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Split screen

In the throes of a thriller

While watching Salman Rushdie on BBC’s Hard Talk India one felt the same sense of sincerity simmering under the declarations of discontent. Rushdie spoke about what it meant to lose the freedom to go in the park with your son. He spoke about the great damage that’s done to a culture when it cannot discuss itself.

The girl stared glassy-eyed at nothing. She could be your average couch potato over-dosing (or do I mean over-dozing) on the latest episode of Baseraa or Amaanat.
But she wasn’t bored. She was dead. The story Murder In (sic) 33 Up (is Agatha Christie giggling?) was about a girl who’s murdered in a train. The suspects included two out - of - job ruffians, the girl’s boyfriend who had sneaked into the train to be near her and the girl’s own disciplinarian father who, perhaps didn’t approve of his daughter’s permed hair/nosering/boyfriend, take your pique.

The thriller took us to unexpected peaks of authenticity on a train, through the bylanes of Calcutta and wherever we were willing to be led.

Frankly, I thought it was the father whodunnit. Just a day earlier, I had read a news item about a papa who walloped his daughter to death because he found her in a compromising position with a man.

Pleasant world that we have bequeathed to the coming generations, no? Television always keeps reminding us of the domestic and non-domestic ugliness all around us. Whether it is Basera or Raahein, the characters seem to be battling intangible demons.

Speaking of demons the makers of Baseraa seem to have created a monster hit. The ratings are flying high, although the narration seems to be going around in circles. The characters are as square as Cyrus Broacha’s, ha ha, jokey answers on MTV’s Helpline. Unbelievably, there are no triangles in Baseraa as yet. Faithful wives are understandable in long running soaps. But faithful husbands? Writer Achala Nagar has got to be kidding.

Her writing quality in Baseraa is astonishingly mundane. Last week television star-turned-wannabe-film hero-turned television star Bijoy - the guy who played the lead with Kartika Rane in the film Yash - looked like an out of work actor begging for a role.

As he wept and spoke about how badly he had been treated by his wife and in-laws, I almost felt as though Bijoy was subconsciously speaking about the way the film industry had treated him. Didn’t he play Kajol’s fiance in Pyar To Hona Hi Tha?. Now he’s back on television to play a supporting role to Kanchan, Alok Nath and others.

Interestingly both Bijoy and Parmeet Sethi became known faces after they starred together in a serial Kurukshetra on Zee three years ago. Both are back on the tube simultaneously. Having panted after Twinkle Khanna with lustful leaps in Mela, Parmeet Sethi is back where he started. In Sony’s new army tale Tujhpe Dil Qurban he stars as the dour army officer Vikram Ali whose tyranny forces a cadet to attempt suicide. "This time I have covered up for you," Sethi barked at the cringing suicide survivor. "But next time I’ll let you kill yourself."

The officers in Tujhpe... seem to be caught in a post-Kargil inertia. They have time for everything from suicide to romance. Captain Asim Vasisht has been wooing a girl with flowers and love messages. He even makes blank calls and doesn’t seem deterred by the fact that the girl is already engaged to be married. The Captain has probably been watching Ravi Rai’s Sparsh very closely. There the protagonist Krishna has a perfectly eligible fiance (co- incidentally from the army) tucked in a corner while her heart leaps towards the divorcee next door.

Mrinal Kulkarni who plays Krishna in Sparsh is back looking five years younger on Sony’s Kaash. The interestingly written story about the nexus between the film industry and, ahem ahem, the underworld, was abruptly discontinued. Now the narration has again started from scratch. I liked the opening where the girl from a small town Priya (Kulkarni) descends on the sapnon ki nagri Mumbai and is taken in by talkative kind-hearted Mumbayite. The locations are extremely expressive. Let’s see if the makers are able to sustain a continuity when the fresh episodes start.

Vinod Pande should stop acting and concentrate on direction. His D-Line on Sahara TV is truly path-breaking. Another fine serial on the fledgling channel is Talash where the newly returned NRI Rahul is convinced that his supposedly murdered sister is being kept captive by the people she threatened to expose. There’s a seething anger at the heart of the narration which is typical of director Sudhir Mishra. If you have seen his Dharavi and the serial Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin, you’ll have no difficulty recognising the anguished characters perched on a spiritual precipice.

I liked the way the protagonist confronted the scum bag politician when during the former’s sister’s terahwan ceremony. The confrontation conveyed a ring of truth. One craves for such revealing moments on television. While watching Salman Rushdie on BBC’s Hard Talk India one felt the same sense of sincerity simmering under the declarations of discontent. Rushdie spoke about what it meant to lose the freedom to go in the park with your son. He spoke about the great damage that’s done to a culture when it cannot discuss itself. The most interesting revelation that evening was regarding a sleazy film that was made in Pakistan portraying Rushdie as a villain in a Safari suit. When an effort was made to kill the film, Rushdie intervened to let it be released. "The film flopped because it was bad," Rushdie reasoned.

I think there’s a lesson in there against all censorship. The more you try to stop a film the more curious people get. That evening Salman Rushdie ruled out Pakistan as a home. Later during the week I caught General Musharraf addressing the Pakistani press on PTV. He sounded worried, harassed, slighted but undefeated by the billions of dollars worth of debt that Pakistan had accumulated. He spoke about a recent visit to Egypt where industrial productivity was double than in his own country although only half the work force in Pakistan was implemented by the other country.

There was no attempt that evening to harp on Kashmir or Kargil, no attempt to blame all the ills of Pakistan on India. Is Pakistan’s politics maturing? Or are we so habituated to seeing callowness on television that we jump at any sign of sensibleness to reassure us that there’s more to television than phoney pretentious and boring telefilms like Bad-dull, sorry Badal on Rishtey?

Forget the absurdity of the narrative, the young man who played the hero couldn’t even pronounce the female protgaonist’s name. He insisted on calling Rachna, Rasna. Maybe sponsorship has percolated to that level. Who knows?

Subhash K Jha