The Extras by Kiran Nagarkar is an exuberant story about the big and small tragedies that shape our lives
The Extras is the second in a trilogy by Kiran Nagarkar on Ravan and Eddie, two boys from a chawl in Mumbai who are as different as chalk and cheese. But by the end of the book, they are thrown together by an overarching desire to be superstars in the glittering glamorous Hindi film industry of the 1970s.
It is populated by a cast of characters which Nagarkar, whom I have discovered is a brilliant storyteller, effortlessly introduces into the storyline. Of course, as I mentioned above Ravan Pawar and Goan Catholic Eddie Coutinho are the central characters. There is Parvati, the former’s mother who changed his name from Ram to Ravan — to ward off the evil eye after he nearly died as a 13-month-old falling off the balcony of the Central Works Department Chawl No 17.
He was rescued by Victor Coutinho, father of Eddie and husband to Violet who has declared Ravan to be her husband’s murderer and forever bears this grudge against him. Shankarrao is Ravan’s father, who spends his time lying in bed and ordering his wife to give him tea and savoury snacks and spending the money she earned.
Ravan is consumed, devoured and gobbled by an obsession. From the time he had watched the movie Dil Deke Dekho, he had known that he wanted to be like Shammi Kapoor, a hero in films. Ravan also loves Pieta, sister to Eddie, who lives on the floor above him but for whom he does not exist. After flunking his high school exams twice, Ravan decides to discontinue his studies and join the New India brass band in the nearby chawl where he learns to play the xylophone. Later he becomes owner of the band, which he renames the Cum September Jai Bharat Band, which specialises in marriages. His day job is that of a taxi driver.
Eddie, on the other hand, works part time as a bouncer at a speakeasy run by a Mrs Fernandes alias Auntie. He has trained at a traditional Hindu gym at Mazagaon, loves rock ‘n’ roll and fancies himself as the new Elvis Presley. He heads a band called The Bandra Bombshells and is crazy about the Anglo-Indian girl from the Railway Quarters called Belle.
Nagarkar puts together a cast of other characters who assist in the progress of the story that starts off real but meanders into certain improbable Bollywoodish situations. There is Three Point One, a dangerous money lender, who earned this moniker, because he jacked up the maximum lending rate of three per cent a month. He is the mafia. Then, there is Sapna the B grade film star and Aasman the Muslim film extra who writes poetry and is beaten and battered at home.
There are some soul searching drunks we get acquainted with — Chatterjee and Krishnamurthy, the resident Marxists at the Auntie’s for whom everybody was a bourgeois or a reactionary. Ardeshir Bharucha, the six foot three painfully thin charted accountant who had “seventeen elbows and forty-five bones in his body” becomes the proud owner of a “Sophia,” a red as lipstick BSA bike!
The novel is peppered with dark humour, some of which leaves you laughing out loud. There are occasional treatises inside the novel, where the author deviates to describe essay like pieces on subjects like India’s brass bandwallahs, the Prohibition, the life of film extras and the idea of chawls among others. It is as if the author is giving a primer to readers. The language is immersive and you find yourself rooting for the characters to make it big, sharing in their daily escapades.
Ultimately, this is an exuberant story about the big and small tragedies that shape our lives. It asks whether we are all protagonists and superstars or are we extras in the movie called life?
The Extras is a must read for anybody who loves Bollywood and provides an insight into life in Bombay, the city of dancing movie stars. The Extras first published in the year 2012 is preceded by the first book Ravan and Eddie and the last in the trilogy is Rest in Peace Ravan and Eddie.