Gulliver’s Travels (to hospital)

When you saw Amitabh Bachchan, late on Monday night, wheeled into the Lilavati Hospital, when you saw his head droop beneath the knitted woo...

When you saw Amitabh Bachchan, late on Monday night, wheeled into the Lilavati Hospital, when you saw his head droop beneath the knitted woollen cap, you saw an ailing giant rather than the superstar of last Friday’s KBC-II. He looked as he must have felt — frail. That was enough to persuade the news channels to maintain a vigil outside the Lilavati and provide us with updates that were constant if not very informative or relevant: we always knew who had been to visit the hospital to inquire about the actor’s condition without knowing what condition he was in.

To say he had ‘‘colitis’’, Tuesday afternoon seemed an exercise in self mockery: after faithfully tracking the film star’s journey from Escorts in Delhi to Lilavati in Mumbai, after conveying each new development (Breaking News: the doctors will make a statement… the doctors will see him in half an hour, the doctors saw him half a minute ago…) in tones of deep foreboding, and to then, finally, announce Bachchan had ‘‘colitis’’ left you feeling — relieved of course — and to wonder whether the ailment deserved the intensity of such coverage.

The TV channels were handicapped: the hospital authorities and the Bachchan camp revealed very little. Spokesperson Amar Singh’s pithy words were reassuring without shedding much light on anything — which seems to have been the point of the exercise. So we gasped in surprise when we learnt that the film star was undergoing late evening surgery — a surgery that lasted three hours.

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It’s at moments such as these that the public first feels confused and then increasingly anxious. First, we were told Bachchan had a stomach ache; that developed into colitis the next day which changed to ‘‘diverticulitis’’ by Wednesday. TV news explained each condition in great detail and we felt reassured that neither was a very severe ailment. To learn on Thursday that the doctors had found no trace of cancer was the first we had heard of it. By then we didn’t know what to think or believe. When the smiling TV anchors said, ‘‘Don’t worry’’, we immediately suffered an anxiety attack.

In the absence of information, welcome trivia: Bachchan’s daily routine, his entire film history, the Coolie injury — even poor Puneet Issar who had inadvertently caused the injury — were summoned onto the screen to divert our attention from no news from the hospital.

At another level, Bachchan’s sudden ill health turned into a Page 3 event — we saw more of Bollywood at Lilavati than at the international film festival in Goa. Breathless reporters dutifully acknowledged the presence of each and every last one — so if you were a self-respecting member of the film industry — and present in Mumbai — you made haste to visit Lilavati and ensure that you were seen, lest, people think you were indifferent to Mr Bachchan’s travails.

On Friday, Aaj Tak celebrated India Today’s interview with Mr Anil Matherani regarding Mr Natwar Singh’s role in the great Iraq oil slick. All day (or that’s how it felt) Deepak Chaurasia went through the entire case, Today’s intrepid investigation in a very good imitation of an opera singer. In what he called ‘‘tel ka khel’’, you heard him go from soprano to tenor in the matter of a few seconds — why are TV anchors/reporters unable to control their excitement? Chaurasia might consider becoming a member of Parliament — he belonged alongside the Opposition MPs who were giving their lungs a huge airing and all of us an earache.

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If you are a music fan you should not have watched the first two weeks of Indian Idol II. You would have heard more tuneless voices than you’d expect on a music talent hunt show. At this stage, the idea seems to be to make us laugh or sneer at the participants rather than admire their talents. Such talents as they displayed, placed them in the category of bizarre specimens — they danced oddly, their facial expressions were mildly manic, their clothes ragtag, and their tears when judges Sonu Nigam, Anu Malik or Farah Khan dismissed them from the competition, copious. Let the competition begin.