As she rolled down the tinted glass of her Morris Minor car, she could see far from the flyover that the Metro was all decked up like a bride. Ribbons of flashing lights crisscrossed its art deco facades; there was a big crowd waiting for the stars to arrive. Waiting for her. She felt the slight chill in the December night. She rolled the glass up and rubbed the sides of her arms with her delicate fingers.

“How much time it will take more to reach Metro?” she enquired in a little fussy tone.

“Ten minutes more Memsaab,” driver turned back and replied in his dry tone.

“Still ten minutes are there…” she glanced at her golden Rolex watch and raised her eyebrows, “Shankar, go to the Gateway,” she ordered her driver. A superstar with four diamond jubilees in a row could afford to keep the crowd and co-stars waiting.

Shanker nodded and sped the car towards the gateway.

Her sweet affair with destiny was at its peak. Today, it was the premier of her tenth movie. This star-studded Premier was held at swanky Metro theatre in Bombay and she was the biggest star-attraction of the night. After all, the movie premier is the sole occasion when a common man had the chance to catch a glimpse of his/her favorite stars.

Darling of the crowds was about to reach.   

As she began to walk the red carpet from entry to red lounge with a thoughtful look on her face, the cameras flashed hundred times with media and fans almost falling for her. She glanced around, then her eyes grew wide and she tugged excitedly at her long glittering saree’s pallu. She entered the theater lobby without even giving a look or waving hand towards the crowd.

A huge superstar, she was not the heartthrob of the nation just for nothing. Her ‘number-one actress’ status was strengthened with four continuous blockbusters and in this woman-oriented film titled ‘Aurat’; she played a pivotal role, where she showed her talent in different shadows of a daughter, lover, estranged wife and then a secluded mother. In short, a Tale of Sacrifice. The role was specifically written for her. What an actress could ask for more in a male-dominating film industry?

…………

“Memsaab, Crawford Market aa gayee,” the taxi-driver’s flat voice combined with sudden break on speed brought her back to the moment.

“Ohh…” She said in her trembling aged voice. Her two yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed junked frame looked at the side-mirror of the taxi and went back into shell once more. Her long wet hair fell on her back. She had wrapped a green-colored scarf around her neck.

“How much?” she asked in mild voice gradually opening the door.

“Seventy five Memsaab,” driver replied.

She fished out an old-fashioned polyester purse from underneath her shawl and took out a badly crumpled hundred rupee note.

“Take it,” she handed over the note with shaking hands.

The driver gave her back twenty five rupees change. For a moment, she was about to say, ‘keep the change,’ but constant curse of cash-crunch ran through her mind, which made her gripped the change in hands tightly. She sighed, almost too quietly even for her to hear. Her face twisted in a rictus of pain.

She twiddled her fingers and looked around for a while. The Crawford market, situated just opposite to the Mumbai Police Headquarters, was as usual bursting with typical Bombayish excitement. A wholesale market for fruits, vegetables and poultry, its beautiful Gothic architecture with heavy Indian influence makes it one of the most beautiful commercial places to shop and sight seeing. Nothing had changed except the time. And probably, that was the biggest change for her. For her, nothing was same. The place was busier than she remembered it, and, she thought, if she closed her eyes, she could still hear the fans’ requests for autographs, photos with lots of love.

She hugged a large package under her shawl, and shivered a little at the beginning of her walk. The market was flooded with Harry Potter’s posters. Pottermania had hooked the entire country. A big crowd of children, dressed in “Harry Potter” T-shirts were gathered in front of a book store waiting for their hero’s new book.

Amidst the giggling schoolgirls and other teenagers, she walked past seeing nothing other than emptiness and moved ahead completely unnoticed towards a chemist shop. The wind whistled through her ears demonstrating its arrogance. Her gentle steps echoed a pained ex-pression on her face taking her back to 70 mm ‘B & W’ era.

………..

