Sight & Sound
A wholesome feast
Amita Malik

It is said that there’s something for everyone on TV. And there certainly was something for everyone last week. For sports fans, there was the US Open Tennis, where Americans were ousted by the Russians. The girls were very young, with pigtailed hair`85 looked endearingly girlish. And why not? They start from the age of 17. There was also our own Vijay Amritraj with his easy, relaxed and expert commentaries. Sorry, Leander Paes did not win. Wished he and Mahesh Bhupathi had been playing together.

In cricket, at the time of writing, we had thrashed Kenya, but Sehwag, not yet recovered from his honeymoon, was a letdown. Both Rahul Dravid and Irfan Pathan were showered with annual honours and Dravid’s bride seems to have pulled him out of his bad spell. But there was Mandira Bedi. This time she dispensed with the noodle straps and changed either to a top which was invisible or to what looked like the top of what our mothers called a chemise or, alternatively, what looked like a bra. I would like to remind Mandira that there is such a thing as a strapless bra, which is much more exciting. Sorry Gold, please note.

Of the two very established programmes on NDTV, one climbed up and the other down. I watched the car and cycle show after weeks, this time from Chennai. This time there were fewer tantalising, long shots of cars and we got a close and long look at the interiors and engines. The story of a physically challenged ex-army man was very touching. Paralysed from the waist down, who was going to drive from Chennai to, I think, Leh. Tata’s have specially designed a car, which he can drive without the help of his legs. Brave man and we certainly wish him happy journey.

I think the best political satire on the screen, Gustaqi Maaf in Hindi, and its English weekly round-up, the Great Indian Tamasha, which started with a bang, is acquiring too many trills. The anchor talks too much and is as much of an irritant as the advertisements in serials. And including actuality shots of the same politicians robs the masked duplicates, who are excellent in looks and speech, of their uniqueness. They no longer stand in their own right, with Prem Tarneja as the sole witty anchor. A pity, I feel.
I was happy to notice that Rajat Sharma’s channel had revived the original programme, India’s Most Wanted with Sohaib Illyasi, its original anchor. The programme ran into difficulties and some poor imitators copied it and lacked the same level of presentation. Illyasi himself had adapted a well-known British programme to Indian conditions and done it well. He must keep it up.

They say that bad news is news and good news is not. Looking at the headlines news on every channel, I must confess that the saying is all too true. The sensationalisation of news connected with crime, violence and, of course, terrorism, seems to have affected young minds, including children. The Dhananjoy Chatterjee hanging in Kolkata has already resulted in three reported cases of children hanging themselves by trying to enact Dhananjoy’s execution. Surely there is a lesson in this for all TV channels.

I know we all have our stories about the gaffes in news telecast by Doordarshan, which one must admit has been trying very hard lately to improve its news as well as its news casting. I am now going to repeat second hand, with no guarantee of its authenticity, a tale of woe from an old DD fan who pounced on me as soon as I returned to Delhi, "Why did you not write about this gaffe all this while?" she complained. "What gaffe?" I asked. "When Sheila Dikshit was selected as Delhi’s Chief Minister, DD’s news anchor said ‘The Sheila Dikshit is Delhi’s new Chief Minister. And now we bring you an exclusive interview with The (sic) Sheila Dikshit’. And then she thrust the microphone towards the new Chief Minister’s face and said, ‘Well Dikshit, why did they take three or four days to select you as Chief Minister?’ Sheila Dikshit visibly squirmed but kept her cool."
As I said, I got this second-hand from an erstwhile DD fan and do not guarantee its authenticity, although I know this viewer to be usually accurate in her statements. So let us treat it at best as an amiable joke, which at least makes one smile over the weekend. And Jaspal Bhatti can take it up from there and make us smile some more.