Sometimes a story stops being just a story and overwhelms you. So Jeet and Mandar's story has sort of overwhelmed me now. We shot on Sunday after much back-and-forthing; a tussle over Mandar - who wanted to be paid for his time (not unfairly)- and much bitter fighting between the two of them late in the week.
During the shoot itself, in the lawns outside my house, there was some residual hostility in the air. Their fight had obviously left some unresolved issues in its wake and each time one of them was alone with me, he would bitch out the other.
Mandar is feeling suicidal apparently. Jeet wants another job, wants to leave Mandar, leave the city, leave his family, leave the job. He wants me to find him another job, following which I must promise not to tell anyone where he lives or how to reach him.
Mandar can sense this. "He's found someone else," he says to me, sniffling almost. He seems a lot more tired today than when I last met them. Jeet who was quiet and withdrawn is now assertive and brusque.
"He talked too much, didn't he?" he asked me about Mandar after we took the bite. The tape got snagged and we had to return to office. "If he didn't ramble on, we would have finished by now and wouldn't have had to go back," Jeet continued, accusingly.
Mandar is looking at the floor. Jeet continues, unmindful. "He didn't talk about what you asked him to come here for. He just went on and on about the past."
Little things about them are depressing me. This fight firstly. Flecks of dirt on Jeet's white corduroy pants, Mandar's dirty finger nails.
At the end of the shoot we are near Shahdara and Jeet invites me into his office. A gaggle of cross dressers is crowded around a small table and chair. I am invited to the chair and they close in on me. Arched eyebrows, red lips, blond hair, flouncy skirts.
They stare at me expectantly and I feel like a Special Visitor to a kindergarten, expected to ask intelligent, incisive questions which will draw all the students into the conversation.
"So...," I begin, "do you all come from nearby?"
There's a chorus of responses which helps to break the awkward silence. Jeet explains the counselling that takes place here and the parties that unfold in the tiny hall upstairs.
As we leave the last few party-comers troop in, carrying plastic bags and wearing unremarkable checked shirts. In a few moments, they will quickly change clothes, slap on the lipstick and gyrate to music that will reverberate through this tiny terrace room in Shahdara.
