Bringing up the son

reflections

There once was an ugly duckling. He stood mute and perplexed at every one of my entreaties to strive harder.

He had a load of books to carry, and I wondered if he would ever master them all. So, I pampered, cajoled and blackmailed him into the kindergarten, the preparatory, the high and the PU.

The blackmail turned all too real, this one on me, in the form of the capitation fee (CP) — capital punishment of having to pay at that high point when he left school, and I tried hard to make him a doctor, an engineer, a dentist, a computer technologist, a anything.

The dreams of getting him a profession in engineering/medical/technology whatever receded as the temperature of the required marks, aptly called the cut-off marks, rose feverishly to 90. That is when I gave up the ‘merit’ admissions.

Meanwhile, the CP fee was also going up. The medical/engineering admissions were priced at xyz lakhs!

Now I was not sure whether I was on the right track. Just imagine, if only I had put the money into real estate and waited for the duration it took for the boy to grow up, well, I would have had enough to pay any CP fee. Instead, I had an ugly duckling who now had to be bought an entry into a never-never land of education with my dream fortune.

That is when I took a good long look at the offspring. The nose was a beak. Yes, but when Amitabh Bachchan first appeared in Bombay to Goa, everyone thought that he brayed like a donkey. But today the bray is a musical voice. Son’s lips were thick. Yes, but Dharmendra’s lips were also thick, and he was a sex symbol. Son had a wire brush for hair. But so did Mithun Chakravarthy. Son squints ever so slightly like his mother. But so did Rajesh Khanna, and look where he ended!

So I decided that my son would make the break — with the education system. The way to the top did not lie through CP, but in getting the world to accept the ‘face’ that my son was born with.

I took him out of school. I made him put pebbles in his mouth and holler at six in the morning to get rid of his lisp. When he finished that, the dance teacher waited to teach him how to use his body and eyes. I drove him through the gym to expand his chest and contract his waist. He loved to see films, which was a blessing. He came back each night a different man with different mannerisms.

And now, the big day arrived. I cast him in a film that I ‘partially’ financed. There was this producer who made the offer. You get the role you paid for.

He was that guy you would see in the party scene nodding his head to the music when the hero was called upon to sing at the piano at the heroine’s birthday party.

One day he will be at the piano. There is a system that sees to that. When he gets past the Bombay to Goa bridge, there are these people who would ‘shape’ him. If his eyes are light, there are contact lenses to darken them. If he goes bald, there are wig specialists who did it for Rajkumar. Teeth are no problem. If everything fails, there is the make-up department that widen or contract eyes, dilate or narrow noses, lengthen or shorten chins.

The hair business, like the false moustache, is the easiest. If his hand is missing a finger like Meena Kumari’s, they know how to hide the hand. If he has a paunch like Shakti Kapoor, or any Kapoor for that matter, they will create a character that needs a paunch. In any case, the audience would by then be so hooked to him, they will not mind the paunch.

And then some day, 20 years later, he will have a network of fans’ associations. Then the sky is the limit. He will reach for the stars and become the chief minister. Who cares? I won’t be there. And what is more, my son does not have to worry about his son or even ‘his’ entire progeny! They will all be superstars. Just take the case of the Kapoors — they are already into the fourth generation, and are still going strong.

So, fire away, son. It will be others’ turn now to go quack, quack, quack!