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Split screen

A matter of facts
What can we say about a celebrity chat show whose host hasn’t got even the basic facts right? On DD2’s Celebrity Tonight, the still-dashing Nawab Pataudi was asked how he felt about his wife Sharmila Tagore wearing a bikini in Kashmir Ki Kali.
Bikini in Kashmir Ki Kali? Mister, get your facts in order before shooting off rude, sensational and stupid questions to gentlemanly celebrities who are too polite to answer back. The supposedly shocking sequence was in An Evening In Paris, not in Kashmir Ki Kali. Besides, what Sharmila wore wasn’t a bikini but a bathing costume.

Coming to the obnoxious question, what’s a man supposed to say when confronted by such a weirdly brainless question? “Great,it feels great to see my wife in a bikini that she never wore? Or, “I hated every minute of it”? This ranks as the second-most stupid celebrity question on television, after Pooja Bedi’s infamous hair-dye query addressed to Amitabh Bachchan.

Wait. There’s more. The celebrity prattle on Celebrity Tonight became even more offensive with the host wondering how the Nawab could be so “standoffish” (I do believe he meant dispassionate) about his wife doing intimate scenes with her co-stars. Pat handled the rude host diplomatically arguing that his wife was only doing her job, and that he was more intrigued by directors who required their actors to do all sorts of funny things.

Even by television’s candid standards the interview with Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi (incidentally, the interviewer objected to the sportsperson being addressed as “Nawab” - quake quake!) was going a bit too far. To appear chummy with the interviewee the interviewer needn’t work himself up into a lather of blather. When Tim Sebastian spoke to Scottish actor Ewan McGregor the two had a ball without losing sight of their respective positions in the interface. Some portions of the conversation pertaining to the paparazzi and nudity were really naughty.

After seeing his son nude in a film Ewan McGregor’s father wrote, Dear son, I’m glad to see you’ve inherited one of my major attributes”. Tim Sebastian chuckled, “And we won’t ask which attribute that was.” McGregor’s pecker-faced...sorry pokerfaced reply, “I think he was talking about my hair.”

Well hair hair! More so, since Tim doesn’t have much of those on his own head. Tim reminds me of Tam. She’s the daughter of the upright politician in Star Plus’ well crafted new soap Rajdhani. Her modelling career seems to be coming in the way of her papa political ambitions. Then there is a very believable young man chosen to serve as her protector and fiance by her folks. But Tam hates the sight of the unsophisticated but well meaning self-appointed boyfriend.

Even the minor characters in Rajdhani are credible and interesting. Even more interestingly there’s another political drama on Sahara Kshitij with similar characters. In last week’s episode, the upright politician’s daughter asked the conscience-stricken politician a vital question. Kya saarey politician ek jaise hote hain?” The politician (S.M.Zaheer) went into convulsions of collective guilt, making simple and loving wife (Rita Bhaduri) wonder if her husband had been watching Thriller At 10 on Zee every night. Of course she didn’t say it out loud. Why should she when Khsitij values silences?

It’s so hard to come across a serial with a single silent groove in the soundtrack. Vinod Pande, who looks after Sahara TV gave us one of those rare silent moments on D—Line when a mentally disturbed female human bomb tried to make human contact with a sympathetic social worker (played with rare sensitivity by Shilpa Tulaskar). The Social Worker offered Detonated Bomb a cup of tea. Bomb flung it aside. The other woman got up, quietly went away and returned with two more cups of tea and offered the traumatized woman another cuppa (obviously empty, but that’s another story). Madhavan was simply superb as the rake on the take in Rishtey’s Kashish last Sunday. The story was fairly hackneyed. A young Casanova comes comes to a hill station, meets a young woman whom he had once courted and deserted, discovers she has a son and - well we knew the rest.

Madhavan is that rare actor on television who can make the predictable seem exciting. To the repentant rake’s role in Rishtey, he brought a certain summery brightness compounded by a barely visible emptiness that is the ultimate karma of all womanisers. I sincerely hope Madhavan never abandons the small screen for the big. After all, it’s the performance, not the size, that matters. A performance of substantial size was the one given by Rajit Kapoor in the ever-watchable Star Bestsellers slot. The story Prayaas last Wednesday was about an out-of-luck stage actor who’s weaned back to normalcy by a female colleague (Rajeshwari). Unlike Kashish on Rishtey which depended almost entirely on the principal performance Prayaas had brilliant performance by the whole cast. Rajit Kapoor was brilliant. After Sayaji Shinde in the story Chaudhvin Ka Chand, this was the second memorable performance on Star Bestsellers.

Though Prayaas was a re-run, I didn’t feel I was watching it for the second time. Let’s hope we see more such well-crafted telefilms on Star Bestsellers. This continues to be one of the most stimulating happenings on satellite television. Strange are the preferences and peeves of our film stars. On BBC’s India Business Report there was a story on the rising popularity of film portals in India. Among those who gushed about the pleasures of cyber conversations there was Mahima Chowdhary. She said she preferred to chat with her fans on a website because “It’s more honest. You can say anything you like.”

Well, say anything you like in your press interviews too, for God’s sake! And stop being dishonest in print.

Subhash K Jha