Televista
Looking back and forth
Amita Malik

THE new year is always a time for nostalgia. For thinking of the might-have-beens on the past year and the hopes of the coming year. And it is always heartening when a great tragedy, like the terrible assassination of Benazir Bhutto and its resulting turmoil in our neighbouring country, is somewhat alleviated by the way the whole world celebrated the coming of the new year with all the expectations that this always brings.

The channels were saturated with the celebration of Christmas which, in spite of the unfortunate happenings in Orissa, was celebrated by all communities, especially children, reminding us that there is something for everyone in every religion. So while the year-end was dominated on the screen by the ever-increasing speculation about who killed Benazir and why, with conflicting official reports visibly rubbished by the visual evidence one saw on the screen adding to the confusion and the agony of the family. Like her or not, Benazir was one of the women who dominated the Asian scene and her dynasty, like that of the Gandhis, seemed sadly following a doomed script.

But, equally, the exuberance of the new year made the screen light up too. Typical of the spirit that dominated the ending of the old and the birth of the new was the cheering and unusual sight of our cricketers, with an indulgent Dada smiling from a comfortable chair, going on the stage with all our famous screen beauties, including Kareena Kapoor, and performing the most difficult dances under the guidance of the acrobatic Shahrukh Khan.

If Sreesanth, who is a trained dancer, looked completely at home so, more surprisingly, did our very own Harbhajan Singh, his twinkling keeping pace with the twinkling toes of the screen beauties. All the younger players, notably Yuvraj of the famous six sixes, performed the most intricate dances on the stage and, to make a feeble pun, even upstaged the contortionist Shahrukh Khan. So I think we can look forward to a cheerful year providing, of course, that our boys do rather better in the tests in Australia.

I said the new year is also a time for looking back at the best in the past and if there is one series which does us proud it is the only one aptly named Total Recall on Times Now. We have already seen the one on the evolution of TV news, including that famous episode with Tejeshwar Singh. At the year-end we had a much happier one with what was aptly called The Common Man’s Cinema. This was a look back with other contemporaries at the truly wonderful film classics of the 1960s and 1970s.

As film personality after film personality, including those who shone on the screen in those days, recalled the real-life stories and characters which made that period of the commercial cinemas one of the best in its history, we certainly shared in their reminiscences. The period was famous for two great directors who came from Kolkata, together with Bimal Roy, and transformed the Bombay film scene. Both Hrishikesh Mukerji, Hrishida to one and all, and Basu Chatterji not only created credible plots about real people like you and me, they also introduced that element known as subtle comedy, unlike the loud farce of the man slipping on a banana peel kind which used to dominate the Bombay screen. Together, these two outstanding directors built up their own casts which formed a team at times. Who can forget the wonderful performances of Utpal Dutt, Ashok Kumar, the young boy-next-door acts of Amol Palekar and the now almost forgotten Vidya Sinha and Pearl Padamsee with Asrani contributing the funny element.

It is a pity that these classics are not revived more often on the small screen to remind viewers that it was not always dominated by monotonous saas-bahu conflicts and the real attraction of the screens, big and small, lies in stories about people who seem real and not caricatures. Only when our channels realise this can we look forward to better serials on TV.

At the moment, while new channels are proliferating every month, it is as well to remember that quality is always more important than quantity. So, happier viewing in the year that has started.