contention with factual illustration.
Beneath an indolent and irascible edifice there lay an astute mind and a dedicated craftsman. Rooks died in 1985. In London. Under circumstances that have never been explained or publicised. A common friend cleaned up his apartment. She sent me an unposted card dated 1982 addressed to me at Calcutta.
Rooks had written to say that he suspected he was dying from cancer of the gall bladder. He wished to visit India in the August of 1983. Would I have him stay with me in my house? I wonder what he thought of when he did not hear from me.
It could never occur to him that his letter to me was akin to his unfinished sandwiches. And like the enduring myth of his liquid diet in public, no one will ever know.
Double Take
Nov21, 1989
She was a celebrity all right. Missing was the Jewellery, the hang ups(nakra) of the big models. She was petite and had large pretty eyes that danced with mischievous innocence, and an olive complexion that was the envy of the other girls on the set. With oodles of expensive phoren aftershave dabbed liberally all over my person and a shirt with two buttons open, I sat in the deck chair on the lawns of the Villa Parle bungalow waiting for my call. Cool, nonchalant and the epitome of fillumy macho, I was to make out with the chick in the scene. Boy what a role!
She came on to the lawns. She waved a breezy “Hi” and my heart did a back flip. At close quarters, she seemed remote and ethereal, almost unobtainable. Should I buss her on the cheeks like they do in the movies? As I neared her she spotted her mother who had escorted her and shyly withdrew, making me wonder about the persuasive power of the aftershave.
Later, during the break in the shooting I put in my two-bits. "I say, old thing", I started, “Couldn’t you put in a trifle more excitement when you say 'I love you'?" The producer, a more direct, no nonsense man, put his arm around her, and cooed something into her tiny shell- like ear. She burst out giggling and immediately covered her mouth. It was like little bells pealing in delight.
“Okay, that was good” announced the Producer “ But let’s do it once more. Ready every one? Lights! Cameras!” . As the camera rolled, I looked around and found the mother looking at me, with a smile. For some reason I felt like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Just then the other, the ‘film mother’ in the film upset things on a table by knocking down two goblets containing bright coloured liquid that was as unreal as tinsel-land . The clearing up took some time. I had to change from the top-of-the market white trousers to the lowly faded jeans that I came to the sets in. Somehow, the Wranglers seemed to be out of place here, – like a cowboy at a mushaira.
We were back to the scene where the guy puts his arms around the girl. Draws her to him, looks into her eyes, smiles and she looks down, examines a shirt button, sighs and looks up at him “Okay, you got that?” asked the Producer. “Fine! Let’s have lots of emotion. Remember this is a close up.Okay” Lights! Camera!! Three takes later, It must have been the Wranglers or the inconsistent soft light that made the producer yell, “Cut” and take a second look at the storyboard. After muttering to no one in particular, he came back to me, “Yaar”, he said, “Do you mind if I knock out this clinch and just have you at the door, returning home after a hard day at the office and the wife greets you at the door and this girl is on the stair case?".
My sinking heart heard no more and I let go off the girl. I said,”You got it”. So,on the screen you will see her saving up all the hugs and the line ‘I love You’ –not for yours sincerely, but for the blasted product. What can you say about a five–year old girl who drops you like a hot potato for a soft drink?
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