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Tellypathy
The saree saga

The main difference between Amitabh Bachchan on STAR News’ Talking Heads and on STAR Plus’ Is Duniya Ke Sitare was not the goatee. The Big B sported an all-white chin growth while speaking to Samar Khan on Talking Heads. It contrasted rather tellingly with the mega-star’s jet-black scalp-growth.

Fortunately, the visibly wonderstruck host didn’t ask the visibly restrained star about the clash of interest between hair and heard. Admittedly some of the questions in Talking Heads did border on the banal.

I quite enjoyed Amitabh Bachchan’s tete-a-tete with script-writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar on Is Duniya Ke Sitare. More than an interviewer, Javed was like an old friend and colleague catching up with the Bachchan and letting us into their past association.

For a change Amitabh was relaxed, even jovial on camera. The fact that Javed Akhtar has a great sense of humour helped ease the tension that overtakes every televised conversation with the taciturn titan.

One of Javed’s questions was, why wasn’t Amitabh working with the best directorial talent, as he once did (aren’t Aditya Chopra and Ram Gopal Varma good enough for Javed?). Amitabh laughed and suggested that Javedsaab should send over all interested filmmakers to him.

Later Amitabh mock-quipped that he was an unromantic sort of a guy saying "who would want to romance with me." Javed retorted, "This time I won’t say I’ll send them (the ladies) to you. That would be very wrong."

There was nothing wrong with this particular conversation and confluence of two likeminded artistes who have reached a certain place in their respective spheres. They can look back on their vastly successful careers without pride or rancour.

Getting Javed Akhtar to interview Amitabh Bachchan was an idea that worked very well. The other Javed (Jaffrey) seemed too reverential and polite to ask probing questions when he interviewed Shabana Azmi on Is Duniya Ke Sitare a few weeks ago.

Pooja Batra seemed in awe of Jeetendra, when she appeared alongside the ageing star on STAR Plus’ Red Ribbon Show. The talk show in aid of AIDS features an ongoing feel-happy signature tune, a forever-upheat host (Sonu Nigam) and celebrity guests who scarcely symbolise the spirit of human suffering and resilience which the show endeavours to project. Apart from Sanjay Bhansali who broke down in the inaugural episode while speaking about his mother’s struggle to bring up her son (Sanjay says he asked the show-wallahs to delete his breakdown but Sonu seemed very proud of the bhawuk moment) the rest of the guest-fest is pretty unstressed.

Last week Jeetendra made Pooja Batra’s day when he told her she acted like a seasoned actress in her first film Viraasat. Pooja looked like she had just won a bumper lottery. She wanted to know about his dancing abilities. The humble and still-youthful Jeetendra shocked all of us by saying he had never danced anywhere except in front of the camera.

Man, that’s what I call a real struggle. In STAR Plus’ exceedingly popular soap Kora Kaagaz the protagonist Pooja (Renuka Shanane) is struggling for self-dependence. She wants to become a working woman. So work in the kitchen growls ma-in-law Uttara Baokar. Sorry, that won’t work. Brother-in-law Ravi (the camera-friendly Salil Ankola) is extremely supportive of Pooja’s professional aspirations. Why, he even brings her cuttings of classified ads and keeps inquiring about her interview calls. What Ravi doesn’t know (and Pooja does) is that his mom tears up every letter that arrives in Pooja’s name.

The dramatic tension is counter-balanced by some old-fashioned comic relief. The actor Anuj who played the lead in Gyan Sahay’s unsuccessful feature film Sar Aankhon Par is back on Kora Kaagaz after a longish hiatus (so’s the Sar Ankhon Par leading lady Anoushka, who’s the love interest in Sony’s new romantic soap I Love You). In one episode of Kora Kaagaz Anuj is shown trying to give "his life’s first injection" to a squealing young thing.

Don’t get Anuj wrong. He plays a doctor. And the injection had no Freudian overtones. But yes, there’s a romance in the offing between Dr Deepak and Pooja’s kid-sister. Provided Anuj doesn’t get swept away by another movie offer.

The era of television stars seems remote. However, a Kiron Kher or a Ratna Shah do manage to instill the innovative spirit whenever they design to descend on the medium of chappatti-chewing viewers. Mrs Shah was delightful as the sari-obsessed housewife in the attire-satire 4,000 KM Lambi Saree on Zee’s Gubbare.

The humour was often piercingly ironical. The taxi driver with the gift of the ‘cab’ took one look at Ms Shah’s nightmarish sari and said, "How can I charge taxi money from a woman who has just been gifted a sari with such a calamitous colour combination?"

The humour was consistingly projected. But director Sanjiv Abhiyankar could have avoided personal remarks about Delhi’s people and the Chinese. If as Ratna Pathak Shah said, a woman’s image is ruined for life if she wears the wrong sari, a serial could lose its credibility if it wears the wrong attitude. And poking fun at specific people is suicidal on satellite television.

Subhash K Jha