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Split screen

Chain reaction

It was so strange to see Rajesh Pilot talking to Tim Sebastian only days before he perished in a road accident. Tim was aggressive in his line of questioning. When was Pilot going to say it’s time to see Sonia Gandhi step aside? Why did he say he wanted a war with Pakistan after Kargil (“I got carried away after seeing 23 dead bodies in Kargil”).

At the end, Pilot gave nothing away. It was for the first time that I could hear Tim Sebastian concede a sort of defeat. All the answers you’ve given me are very diplomatic,” Sebastian charged, Pilot grinned. This was probably the last time we saw him happy on television.

The tragic death of the pilot-turned-politician triggered off a chain reaction on the new channels. Star News and Zee News got everyone from Salman Khurshid to Natwar Singh to speak on Rajesh Pilot. This was a very unfair thing to do. What could these poor gentlemen say about their deceased colleagues, except make all the politically correct gestures and noises?
One politician who doesn’t believe in political correctness is Laloo Yadav. On the night that the CBI pressed charges of excessive spending on Bihar’s former chief minister he appeared on Star News armed with calibrated information on his innocence. Yadav was deeply upset and he wasn’t afraid to show it.

So convinced was Barkha Dutta by his impassioned defence that she conceded to the notion that perhaps Yadav’s property had been “over valued” by the CBI.

Time ran out. But ask Laloo Yadav if he cared! Even as Barkha Dutt moved on to the next story the irrepressible Bihari bulldozer thrust sheets of paper with his own record of his assets in her face “Read this when you can,” he commanded the amused and indulgent Dutta. In the cutest reconciliatory gesture I have ever seen on television Barkha Dutta gently held Laloo Yadav down with her hands, the way you would a truant child who insists on having ice-cream after dinner although he has a sore throat.

Such candid moments are rare on television. What we generally see are journalists trying hard to get the better of politicians and other seasoned tele-personalities. Kumar Mangalam Birla is not a seasoned television personality. On Star Talk, Vir Sanghvi handled him with kid gloves. The anchor gently questioned him about the greatest tragedy in his life - the death of his father.

“Everything happened in fast forward,” Kumar Mangalam Birla rewound to those terrible days when the heir apparent suddenly found himself in the hot seat. The conversation was exemplary in every way and proof-positive of the rapport that can be stuck between persons on the two sides of the firing line.

A miracle has happened on Sony’s CID. Shivaji Satam who had gone blind has suddenly regained his eyesight. Naturally there was a lot of reading to catch up in the episode on June 7. Now if only the other characters would begin to “see” the writing on the wall.

Bhumika, who’s played by Divya Seth in Sony’s Sparsh seems to have got married recently. Ironically her character is on verge of getting a divorce in Sparsh. But Bhumi has changed her mind. She doesn’t want to divorce her husband any longer. “Dekh loonga main tumhein,” Mahesh Thakur flared his nostril at Divya Seth last week. “Kya kar logey?” she flared back in sobbing motions.

Urban marriages with their peculiar problems seem to occupy considerable space on satellite television. In Sparsh, Muskaan and Sahara’s D-Line the female protagonists, all career women seem to be grappling with domestic crises precipitated by their own ambitions. In D-Line and Muskaan Shilpa Taluskar’s and Sandhya Mridul’s husbands (Amit Behl and Ayub Khan, respectively) are “understanding.” Problems are shown to crop up when the husband fails to come to terms with his wife’s motivations.

In Raahein Preeti (Shefali Chhaya) reminded her husband Rohan (Akshay Anand) at least twice that he beats and rapes her after getting drunk. She isn’t the only one. On Zee’s Kasak Monica (Grusha Kapoor), all bruised and battered,had her husband standing above her with his leather belt.Ironically the soundtrack came to life in Raahein with the immortal love theme from Love Story while Preeti told Rohan that he should stop drinking and raping her. Are explicit scenes from doomed marriages the new turn on at prime time?Are bedroom battles all set to take over from where corporate wars left off? What a blessed relief it was to have Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bhanwaron Ne Khilaya Phool on Star Bestseller last Wednesday. The fifty-minute film sparkled with small town humour and gave off the whiff of a native wisdom that contrasted well and sharply with the ersatz urbanism of the average serial.

The story of a bunch of idle neighbours who take on themselves the responsibility of looking out for a girl in their locality was killingly comic and reflective of the slumberous ambience and sleazy,though harmless,concerns of non-metropolitan North Indian towns. There was this unbelievably humorous moment when Irfan Khan stands on his rooftop watching the hoods down below playing cricket .Suddenly the ball comes flying and hits Khan he passes flat-out. “Neeru Ke Papa,” Khan’s wife(Aneeta Kanwal) scolds the still figure of her husband. “If you want to sleep why don’t you go inside?” Such genuinely funny moments are not only rare,they are extinct on the home viewing medium.

Sony’s Boogie Woogie Special on dancing stars over the years had Javed Jaffry doing wonderful takeoffs on everyone from Jeetendra to Mithun Chakraborty to Govinda. Unfortunately in his eagerness to score quips Jaffry forgot to mention Askshay Kumar among the leading dancing-stars of the 1990s. It’s strange how several flop stars of the 90s are reconciled to being television stars. Ravi Behl who started with a bang in Narasimha co-hosts Boogie Woogie. Ayub Khan who made his debut in Salaami,is happy playing Sandhya Mridul’s husband in Muskaan.And now Mukul Dev who was Sushmita Sen’s leading man in Dastak is all set to take on television .He plays the male lead in Gharwalli Uparwalli.

Subhash K Jha