Kaun Banega Celebrity Crorepati?
Aamir Khan rubbed the tiny moustache under his lower lip. “Now I know why Farhaan Akhtar wanted me to sport this” he quipped. “It helps you to think.” Aamir was required to do a lot of thinking on Diwali night. Bhai, pachaas lakh rupye ka sawaal tha!

Aamir swam through the questions. His grandmother and young son proudly watched the star of the family as he shot off cocky answers. Earlier, Sonali Bendre too bathed herself in glory proving that a pretty face can hide an alert brain.

Somehow, the Celebrity Special on Kaun Banega Crorepati was more proof of the host’s invincible dexterity before the camera. The atmosphere wasn’t as tense as it is when ordinary contestants fight to win the prize money. We all knew the prize money was going to charity and we played the game with the two star-contestants on a level beyond the obvious. We wanted Aamir and Sonali to win because they were our Diwali’s ghar bulaye huey mehmaan. In fact, the abrupt ending to Aamir’s questions when he was still on a winning streak (with a little help from Javed Akhtar on the phone) made the whole segment cutely tokenized. Let’s have more such celebrity specials on ...Crorepati, provided the contestants are as bright and charismatic as Aamir and Sonali.

The game-show format is becoming deeply and dangerously contagious. While Zee’s Sawaal Dus Crore Ka has rapidly descended into an acquisitive desperation, Sab TV’s Jab Khelo Sab Khelo doesn’t even deserve a mention. Alarmingly, even the non-monetary competitions have introduced prize- money sections. “Please watch us we’ll reward you for doing so,” seemed to be the unstated plea on Zee’s Antakshari last week. I felt sorry for Anu Kapoor, not because his partner had changed from Shefali to Rajeshwari (is that a bane or a boon?) but because Kapoor had to call members of the audience and tempt them to answer music trivia like, “Sing the song for which Asha Bhosle won the National award in 1981” and “Sing two songs from R.D. Burman’s last released film.” Neither of the wannabe hazaar-patis could answer such elementary questions properly.

On Sab TV’s The Fan Club, Manoj Bajpai was asked how he feels when women call him “intense and sexy”. Before or after Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar, the fan didn’t specify. But our intense and er, sexy actor took the question very seriously and answered on how much all males enjoy female attention and that after Satya, fans approached him in the fashion of Bhiku Mhatre. “And after Shool they approached you dressed as cops?” hostess Suchitra Pillai joked. Mr. Intense & Sexy still refused to see the lighter side of fame, success and fan attention.

Two actresses have gone from the large to the small screen without a care in the world. Mayuri Kango has come a full circle. Her debut film Papa Kehte Hain was meant to be a telefilm. She’s now seen doing a Muslim social called Nargis on DD1, where she plays the title role. Aasif Sheikh is the guy who craves for her attentions. Last seen, Mayuri Kango (dressed to the hilt and made up to rival any screen queen) and her screen father Vikram Gokhale were trying to recreate Amaanat within a Muslim ambience while Imran Khan was moping over a girl who wouldn’t have him. After Heena, Muslim socials have caught on in a big way. Besides Nargis on DD2 we have Shaheen on Sony and Rehenuma on B4U.

B4U’s Bahuraniyan features another cinema-to-television crossover actress Bhagyashree in an interesting variation on the typical bade ghar ki bahu conflicts. On this occasion, it’s the Bahu who’s making every effort to adjust to her socially and economically inferior in-laws’ reversed snobbery. There’s a bitchy Bua in the household to create trouble. Last week, she instigated Rukmini’s husband (another big screen dropout Ronit Roy) against his wife. He sulked in a corner, misbehaved with his father-in-law and refused to attend his-in-law’s wedding anniversary bash.

Bhagyashree took all this with lowered eyelids, probably because she wanted us to see her ever-changing collection of eye shadow. It went from pink to blue to green within 15 minutes. Whenever the actress descends on television, she brings her sari and makeup collection along.

On a more sombre note, there is Khaki every Wednesday on DD2. Created by the team that is responsible for Aahat and CID on Sony. Khaki tries to look at lives of the law enforcers as more than a thrill-a-minute adventure. The constant danger, agony and trauma are recreated through the death of an honest cop (Madan Jain). In the last episode, colleague Tom Alter had to announce the tragedy to the dead man’s wife and son. He didn’t have to utter a word. One look at his grief-stricken face and the wife (played by Sadhana Singh) wailed as though she has just been told her host would be Anupam Kher instead of Amitabh Bachchan.

The efforts to piece together the dead cop’s life story through the reminiscences of people who knew him gives Khaki a touch of Citizen Kane to the khaki-worthy goings-on. Such pretensions to superiority aren’t unknown on the small-screen medium any longer. On Star Plus’ newly launched Kalash, a Salman Khan clone did Saif Ali Khan’s boyfriend-meets-girl’s-family-after sex sequence from Kya Kehna, and on Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani, the unhappy new bride Sonali did Mahima Chowdhary’s telephone sequence from Pardes, down to the sobbing girl pretending she can’t hear her father on the other end. In this way the bond between cinema and television is being strengthened. Watch out for the ugly kadi for more cannibalised sustenance.

On Star News in Hindi last Sunday, there was Ashutosh Rana with the author of a book on Kashmir militancy discussing Mission: Kashmir. While the author gave the film a clean chit for authenticity, our industry orator launched into a long and absorbing if somewhat irrelevant monologue on the long relationship between sur and taal and the close bond between music and our cinema. I am sure even Vinod Chopra was quite flummoxed by Ashutosh Rana’s reading of his film.

The same evening we also had the three boys from Mohabbatein on Star News who were asked to sing their favourite song from the film. Naturally they begged off. When asked about the competition with Mission: Kashmir, Jimmy Shergill shook his head and smiled. “I am sure they have worked as hard as we have.” Right. And could we have some better researched questions for the celebrities on the news channels?

Subhash K Jha