‘Don’t go to Cicero’ the train attendant advised me.
‘There are bullets on the wall?and they don’t like outsiders’
So I went back. Back to the train station?and on its grand stairway I hoped to rescue that kid falling from that trolley??
‘Why Cicero? you may ask.
‘How about Bali or Paris or Cairo?’ And who has even heard of Cicero, anyway? What is it– a wasteland? A squatter? A fictitious place in the figment of your imagination?
‘No. Cicero is the place where Godfather lives.’
‘Which GodFather, you may ask? Your uncle? Your dad’s friend?
‘No. Robert De Neiro, The God father.
Let me back up a little bit.
Remember the time when TIVO was known as DoorDarshan?, and the first program you ever watched after coming from school were those multi-toned television bandwidth lines ? and for a TV buff like you, its long beeeeeep – sounded like music. And remember when you were hypnotized by the rotation of that Yin-Yang symbol of DoorDarshan?…When Wednesdays you watched lopsided steps of Shammi Kapoor during ‘Chitrahar’ and Fridays you were captivated by Pronnoy Roy taking us around ‘The World This Week.’
Remember, when you watched one day cricket matches where the camera usually followed the exact opposite direction of the ball ..and the commentator said ‘Bahuth acchi shot boundary ke paas’….followed by ‘pakad gaya’ and when the final slog overs where interrupted by power cuts and boring newscasts…that’s when I’m talking about….there was this TV series called the God Father…of course there was ‘Oshin’ too…but that was for girls. Boys were supposed to watch the Godfather!
Cicero…that small town in Little Italy, Chicago…where the street was full of life….a poor working peoples’ neighborhood…with its lively vendors selling fruits and clothes…where the rich had Buggies and poor had bicycles and scooters…and where the statue of Mother Mary went in huge processions….and you could spot that white-clad Don among the crowd – pretending to be generous but secretly killing people who did not pay him his dues…and within this huge chaos was the GodFather… an honest man wanting to make a living. How I loved to be in that street…infact How I loved to be the GodFather…
Years later when other versions of the God Father surfaced I had more reason to believe the humane face. With cotton stuffed in my mouth I would sit in my dad’s working table and look at my sister and say…”Why did you come to me..Why not the Police?” Of course how could my sister recognize Marlon Brando?she was too young to know the complexity of men in responsibility…she was perhaps more interested in seeing Oshin and how cute that Japanese kid was.
Well, remember the scene in the GodfatherIII, in one of the most memorable moments of the God Father saga when Al Pacino heaves a loud scream as his daughter is shot, which, if I count correctly lasted 62 seconds. There is something in these GodFathers’ that is attractive. And how about the same theme recurring in the ‘Untouchables,’ rather from an honest cop’s point of view. Now my mind is telling me…Ok, if you are going to Cicero why not visit the train station on the way in Chicago where Kevin Costner brims with the milk of human kindness (to borrow from Shakespeare) and tries to rescue that baby in the trolley as it slowly trickles away on that huge marble stairway. Wasn’t that breathtaking when Andy Garcia floated in the air.
And what about our own desi version. Nayagan…where Kamalhaasan trudges home with swollen legs after being beaten at the police station. I remember some of my friends, of course, where so obsessive that they would bunk the chemistry class (in those days they would call it variety entertainment) just to watch Kamalhaasan escape from prison. I tell you, when you are a kid that is instant justice. You develop this apathy toward authority and toward corrupt policemen. Until, of course you see that bloodshed. Or you see that all these Godfathers rather die rather unceremoniously. Just look at Brando collapsing in his garden while his grandson assumes that he is still playing or AlPacino slumping alone and isolated in his easy chair followed by a cat (or dog, doesn’t matter) licking his dead body….
…Ok…I won’t visit Cicero I tell the train guard…I would rather have that romantic version of Cicero than the reality…I will take a train that passes through Cicero and go to that grand station where the marble stairway the bronze rails and strange men can emulate my fantasy…and yet as I pass through Cicero, I peak down, I see the roof tops of mystery. I imagine Robert De Neiro prancing over from one the terrace to another, with a shrouded white towel, and a little later disbanding his gun, throwing it in one of the chimney stacks and joining his wife and kids on that little street in Cicero as if nothing happened…
Author: Newton Dsouza- USA