She was paid more than many of the leading men of her time much to their chagrin. Her first movie, Tapasya, was a resounding success. The big banners vied for her, as her mere presence guaranteed a gala opening. Her beauty and spell bounding performances mesmerized the audiences. In the movie Pavitra, she played a young widow, while in Insaaf, she essayed the role of a courageous rape victim. She would play a chaste girl in one movie and at the same time a whore in another.

Her meteoric rise was more than just phenomena. She reigned amidst glory and fame as the glamorous siren and dancing queen of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Her unique style of acting became a signature, as did her quivering lips and emotion-laden voice. She won two national awards besides three consecutive FilmFare awards in a row for best actress. 

As she would get up in the morning, strong sea waves would lash against the promenade while wave upon wave of fans would throng the gates of her sprawling bungalow. Some claimed to walk a hundred kilometers; a man once claimed to be her lawful husband! Sheer stardom! Whew!!!  

While she would take her bath and prepare for breakfast, the watchman would bring a bag full of fan-mails, even few of them written by blood, full of praise and marriage proposals. She would sometime read few of them and then tucked them away in a store room. Her dimpled smile had swayed the entire youth generation with its inimitable allure. She used to receive marriage proposals from many big industrialists but she had spurned them with a smirk on face. 

Every time the fans saw her, they went mad. Film shootings were disrupted and eager admirers would knock at her door at all times. Once, while shooting for a stadium scene, the scene required 5,000 fans but producer had to change the crowd every two hours, because there were several thousands more waiting outside to watch her in action, and if the unit wouldn"t take them inside they would create a ruckus outside.

  She loved dining at the Taj; she often gazed at the shimmering sea, at the birds that circled above it, and at the formless smoke that rose from the docks. Every weekend, a table by the huge glass window would bear the sign ‘Reserved.’ The manager would politely, yet with a hint of pride, tell other diners eyeing the table that it was reserved for her.

Wearing a shimmering gold saree with elaborate gold zardosi work, showing more of her slender shoulders because it cut just below her collar bone and across to make sleeves that came down and covered half her hands, she would enter the five-star hotel with much ado. The luminous diamond and gold jewelry added glitter to her apparel that included the Sapphire and Diamond necklace around neck giving her a royal look. Most of times, she would wear the finest of silks, dab the choicest of ittar, and wear the most elegant jewelry. A heavy Kashmiri shawl would be placed on her shoulders, although it was simply for style than to keep her warm. The other women in the room always had a hard time trying to keep their men from gazing at her.

“Those days, gold was cheap at Rs 22 a tola, though quite costly for that era," she remembers. She got her diamond set made from famous Amritpal Jewelers at Mumbai"s Zaveri Bazaar.

Her reel life was filled with virile lovers with whom she cavorted in lush gardens. Her real life, love life in particular, was a complete disaster. Ajay Kumar, her leading man in many successful films, was the man of her dreams. His printed shirts buttoned at the wrist; on dark trousers, with the looks of Greece god, he was the epitome of style, who smoked the costliest of cigars, drove around town in his Mercedes, and had bedded almost every beautiful woman one could think of. Yet, she loved him; the only true love of his life. The apparent age difference between them did not deter her from confessing her love openly for a younger man. He played with her while it amused him, but much like a child bored of a single toy, he went after another younger woman.

Make-up, lights and the camera though are a distant memory today, but still a pleasant one. She was born to the camera.  To recapture the sheer joy of the ‘gone with the wind’ past, to catch a peep into her best of time, she would open her photo album - beautiful images separated by thin sheets of butter paper, crisp in the memory of her finest moments. She used to sigh.

………..

She took a deep breath, coughed slightly and put forward a paper folded four times. It was a doctor’s prescription chit.

“Please, give these medicines,” she whispered in her barely audible sound of pain.

A boy standing on the other side of the shop-counter, in his teenage years, opened the neatly folded paper and read the unreadable scribbles carefully.

“Shekhar, how much did you pay to dealer for last medicine’s consignment?” an old man sitting beside him asked the guy with his head still into calculator. 

“Three thousand, papa,” Shekhar replied to his father while putting all the prescribed medicines on the counter. The old man continued to do the calculation.

