SIGHT & SOUND
A case of overkill
Amita Malik

AS the firecrackers celebrating India’s thrilling five-run victory at Karachi went off with deafening bangs in the area where I live, my mind went back to a defeat not so long ago, when Dravid’s car was damaged in Bangalore, the walls of Kaif’s house in Allahabad were spattered with garbage and mock funeral processions of Sourav Ganguly were taken out in Kolkata. Certainly not a pleasant memory. Sadly, in the subcontinent emotions run dangerously high and everybody, from politicians to astrologers, cashes in on victories but looks the other way in defeats. Kapil Sibal said on TV that the win was due to the players and not political parties. A sentiment which all sane people should endorse. In fact, while the firecrackers were splitting the sky, those celebrating seemed to have forgotten that this was only the first of five one-dayers and that there were still three Test matches to come. And they should decide what they would do if India lost next time.

It also set me wondering if the media, particularly rival TV channels trying to out-do each other, is responsible for this over-the-top reaction to cricket matches. The newspapers do exactly the same, but in slightly less high-pitched tones. While everybody keeps repeating that it is only a sport, the poor players are subjected to unbearable pressure. In this case, they are also subjected to the pressure resulting from the presence of gun-wielding securitymen around them. They are usually confined to the hotel where they are staying with no one but each other for company and possibly with nothing else to discuss except cricket. No wonder Tendulkar walks about with the headphone of his walkman plugged in his ears. And when Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra broke loose and mixed informally with ordinary cricket fans in non-VIP enclosures in Karachi, it led a normally sober Pakistani cricket columnist to compare "Jawaharlal Nehru’s great-grand-daughter’s radiance" with that of Audrey Hepburn. I think it was lucky that even on that cricket-crazy day, India’s defeat by Pakistan in hockey at Madrid got at least a brief mention in the media. L. K. Advani’s Bharat Uday Yatra took a comparative backseat, which was an even bigger victory for cricket.

It was startling to find elderly Pakistani ladies in the stands at Karachi enthusiastically rooting for the Indians, especially Rahul Dravid when he came back after missing his century. That was also a victory for cricket. One is glad the Supreme Court put a damper on Doordarshan sneaking in through the backdoor at the expense of Ten Sports. Cable operators have not had their way either. Great is the power of cricket to humble everybody, including the sarkar-protected DD.

One of the most shocking and thought-provoking exposes one has seen on TV in a long time is by a NDTV team of two reporters who went house-hunting under false Muslim names in Mumbai, which one still looks upon as perthaps the most cosmopolitan city in India. What landlords had to say about their reasons for keeping the minorities in a ghetto led to a feeling of shame as well as revulsion. The programme also brought forth some complaints from bachelors, who are suspect as tenants, while in the Capital single women are looked upon with equal suspicion when they try to live on their own. After all this one wonders what is being done about all this and whether such exposes lead to corrective action by either governments or individuals.

I have been following NDTV’s Best Chefs of India for some time now with more than usual interest and suggest that the producers exercise some control over the dishes chosen since amateur cooks, for whose benefit they run this programme, are not necessarily interested in some of the regional dishes chosen. A good example is the Himachali papad. I certainly would not go to all the trouble of preparing what is a trivial snack, for it not only entails a tedious process but also takes two days to dry in the sun. The anchor Amit Agarwal’s expressions of praise are always predictable and fail to convince, as he does not even explain why he likes something so much. I also strongly object to the Bengali master chef at Wildflower Hall, Shimla, messing up some perfectly wonderful trout with mustard oil and strong desi spices, when it is supposed to be a western dish. He said Indians liked it that way. Well, this Indian doesn’t, and he should stick to llish maach next time.

Tailpiece: Two cricketers who always preferred to give interviews in Hindi and Urdu Shoiab Akhtar and Harbhajan Singh. But now the Rawalpindi Express speaks fluent American English with sprinklings of "I reckon" and "I guess" and he pronounces chance to rhyme with bans. We will certainly not pull the chain because he speaks very well.