SIGHT & SOUND
Not a fair deal
Amita Malik

In the early days of TV in India, which means Doordarshan, there used to be a joke that one could not see the men for the women. Unlike in cinema, which in those days was not considered quite respectable for women from conservative families, AIR and DD being sarkari media, were considered respectable and "safe". Besides, programmes such as newscasting could be part-time jobs, very attractive for women who could not leave home for full-time office hours.

With the proliferation of channels, everything has become more professional and is no longer part-time. So even if women are very prominent in presentation slots such as newscasting and anchoring of programmes on cinema, night-life and environment as well as investigative stories, they are about evenly balanced vis-à-vis men.

However, when we come to such programmes as panel discussions, a curious practice has been established: there is always only one woman against as many as three men. In fact, in a recent edition of Question Time India on the BBC, there was no woman. If included at all, the number of women is also very scarce in programmes such as Ajai Shukla’s Foreign Correspondent. If women are more visible in political discussion programmes, it is because they are there by virtue of being party spokespersons, such as Sushma Swaraj and her counterparts from the Congress. The CPM does not put even vocal party members such as Brinda Karat on the screen, except for occasional issues concerning women.

Yet some of the most intellectual of women, especially from JNU and other academic backgrounds and from the media, including the Press, are always there in a minority. Although we accuse the politicians of gender bias when it comes to their representation in Parliament, the media themselves seem to suffer from gender bias. Are the men producers, who normally select panels, any better then Laloo Prasad Yadav, who does not push women in Parliament, but makes his wife Chief Minister?

I must confess that last week I threw everything else overboard to watch the Australian Open, which provided some enthralling moments of tennis as well as studies of character as well as styles. I usually shut off when Lleyton Hewitt plays, which is to hit hard, harder and hardest from the baseline until the other fellow hits out. Mostly mindless, mechanical tennis. And, it was what a contrast to watch a master-technician like Andre Agassi, who’s fighting fit at age 34.

Then there were youngsters like Taylor Dent playing the classic serve and volley game and doing it better than poor Tim Henman, who never makes it in spite of everything. In fact Dent had the audacity to serve and rush to the net every time against Agassi himself and often scored points, unlike sticking to the base line and hitting hard, harder and hardest like Hewitt.

And then of course there was our very own Sania Mirza. The whole India watched and I am sure Humphrey Bogart, who voiced those immortal lines to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, would have approved our saying the same to Sania: "Here’s looking at you, kid." And we did look as she overcame her "first set" nerves and, as Vijay Amritraj put it, "realised that Serena was not quite as formidable as she had thought" and decided to play shot for shot. The teenager showed maturity and fighting spirit of a rare order and we are justly proud of her. But please, let us not kill her with too much hype.

I liked tremendously the BBC interview of New York-settled novelist Anita Desai. There were some polite but searching questions about her trying to find an identity with a German mother, a Bengali father and a Gujarati husband. Also enjoyed India Talks on NDTV, with Richard Gere and Prannoy Roy in the chair. A highly intelligent audience of youngsters asked questions about everything, from Buddhism to AIDS to cinema to the actor’s personal life. One felt proud of the thoughtful questions and Gere responding in kind, but with a touch of humour when required.

But Shekhar Gupta, who thought he was doing an innovative Walk the Talk with the dabbawallahs of Mumbai, perhaps did not know it has been done several times before, most recently by the BBC. Everyone in India has seen it all before and has no wish to see it again and again.