In Slow Burn, Amal Singh turns Mumbai into a fever dream where ambition, humiliation, fame and fantasy blur together – following one struggling actor who finally gets everything he ever wanted, only to discover the nightmare hiding beneath it.
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Six thousand, four hundred and ninety-two. Exclusive of taxes. That’s how much Rishi Tripathi is being paid to dance like a clown in front of a screaming child who is clutching a satin-wrapped gift box to his chest. The child’s mother claps her hands, mouthing ‘happy birthday’ but not saying the words. The child’s father flattens a crease on his otherwise perfectly-ironed shirt, and later, brushes a strand of hair from his eyebrows. The room smells of stale cake, sweat and incense. Baar baar din ye aaye, baar baar dil ye gaaye, plays on an iPhone kept on a polished mahogany desk. The living room is awash in the kind of opulence that is brought by too much money but no class. Maroon, velvety curtains that clash with the cyan-coloured walls around. Furniture that bends in entirely the wrong sort of ways. No clarity in design, no comfort in seating. Bleach to the eyes. But it made sense for the type of people who think a man in a clown costume is the idea of fun for their seven-year-old kid who looks disappointed in the world and would much rather play on a Nintendo Switch. Rishi Tripathi didn’t ask to be here.
Rishi Tripathi doesn’t want to be here at all.
He would much rather down cheap rum and sit on Versova beach, feet soaking in wet sand as he conjures dreams of a better life. There’s a dog whimpering nearby. A woman is walking barefoot and the salty water rushes in to immediately dissolve her footprints, taking their feeble memory with it, back to sea, where other such memories are cobbled up amid fish, crabs, seaweed and the cold. The woman is carrying bright red sandals, the colour of fresh blood. A cop yells at a teenager in Marathi. The scene is vivid in Rishi’s mind. Maybe he’ll take Manisha along with him to the beach.
Tum jiyo hazaro saal, bas yahi hai aarzoo.
Rishi shrugs off the image and focuses, yet again, on the sum assured to him. Six thousand, four hundred and ninety-two. A part of the money will fund his acting workshop. The remaining will go towards groceries and other expenses. A minute longer, and he would charge these guys extra. That’s what his manager had told him, sipping cheap whiskey.
‘Imagine the connections you will end up making in one evening! He’s a textile giant and is thinking of investing in the entertainment business.’
The only connection Rishi had made so far was plugging the charger of Mrs Lokhande’s Samsung Galaxy into the wall socket.
He checks his watch as the pay cheque moment draws near. As he twirls and raises both his arms in the air, grinning like a maniac clown, the birthday boy stops screaming and casts him a murderous look. In that moment, he’s the boy from The Omen, the child of the devil, eyes raging-red flames. Rishi jumps and goes down on his knees, crawling towards the child, hoping to dear God the little devil doesn’t pounce on him.
‘Show me a magic trick!’
Rishi stops in his tracks. He glances at the kid’s mother and father. Magic tricks are extra. That was the deal. Before he can try to negotiate, the kid grabs his collar and yells in his face. ‘Show me a trick, you clown!’
In times of distress, be polite. Be courteous. You don’t know who remembers. You don’t know who you would meet later in life beside a railway track or sitting with extra leg-space beside you in an airplane, ready to listen to you or ready with an icing knife. In a city like Mumbai, people remembered. That’s how someone became big or disappeared into obscurity. The town was filled with stories of both uncommon generosity and uncommon cruelty.
‘Darshan!’ The mother yells. She wants to let Darshan take charge of his happiness but can’t show it properly. Her voice is gentle; her manner is kind. It’s her first child. She has to be strict and yet pamper him. Rishi does the coin-behind-the-ear trick that fools most kids. But Darshan is a special sort of annoying. He has decided to remain unimpressed throughout the course of the evening.
Rishi jumps, throwing hands and feet in the air, lands and takes out a flurry of ribbons from inside his sleeve. He invites Darshan to take one end of the ribbon. Darshan grabs it and yanks hard. Rishi hopes his costume doesn’t rip from the inside. The endless ribbon trick works as long as the viewer believes that the trail is long enough. Most audiences are first surprised, but quickly get bored of the ribbons, their attention spans flickering, their eyes yearning for a flashier trick.
Darshan pulls and pulls the ribbon, until the frayed end of the cloth tumbles out of Rishi’s multicoloured sleeve.
‘You’re stupid,’ says the kid.
‘Do you want to see a card trick?’
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