The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [60]
Like most film-star children, Sanjay had started his film career as a teen romance lead, but he needed those big mid-career payoffs as a tough-guy Indian action star. So, Sanjay had boldly enlisted in the Indian Army. Young Sanjay had been a soldier against Moslem terrorists, on patrol in the blood-spattered mountains of Kashmir. He had driven an Army jeep and carried a machine gun along the dangerous Indo-Pakistani Line of Control. Sanjay had won a huge amount of worshipful Indian media coverage for these patriotic publicity stunts. Pundits in the know were already talking wisely about Sanjay’s future political career.
The Bharatiya Janata Party or “Indian People’s Party” were Sanjay’s brand of leaders. The BJP were tough, heavily armed right-wingers who had been running the Indian government since 1998. Sanjay was the BJP’s kind of movie star, a modern guy with big modern Indian muscle, great Indian clothes, cool Indian moon rockets, and extremely dangerous Indian atom bombs. Sanjay’s violent adventure movies always played well with these tense, nervy Indian superpatriots. Sanjay’s dad, who had won huge popularity playing Shiva in a TV soap opera, was a BJP member of the Indian Parliament.
Knowing all this, Tony was very concerned about Sanjay, and not in a good way. Tony’s wild romance with Anjali had gotten a lot of play in the Bollywood film press. Bollywood always publicized the love life of its film stars, and the more peculiar, the better.
Sanjay could break both of Tony’s arms like matchsticks. And yet Sanjay had never said a word about the Anjali situation. Tony wasn’t quite sure if this dicey situation was just a given, or completely unspeakable. Many, many things in India were both at the same time.
Tony had a lot of investments in Bangalore, and offshore outsourcing was one of his major lines of work lately. What Anjali got out of all this was less clear to Tony, but Anjali always went along for Sanjay’s hunting trips, no matter where in the world he went. While she was hunting, Anjali was allowed to live without her golden saris, her heavy jewels, her movie cameras, and her greasepaint. Hunting trips were the closest thing to freedom that Anjali would ever be allowed.
Tony was also pretty sure that Anjali had been deputized by the family’s women to spy on Sanjay. She always went along with the big-game hunter to make sure the family’s favored son didn’t do anything unpredictable and James Dean-like, such as blowing his own head off.
The sudden glamorous arrival of Indian film stars had absolutely thrilled the Indian staff at the Colorado telescope facility. The Indian staffers that Tony had hired were Bangalore software hacks, living in America on business visas. Most of the time, the Indian staffers felt very isolated in the remote Colorado mountains. Sanjay and Anjali had done wonders for their morale. Sanjay and Anjali seemed pleased to tour the wonders of the telescope and to pose for friendly snapshots with the staffers. Bombay film stars took their offshore fans very seriously.
With another day’s shooting wrapped up and in the can, the film stars drove to Pinecrest to kill some elk. They took a sturdy set of nicely heated Jeep SUVs, with ruggedized tires and the standard Pinecrest luxury tourist provisions. Their driver and hunting guide was a Chinese servant who called himself “Chet.” Like all of Mrs. DeFanti’s Chinese ranch staff, Chet was so tidy and reserved as to be practically invisible.
Sanjay sprawled in the Jeep’s toasty passenger seat, wearing a brand-new black cowboy hat and a spotless leather jacket. Pinecrest Ranch had loaned Sanjay an enormous .338 Winchester Magnum. When he wasn’t caressing the rifle, Sanjay made a lot of use of his silver hip flask. Sanjay tended to drink steadily while “hunting,” also easing the tedium with high-stakes poker games and dirty songs in Hindi.
Tony and Anjali also rode in Sanjay’s Jeep, sharing the backseat with