TELEVISTA
Zardari cornered
Amita Malik

Easily, the most riveting image on the screen this week was President Bush evading, not once but twice, the shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. His face-saving statement was that it was only democracy asserting itself. The Iraqi who threw the shoes called his action as a parting kiss; or was it a kick?

In fact, one only had to switch on the TV to find Pakistani President Zardari trying desperately to fight the world opinion against the state of his country. For once it was not just India but the world’s most important countries, from the US to Germany, that were putting pressure on the President to act tough with the terrorists operating from Pakistan. The statements of Senator Kerry and UK’s Prime Minister Brown in this connection further put Zardari on the defensive. Most damning of all was Fareed Zakaria’s interview with former ISI Chief Hamid Gul. It left nothing to imagination.

Thrown in was the wrong report of the alleged violation of air space over Lahore by the IAF, with Pakistani channels faking the sight of Pakistan’s air force planes taking off to fight the ‘invaders’. A classic example of irresponsible media creating panic and rumours of war. Our own media is equally to blame in being sometimes seduced by such rumours.

However, to help viewers keep their sanity when the world was apparently crumbling around them, we had some lighter moments. The Miss World contest, taken stage by stage from posing in swimsuits to tests of intelligence, is always a draw. It is rumoured that the winning country is where the cosmetic manufacturers intend to move in next. As South Africa has been the venue many times before, one could concentrate on the contest. Blonde Miss Russia beat our Miss India to it, but by quite a narrow margin. So Indian honour was saved. That the first runner-up was from Kerala, with an unfamiliar name, added to one’s satisfaction and happiness.

The Taj has recently been so much in the news. It was an idea nothing short of brilliance for NDTV to put on Zafar Hai’s moving film on the Taj Mahal Hotel. Actor Roshan Seth was at his very best as the narrator, and as he took us on a leisurely amble around the hotel’s many varying interiors, it seemed a fitting and timely tribute to perhaps Mumbai’s most enduring icon as far as architecture, vintage status and unique positioning near the Gateway of India go. It is a documentary which needs frequent repetition, because it expresses not what only Mumbai but India stands for.

If Aamir Khan chooses to lose or put on weight, one would have thought it was his personal problem. But to subject viewers to the boring and ugly sight of how he does it was more than most viewers could stand. In fact, from watching stars having haircuts to seeing them slimming in all their ugliness is something we should surely be spared. Enough, as they say, is enough. For channels, which sometimes overestimate how much the viewer can stand of Saif and Kareena, to assume that we are interested in Aamir’s new hairline is one of those miscalculations that they, in the fierce rat race, fall for.

Because next to frequent overbearing advertisements cluttering up the screen and breaking up the continuity of programmes, frequent repetition of programmes which, channels assume the viewer wants to see, is the next biggest miscalculation. So, the channels should watch out. You have everything to lose as far as viewers go. You might consider ads the be-all and end-all of viewing. But the viewer might just think otherwise.