Bade miya toh bade miyan,
chhote miyan bhi kam nahin

Govinda has acquired new fans after just a week on the boobtube. And he hasn’t even got into full form as yet. In the first few episodes of Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke we could see him warming up towards a bump-and-grind climax. The one thing which can be said about Chappar Phaad Ke with full certainty is, it doesn’t try to be another Kaun Banega Crorepati, so it will survive.

The first difference is in the posture. While the Big B sits serenely in front of his contestants, Govinda prefers to stand. This is to facilitate all the monkey business that’s an essential part of Govinda’s persona. Then there’s the improvisational instinct. It’s given free vent for the event.

Govinda is free to have a ball. The contestants are nervous. But Govinda does his best to put them at ease. "Do you just want to play or have fun while playing?" he grins and asks.

Imagine, just playing with Govinda around! Koi crime-dham hai ki nahin?! Incidentally, the very first question in the very first episode was about Hrithik Roshan. Govinda also made a sporting reference to the mahan kalaakar Amitabh Bachchan in the first episode. We don’t get to see too many of those on television.

The Saturday-night telefilm on Zee Kala Heera had a mahaan television kalaakar Pavan Malhotra playing a simpleton with a dribbling chin who chances on the wrong-doings of an evil nexus, comprising Govind Namdeo, Rajendra Gupta and Vineet Kumar. The cat-and-mouse game between the corrupt and powerful, and the innocent and weak was clumsily filmed on a shoestring budget with the strings unable to keep the body and shoe together.

Speaking of bodies, The Femina Miss India Contest on Sony Entertainment had some really fabulous moments. Raveena Tandon dressed in an Anna Singh designed saree was a sight for sore eyes. When she walked the ramp alongside other judges we could hear an audible gasp in the audience. To see an actress as beautiful as her dressed in a shimmering celestial saree was to realise how elegant the Indian costume looks on the right figure and how monotonous the strapless gowns and yankee pouts can get after a while.

Yup, Raveena was a headturner that night. The others just had to make every effort possible to get noticed. Our forever-insufferable man on the spot Cyrus Broacha was specially insufferable, so much so that anchor Rahul Khanna had to apologise to the judges for Broacha’s breach of decorum.

Broacha asked the perfume tycoon Azuro whether Indian men or women smell better. Azuro sniffed at his neighbour Diana Hayden. He then sniffed at Brocha. "Sheee smells beeeter." He lisped in his cute accent. Backstage the Nikhil Chinappa needed to be put on a leash. When Preity Zinta joined him for a while she said she wasn’t tall enough to walk the ramp and added that the best things in life come in small packages.

"Oh," leered Chinappa, "you really believe that size doesn’t matter in anything?"

Now, what do we do with television anchors like these? Ask them to rinse their mouths with dettol. Or just throw the whole damned lot in the nearest garbage can?

News Hour on Star News featured another unabashed space hogger, danseuse Sonal Mansingh, discussing the Bharat Ratna for Bismillah Khan and Lata Mangeshkar with that brilliant journalist and analyst Shekhar Gupta. Instead of discussing how richly the two recipients of the highest civilian honour in the land deserved the Bharat Ratna, Mansingh let us know that she hadn’t lobbied for whatever minor award she had received and that she was in the queue for the Bharat Ratna.

Honestly, when will the artistic fraternity of this land learn to be gracious about fellow-artistes’ achievements? I liked Shekhar Gupta’s contention that the Bharat Ratna shouldn’t be given to those who are too old to appreciate it. But why did host Rajdeep Sardesai have to bring up journalists as possible recipients of government honours?

Star News’ Limelight featured Muzaffar Ali and the Pakistani Ghazal singer Abeeda Parween. Host Sunil Sethi brushed up his Urdu diction and plunged into the task of communicating with his guest in the language of the Sufis. Muzaffar Ali chose to confuse Sethi by switching from English to Urdu, and vice versa. He also took the opportunity for selfcongratulation, bragging that singers like Asha Bhosle and Chhaya Ganguly had won National awards for singing for him. Shouldn’t the credit for Asha B’s and Chhaya G’s victory go to the music composers of Umrao Jaan and Gaman, respectively?

In DD2’s going-great-guns Kundali the rejected girl suggested a way out to the man she loves. "You cannot marry the woman you love because the stars foretell death for your first wife. So marry me, let me die and then you can marry the woman you love."

I think the lady has been watching Amol Palekar’s Ankahee on cable television.. On Zee’s nightly soap Akash the woman who’s having a clandestine affair with Sudha(Kitu Gidwani)’s husband shook like a leaf in the wind when Sudha’s sister confronted her. The frightened woman rang up the wronged wife and sobbed, "Please can you come over a while. I feel very scared." The Crude Arth, anybody?

Guilt at prime time, is better than bilge at crime time. On DD1’s Kaun Mita Vashisht tried to make the criminal surrender over the phone. "You really have no choice in the matter," she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. She would be better placed hosting India’s Most Wanted than investigating crime in cheap thrillers.

On Neena Gupta’s quite and quietly engaging Siski, Neena Gupta is being harassed at her work place by her gonnabe husband Kanwaljeet’s villainous father. When Kanwaljeet offered to help she snubbed him, arguing that she can handle her problems on her own. In that case why did she go and tell Kanwaljeet’s best friend about the problem?

Strange are the ways of women in the soap operas.

Subhash K Jha