A couple of friends of mine, Ashu and Dhruv, composed the music for the film Bombay Boys. In the wake of its success, they have been flooded with offers for a "different" kind of film. Having turned down such potential masterpieces as Bombay Girls, they were finally swayed to meet the producer of the forthcoming alternative venture Bad Boys -- a story of a few (three?) guys who kidnap an underworld don. Having set out for the meeting, they were suddenly overcome by this sudden fear that they just might be walking into the jaws of an extortion bid. On principle that was disturbing enough, but what was even more embarrassing was that they had made no money whatsoever on the album, and therefore would not be able to cough up any ransom/extortion demand. So en route, they started calling friends and relatives to warn them that they just might disappear off the face of the earth. They then proceeded to the meeting. When offered Rooh-Afza by theproducer, they were paranoid that it would be drugged.

Anyway things worked by not working out, over the issue of money -- what they quoted as the budget for a single song was double what the producers were expecting to pay for the entire album. So they escaped by being perceived as the extortionists.

But things are rarely that humourous or simple. An actor friend of mine has been recently appreciated for his performances on screen. Unfortunately he was also noticed by the dominant political organisation in the city, and one evening started receiving phone calls "inviting" him to attend their organisations all-city meeting. He tried to decline politely, by suggesting that he was shooting till late that night. The party man demanded the producer's number. The actor gave him the number of his friend, and asked him to go with his alibi. The producer then was at the receiving end of threats, until he called up the actor and said it was getting too much for him. To the actor's credit, he did not succumb tothe pressure, even as it escalated, and refused to go for the function. The next day he found out what happened to his co-actor who did go, after being advised by friends that he had no choice -- he said that it was the most humiliating experience.

He was not invited to be felicitated as an actor, a star or a celebrity. He was there to demonstrate the power of the organisation, that could even reduce such personalities to nothing, to seat him before a horde of party members who would come up and stare at him, and introduce him to their wife and kids, take photos and shake hands. And smile before him in the knowledge that they were members of an organisation that had such power. So for four or five hours, they reduced him to something lower than a junior artiste.In films we see our heroes realising the consequences of not standing up to what is wrong, and how they rise to the occasion at the right time, and prove themselves. The fact is that standing up is not a one-time decision, a one-off thing. The nexttime a function is organised, he will probably get a call again, with the pressure on him doubled.

It is a classic Catch-22 -- you work to achieve a certain level of recognition, of appreciation of your performance by your peers and the audience in general, because without it there is no satisfaction. But hand in hand with the success that is measured in those terms is the necessary erosion of your private space, and in a city like Bombay today, the very real possibility that you become a performing puppet in a much bigger game.