Reincarnations

His big break arrived with the coming of the theological movies. Once the formula of making films based on the puranas, and adding the usual mixture of songs, dances, funny uncles, etc., had paid off, every god in the pantheon got his or her chance to be a star. When D.W. Rama scheduled a production based on the story of Ganesh, none of the leading box-office names of the time were willing to spend an entire movie concealed inside an elephant's head. Gibreel jumped at the chance. That was his first hit, Ganpati Baba, and suddenly he was a superstar, but only with the trunks and cars on. After six movies playing the elephant-headed god he was permitted to remove the thick, pendolous, grey mask and put on, instead, a long hairy tail, in order to play Hanuman the monkey king in a sequence of adventure movies that owed more to a certain cheap television series emenating from Hong Kong than it did to the Ramayana.

S. Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Etiquetas: citas, dream job, gibreel, reincarnations, salman rushdie, satanic verses