From Above

by Vanessa Rebello

It had been 11 hours, 36 minutes and 15 seconds since the shoot had started. 17 seconds now. The set was housed in a large warehouse style studio, complete with skin scorching lights and actors under two-inches of makeup. Dev was perched on the wooden boards that dangled precariously from the 30-foot-high ceiling. He had been there since lunch; the sun had set a few hours ago. They were shooting a thirty second commercial.

Today was his last day on the job. Tomorrow he was to retire. They hadn't found a replacement for him, but  they still had someone to rely on for the time being.

"Woh light chalu karo! (Turn on that light)," screamed an assistant director. On the ground, a scrawny man dashed forth and obediently turned on the light as carefully as possible, aware that his all the money he had ever seen in his life wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of that single device.

Dev watched him turn it on, touching the switches ever so gently, partly because it was hot. He and the scrawny man had known each other for the longest time. They were the only two who weren’t part of the union. The reason they could afford to do that was because they had been picked up by a production house to work as regulars. The cost of this regular work was less pay.

The scrawny man had also made appearances as an extra in a few films. Dev envied him. Sometimes he still wondered what it must feel like to be under those lights after the director screamed 'action'. He had come to the city, a young hopeful man, with stars in his eyes and lint in his pocket. For years he ran from studio to studio, audition to audition. The rejection wasn't as bad as the mockery. The mockery wasn't as bad as the hunger.

When his dreams were finally starved out of him he took the first job he could get. The long hours he had spent sitting idly on sets, hoping to be cast, had come to some use - he learnt a few technical aspects of lighting simply by watching others do it. Thus, he became Dev – the light boy.

It seemed like a lifetime later that he found himself still sitting there on the wooden boards, setting up the lights, turning them on and off between shots, looking down on the others in the only way he could. He casually played with a rope that made a few loose wooden boards with steel planks on them rattle on the other end. Up here, anything was entertainment.

"Action!" shouted the director.

"I knew right from the beginning that this is what I wanted to do," chimed the actress. "Acting just comes naturally to me."

"Cut!" said the director. "One more." According to the clap that was scene 8 take 24.

Dev wished they would at least look at him sometimes. Not just when they needed some work done. They could have asked about his wife, or maybe his kid. They could have told him that they would miss him after he retired. Sometimes he considered standing in the middle of a set and reciting the beautiful poems that he worked on in his spare time. Maybe someone would see him and make him a big star. Or maybe someone would just notice him. That would be nice too.

He looked at the floor, a great distance below him and thought ‘Maybe they’d notice if I jump.’

In all his years he had seen two other instances of light boys falling to the ground in the middle of a shot. One died instantly. The other had lost a lot more: his legs, his livelihood and eventually his mind.

The actors felt very guilty about these kinds of things. It reminded them of how much more they earned than the rest of the crew. The money that his wife would get from the accident would make sure she could support herself for a long time, maybe to send his kid to college too. It would rid him of the torture of having to look for another job. Of course he would have to get another job! Retirement was a concept invented by rich men and forced upon the rest.

Dev didn’t like to do things that had already done. Right from the beginning he had always wanted to be different. Still, jumping seemed like a good idea.

“Oye!” came a voice from below. “Upar wala chalao! (Turn on the top one).” Dev leapt to his feet and across the wooden boards. As he leaned over and stretched his arm to turn on the light, he realised that the shoot had almost come to an end.

It’s now or never. It was bad enough that he had lived like a mongrel, he was not about to go out with a whimper.

He went back to his corner and looked below. It was a long way down. Such a height was bound to cause severe damage in the least.

“Last shot,” he heard someone say.

Everyone prepared for it. The actors had their makeup touched up. The director stared into a screen. The scrawny man meddled with another light. No one was looking up.

‘Now,’ he thought. In the next second several thoughts raced through his mind.

‘I should think about this a little more.’

‘There’s no time.’

‘Life is sacred.’

‘There’s no life without money. No money without a job.’

‘Who are you to decide...’

“Now,” he murmured to himself, cutting short his thoughts and yanking on the rope with all his might.

The wooden boards on the other end of the rope and the steel planks that rested on them came loose and went crashing to the ground.

BANG.

He closed his eyes, unable to look, unable to move. He heard the chaos below. People were running towards it, some screaming, some shouting instructions.

‘This will buy me a few more months before I have to look for another job,’ he told himself. ‘I did the right thing.’

Below the debris lay a scrawny man, looking at the man up above with what seemed to Dev like knowing eyes.