Steemit Challenge - Season 28 Week-5: Shadows Behind Stardom
The gate to the house creaked open and Khaled sat in his car parked under a dying neem tree. The face of Singh was seen at the door, and was thinner, and older, as though the silence of retirement had bred away his bones. His superstar who previously packed theatres had curtains and keepy wary eyes.
You must not have come, Singh said in a low voice. “Phones listen these days.”
Khaled followed him inside. There was nothing on the walls, no prizes, no posters. Just shadows.
"You left the sport when you were at the best," Khaled said. “No farewell film. No reason. That’s not like you.”
Singh laughed bitterly. "Always you journalists are thinking stars pick their exits."
He had a trembling hand in pouring tea. And that is when Khaled realized that the fear made its job.
Singh talked very slowly, as though each word of his could bring peril. Several years before, one of the producers had given him a part in a film with no script and no sense but unlimited money.
The film was a big flop, but somehow it made a comeback and made it to profits that were unquantifiable. Singh was inquisitive, and he questioned. Too many.
"I witnessed ledgers," Singh said. Foreign investments channeled in shell companies. Flop movies are used to launder black money. Cinema was not an issue to the mafia. It was just their machine.”
Khaled leaned forward. “Why you?”
“I refused to endorse it. Worse still, I knew faces, men I had met at political fund-raisers, smiling next to ministers."
The threats came quietly. First a warning call. Then a picture of the sister of Singh before her office. At last there was a bullet lying on his dress table.
“So I ran,” Singh said. “Not for courage. For survival.”
Khaled walked out of the farm house without his recorder on but with an eye-blazing determination. The novel was not the size of one actor. He started at a place where figures are most effective: film budgets.
He related crash and burn box office to the spike of profits. Patterns emerged. The same producers. The same distributors. Money circulated, clean as you go.
One of the fixers had accepted a rendezvous with him at a cavernous bar on the docks. They finance movies in three nations, the man replied with jutting eyes. “Politicians protect them. Stars advertise them. If you publish, you disappear.”
It was a real danger when one night the apartment door of Khaled was open and nothing was stolen except his notes. This was succeeded by a text: Bright stars cast long shadows.
Still, he dug deeper. Bank documents leaked. One of the junior accountants had caved under the pressure and provided transaction trails connecting a local senator with offshore accounts under film revenue.
Khaled triangulated all that, aware that a slip of the tongue would make the tale, and perhaps himself.
He reunited with Singh, but in secret. “I will publish,” Khaled said.
Singh stared at him. “They will ruin you.”
“Maybe,” Khaled replied. "But you were already spoilt with silence."
The exposé dropped like a bomb. Countries, dates, names, numbers. Screenshots of transfers. Face-to-face interviews with those inside whose faces were covered but whose facts were stinging. The industry shook. Producers denied. Witch-hunts were screamed at by politicians. Investigations were announced by a foreign agency.
Then came the twist.
Another faction of mafia leaked more files, as it was keen on destroying their rivals. The truth multiplied. Arrests ensued, not all, but many enough to get through the wall. The forced retirement of Singh was now seen as what it was; a silent rebellion.
Khaled got one message to the end, which was not signed: You have won this round.
Singh appeared in the spotlight again in weeks, but this time with no movie, but as a witness. He was before cameras, composed and firm. "My reason was that I ran away in fear and not fame. The truth never should be possessed by fear."
Khaled was looking on at the rear of the room. The stars which are the brightest, he knew, do not appear on screens but in decisive moments. And the best shadows at times are the evidence that light is at last penetrating.
I invite @josepha, @stef1 and @mikitaly to drop a very constructive comments on this post and also to participate in this contest.
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