![Kitu Gidwani](06kitu1.jpg)
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Kitu Gidwani, the IT girl
The actress plans to start afresh in New York soon
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Jeet Thayil in New York
The captain of the New York Health and Racquet Club's 75-foot private yacht was summoned down from the pilot deck. There was a situation that needed to be taken care of and the crew needed his presence.
Actress Kitu Gidwani, accompanied by a photographer and writer, wanted to board the yacht and pose for pictures. She was on the passenger list for a sunset tour of Manhattan's skyline. But passengers were not allowed on board until embarkation time and that was still an hour away.
Captain James Yurwitz, 32, clambered down to the foredeck where Gidwani was waiting. His posture changed when he saw her. He straightened up. He stood a little taller. The brass buttons on his white uniform seemed to gleam in the late afternoon sun.
Wearing a demure halter top and sunglasses, the Indian actress smiled at Yurwitz. He responded in the way most men would when graced by Gidwani's smile. He tried his very best to make her comfortable.
"Welcome aboard," he said. "Please, please, do whatever you want."
Yurwitz and his crew waived the rules. For that day, at least, Gidwani would rule the waves.
Not that she is unfamiliar with all kinds of male attention. At the moment she is visiting the United States with the intention of moving here some time soon. The night before, at a birthday party in the East Village, an elderly man sat down beside her and looked into her eyes. 'You are so beautiful,' he said. 'Let me do you!'
The people sitting around them nodded at her. The friend she had gone to the party with, even she nodded her head. Go on, they all said, let him do you. It turned out the man was a self-described 'healer' and he wanted to 'do' her face. For free. He normally charged $10,000 a session, but for her he was willing to --- that's right --- waive the rules.
'How would you like to look ten years younger?' he asked her. 'I can do it by using only my eyes and hands.' His business card said 'Metaphysician' and he had a portfolio --- photos and videos --- in his briefcase. He worked in half-hour sessions he said, and afterwards she would look as good as new.
'Though of course you don't need it,' he said.
On hearing she was from India, he said, 'I've never done anybody from your country before.'
He said God gave him his ability 'in a blinding flash.' He was able to heal people with deformities and tumors. He had worked on famous actresses and models. He told her if she was worried she could bring a chaperone along. But he also promised that he would not 'misbehave' during dinner.
Gidwani did not take up his offer. "I was having this argument in my head," she said. "I decided he had to be a quack. Though I must say he was very charismatic, I'd never heard anything like it before."
She has heard all kinds of approaches. A week earlier she was having a drink with a friend in a midtown bar. Two young men were deep in conversation at a booth nearby. They would occasionally glance at Gidwani and her companion. When her companion got up to use the rest room, one of the men came over.
Aren't you Kitu Gidwani, he asked. He had seen her on television and in the movies.
Was she rude? "Certainly not," she said. "In fact I was very gracious. After all, they were fans." Gidwani has plenty of fans, even in New York, where the latest Indian television shows and movies arrive regularly for a hungry audience.
The most recent movie she worked on was Govind Nihalani's Deham, which could be translated as 'body'. Based on Manjula Padmanabhan's award-winning play Harvest, the movie tells a futuristic tale about a world in which rich countries buy organs from the third world. Gidwani plays the wife of a man whose existence is defined by the fact that he must trade his organs for his family's welfare.
Set in 2022, Gidwani's character Jaya lives in a slum with her husband and family. A multinational company that trades in organs hires her out-of-work husband. He is happy to mortgage his body to a Western buyer. The sale transforms the couple's life. They find themselves suddenly cash-rich. Everything is fine until the day the buyer turns up for his pound of flesh.
Though Jaya's life is contained by the fact of her marriage and her poverty, she manages to retain her dignity. "She stands up for herself," Gidwani said. As did Gidwani, considering she had to appear in a near-nude love scene.
"It was nerve-wracking," she said. "Especially since it was the scene that opened the movie. You know, lots of people standing around and expecting you to shed your inhibitions."
Still, it was an interesting role in a varied career. Gidwani has appeared in a wide range of movies out of Mumbai. She worked in Deepa Mehta's 1947 -- Earth, and in Shyam Benegal's Trishna and Junoon. Both filmmakers are considered among India's better directors. But Gidwani has also worked on mainstream potboilers such as Abhay with Kamal Haasan. And she has worked in theatre.
Though some movies she has worked on are about as interesting as any India has to offer, the occasional film is not enough to sustain an actress who may want to grow and move ahead with her career.
So what's next? This: Gidwani hopes to move to the United States very soon. Where in the US? Where else but New York City? In a year or so, she says, she hopes to be living in Manhattan where she will, essentially, start all over again. She will work in theatre or in television or in the movies.
Her fans --- who include a 'healer' with a briefcase full of photos, the captain of a luxury yacht, and two Indian American television addicts, undoubtedly among innumerable others --- will hardly be able to wait.