The Legal Adviser

The studio's legal adviser belonged, oddly, to the Story Department, an assembly of writers and poets, and was officially known as the legal adviser — though everybody referred to him as 'the opposite'. Unlike the khadi-clad dreamers around him, he wore pants, a tie and sometimes a coat that looked like 'a coat of mail'; he was a man of cold logic in a crowd of dreamers, and often looked alone and helpless. He is remembered chiefly for a single incident: when an extremely talented but temperamental actress blew over on the sets, he quietly switched on the recording equipment and later played her own tirade back to her. Hearing her voice through the sound equipment, the countryside girl was struck dumb and never recovered, so that a brilliant career ended — a sad end the legal adviser had brought …