Sight & Sound
It’s poll talk everywhere
Amita Malik

WE are again going to the press before the election results are out. It is exciting, with everyone guessing and guessing differently. What I find heartening is that this time the newspapers and channels are making the most of the exit polls. I have found vastly amusing the election promises made by various candidates. I think we should give the Nobel prize to a candidate in Mumbai who promised that he would get Mumbai’s traffic problems solved. Now, that is perhaps the bravest promise made by a candidate. Perhaps he can stand from Delhi or Kolkata next time. He would beat Nafisa Ali and Mamata Didi hollow.

At the same time, I felt rather sad that the proverbial man (and woman) in the street got much less of a say than the stars. You had the old suspects, Mahesh Bhatt, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, and a host of other stars and starlets pronouncing words of wisdom on the screen. And, not to miss the tantrums of the VVIP stars like Tanuja and Kajol, who found their names missing. Sachin Tendulkar and his wife voted quietly and left quickly. The most moving sight was to see Chandrababu Naidu, folding his hands in apology to his voters, and saying that he was sorry he had let them down but he intended to serve his state and the country all the same.

Lalooji’s entertaining turn, mixed with shrewd political observations came off best in his interview with M.J. Akbar, who responded in kind by smiling and throwing in a pinch of salt. Meanwhile, Double Take went from strength to strength and when I saw both Kapil Sibal and old enemy Arun Jaitley being impersonated in face and voice. I think it was nothing short of brilliant. That almost every channel saw the funny side of the elections and spared no one speaks a lot for democracy and freedom of the media. In one of the episodes of Double Take, "Aloo" spoke in his usual innocent way to President Musharraf about electronic voting machines and the General dismissed them with a dictatorial thumping of the knuckles.

As an escape, I watched my favourite serial Astitva which is really getting dramatic. I only hope an otherwise modern, coherent and credible serial does not go round the bend at this stage. In fact, its ads are getting even more tiresome, as they butt in at odd moments.

My greatest escape, as usual, was watching Animal Planet, which again made me realise that animals are much more civilised than human beings. They have their own code of behaviour, their own laws of the jungle and their own loyalties. Only, they don’t have elections. Lucky animals.

I am happy to say that the regional channels in Kolkata are holding their own against the sabse tez Hindi channels. Their news bulletins give an excellent coverage but the same cannot be said about the presentation. And the amazing thing is that ETV’s Bengali channel is giving a run for its money to the locally based channels although it is headquartered in Hyderabad. Another good point about the Bengali channels is that they show old film classics regularly. It was interesting to watch Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar in the Bengali version of Devdas. Brought up on the Pramathesh Barua and Bimal Roy versions, I had missed it because I did not then live in Kolkata.