Ismail Merchant's The Mystic Masseur has been filming on location in Trinidad for the past month and a half. After receiving an invitation to visit the sets, Assistant Editor Nirshan Perera hopped on a plane to the West Indies before his editor could react. This feature is part of a series from the front lines of the emerging movie.

The trauma ward of Couva General Hospital won't ever be the same.

That's what Keith Imambaksh, an emergency room physician, was thinking as he stepped out of a vintage 1950s Ford and Ismail Merchant's camera zoomed in for an extreme close-up. Within seconds, a jostling crowd of supporters surged around him, greeting him with their heartfelt namastes and shouting "Jai, Narayan."

For one day, 46-year-old Imambaksh got to live out a dream he's nursed since he was 12: to be in a movie.

On the sets of Ismail Merchant's The Mystic Masseur, the wispy, grey-haired Trinidad native is one of 4,000-odd locals who have been hired to assist the foreign crew and add Trini flavour to the movie.

But Imambaksh's part is no two-bit role. The affable, soft-spoken doctor is none other than the notorious C S Narayan, arch-enemy of Ganesh, the movie's main character played by Aasif Mandvi.

When Imambaksh auditioned for the role last December, he did it for a lark. His friends and colleagues in San Fernando, a rural town 50 miles south of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad's capital, had egged him on, reminding him of his drama leanings in secondary school.

"But now, boy, they askin' for my autograph," Imambaksh quips in a singsong Caribbean accent. Unlike Mandvi, he didn't need a voice coach to help him talk authentic Trini.

From the moment they heard him recite his lines, Ismail Merchant and his partner, James Ivory, knew Imambaksh was perfect to play Narayan. In the movie, Imambaksh's character is a sharp-tongued newspaper editor with lofty political ambitions. As Ganesh's popularity in the island's Indian community grows, Narayan launches a vicious slander campaign and founds a rival political group.

In the scene Imambaksh shines in today, Narayan -- who is running for public office against Ganesh -- is given a hero's welcome by his ardent followers. It's a sequence that involves around 50 people, several vintage vehicles, hundreds of political placards, a motorcycle and one decrepit cow.

It's a humid, dusty take with the afternoon sun staring straight down. But through it all, Imambaksh remains enthusiastic and dapper.

But a few hours later, as he changes out of a sweat-stiff brown Nehru suit into a sunny island T-shirt, the good doctor observes sagely, "One begins to realize the tremendous amount of work that goes into making even a few seconds of footage."

He says he is incredibly proud to be a part of the re-telling of a literary classic that is a window to Trinidad's East Indian community. No one has captured the soul of this transplanted Indian community as its native son V S Naipaul has. "I grew up on him, and now I get to share a story of his with the world," Imambaksh notes, grinning widely.

One hundred and fifty years ago, when his great grandfather Kudarbaksh hitched a ride as a cook aboard a British vessel importing Indians from Uttar Pradesh, he couldn't have guessed that one of his descendants would help spread a story of thriving migrant Indians.

In fact, Imambaksh says his family now doesn't have a clue about the extent of his involvement with The Mystic Masseur. "I spoke to my son when I got the part and told him I was going to be in a movie, but didn't go any further than that and I haven't told my daughter at all," he says, laughing. "I'm keeping this as a surprise for when the movie opens!"

Design: Uttam Ghosh

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