SIGHT & SOUND
Enjoyable encounter
Amita Malik

Interviews always have their ups and downs. There can be mood swings and ego clashes between the interviewer and interviewee. Which is why one finds that sometimes the best interviews are with innocent children. Last week I saw an interview with a little girl of about 10 which gave me unalloyed pleasure. It was Ayesha Kapoor, the little heroine of the film Black. The movie featured her and the key stars Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachchan. Most people, however, say that the performances of these two outstanding stars was surpassed by that of the little girl who plays the role of the deaf and dumb girl child before she grows up.

Ayesha has a German mother and an Indian father and I wonder at the director picking her out from a place like Pondicherry, far removed from Mumbai. All this makes Sanjay Leela Bhansali stand out as a director of rare discernment and skill.

To begin with, the little heroine rode up on a horse. Her mother runs a riding school in Pondicherry. Ayesha got off her horse with practised ease as Nupur Basu of NDTV, as relaxed as usual, asked her some simple questions, unlike some interviewers who try to be patronising with children. I shall only pick out two questions and answers, which say a lot for both Nupur’s relaxed approach as well as the little girl’s naturalness and innocence.

"How did you get on with Mr Bachchan?" asked Nupur. "Well, in the beginning I called him Amitabhji, because everyone called him that. Then I got to calling him Mr Bachchan. But in the end even I called him Amitabh. He was so friendly even though I had to hit him hard three times and that was difficult." "Would you like to act again in a film?" asked Nupur. The girl patted her horse and replied: "Only if I am allowed to act with him." Such natural charm.

I once interviewed on TV John Grierson, the legendary Father of Documentary, who actually invented the term for this kind of short film. He remarked: "You have the most beautiful children in India, they have both looks and intelligence but except for Satyajit Ray, your directors simply haven’t directed them properly." Well, that was a long time ago. And I think that Black has proved that we have younger directors like Bhansali who have taken up that challenge and come off with flying colours.

The camera, they say, does not lie. Nor does the microphone. As usual, I have been watching a lot of tennis, which is my favourite game. And as I watched the tennis from Rotterdam, I could not help but admire their audience behaviour. Admittedly, the Dutch are a dignified and sober people. And they have showed it in the way they cheered players without a suggestion of bias. Occasionally, some supporter of a player would call out his name or wave a national flag, but there was none of that horrible jeering and shouting which can affect the play of people from other countries without such local support.

This kind of supporting happens in Wimbledon in a mild sort of a way when poor Tim Henman is cheered as Tiger Tim, but it is not of a type to disturb his opponent. Australia is pretty bad when Lleyton Hewitt is playing but at least they cheer his opponent in a milder way when he makes a good shot. But I have never seen such uncivilised behaviour as that at Hyderabad when Sania Mirza was playing. It seemed the gallery was thrown open to even those who did not understand tennis.

We are all proud of Sania and want her to climb the heights. But it is very unfair to her opponents when the crowd becomes a mob, even boos the opponent when she serves a fault and makes so much noise that she has to hold up her service and then serve with everyone trying to throw her off her balance. In other countries, the umpire asks the crowd to behave and controls it so that the players are neither disturbed nor face daunting bias.

As an Indian I felt very bad when the Uzbek girl lost. It seemed she was not pitted against Sania but the crowd. As TV viewers, we can see and hear all this much more clearly than those actually present there. Which is why I am bringing it to the notice of the authorities. And the umpires.

Tailpiece: Hindi is a very rich and elastic language and can cope with most situations. Which is why I wonder why most of the anchors in our Hindi channels use the English expressions: "Don’t go away" and "Welcome back". Surely we have Hindi equivalents?