“One thousand and sixty rupees,” Shekhar quickly prepared the bill while putting all the medicines in polythene bag.

Her polyester purse again came out from underneath her shawl. She secretly searched something inside her bag like counting the notes. Her mouth went dry. She swallowed back her fear and inched closer to the counter. A pain-cry worked its way up her throat and ended in a scared puff.

“I have only…nine hundred and twenty five rupees right now,” she stammered in pleading tone.

Though her purse was empty her heart was full. Full of pain, agony and hungry of lost love and obsolete praise. She kept standing on the counter with blank ex-pression.

“What?” Shekhar’s eyes popped up with the question, “No issue, then you can take rest of them except these tablets,” he took out two separate packs of tablet.

“But I need them, beta,” she pleaded again anxiously with her fingers curling over the edges of the counter, “It pains a lot in my back, becomes very difficult to sleep.” She felt a rush of pain unleashed in her body just by the mention of backache.  

“But aunty, we don’t deal in credit,” Shekhar said with a commanding tone ignoring her request.  

“What happened?” Shekhar’s father got up from his seat and came forward to the counter.

“Papa, aunty don’t have enough money to buy the medicines, she is asking for credit,” Shekhar told the matter and went inside leaving the matter to his father. 

“Dekhiye, I am really sorry but we don’t deal in credit,” the old man said politely while looking at her face.

“Sir…please, please pity on me, I would be able to sleep peacefully for the whole month with these medicines,” mere the thought of unbearable pain brought out a more audible voice from her throat this time.

The old man kept looking at her face and then suddenly screamed in both joy and surprise, “Are you A…A…Anupama, the superstar…Anupama...who was in...What was that movie...aaah yes...Tapasya!” the old man was grinning explicitly.

She didn’t say anything further but just nodded her head in agreement with a poignant smile on her face. She had smiled after a long-long time.

“Anupama ji, I have been a very big fan of you,” the old man had come out of the shop and now was standing near her, basking in his ‘five-minutes’ glory, “I have seen all of your movies, you are such a good actress. I can’t believe my eyes that I am standing so close to you.”

The old woman"s face brightened, "you still remember me?" she asked eagerly. She struggled to hide the joy she felt.

“Can I….take these medicines?” she asked hesitantly.

“Aree, Anupama ji…don’t make me feel so small by asking…you please take all medicines, I won’t charge you anything,” the old man was still smilingly while his son looked at both of them with a glint in eyes.

“No, no…You please take nine hundred this time, next time I will pay you rest of money,” she replied with assurance that she would have medicine for the whole month.  

“Just on one condition,” he picked up a pen and paper and turned back again towards her, “you have to give me one autograph.”

“But…now I am not a star anymore,” she said in a ruffled tone.

“For your fans, you were, are and will always remain a superstar, Anupama ji,” he persisted with her soothing words.

She was overwhelmed with emotions. She was giving an autograph after a long time. Even she didn’t remember when she gave an autograph last time. She looked around the shop if the others heard what the old man just said. None did.

She signed the paper with shake trembling fingers, whispered ‘Thanks’ and walked out of the store. Once outside, she smiled to herself. She felt like a star again. Her pain, the years of neglect melted like mist when the sun gets brighter by the minute. For once, life was added to her torn existence.

She had seen it all. Struggle, hard- work, success and then illness. Life of her followed a film"s script; just that the clichéd ‘Happy ending’ was missing.

As she was going back in the taxi, Ajay Kumar"s eyes stared at her blankly from a cheap poster of his upcoming movie as he hugged a girl closely. For an instant she felt he missed her, but it was just a poster. “She must be younger than Anuja, his granddaughter,” she muttered to herself.  

She could saw the revamped Metro from the flyover, now basking into the glory of a multiplex. It was being decorated for a new movie premier. She rolled up the window-glass.

Today, she had reinvented the ecstasy of a bygone era…tinted memories of golden moments…the agony of oblivion … the rollercoaster ride we call Life.