Look at what TV did to all of them!

‘‘Of course there is a downside. Shakeel is asking for a huge promoter’s fee each time he calls. If I don’t pay up he might do a chikna on me!’’

My other interviewee, Mrs Madhu Sharma, wife of the absconding R K Sharma wanted in the Shivani murder case, told me to go to Pramod Mahajan ‘‘if I had the guts’’! But I want to interview you, I said. She started. ‘‘TV is a powerful medium. You should have seen the TRP ratings when I spoke against Pramod Mahajan. Now TV channels have direct uplinks from my house.’’

‘‘Great, you must be happy,’’ I cheered. ‘‘Hardly. When my husband shows up it’s curtains for my TV career. Would your channels have the guts to telecast me if I did not use Mahajan’s name? Would you have interviewed me if I were just a raving, ranting wife of a police officer? Would I have mattered if I were a nobody? You are no better than anyone else… get lost.’’

As I beat a hasty retreat, I realised that TV is not only pysching viewers but also the principal characters. But how does someone in the remote jungle of Tamil Nadu take to TV? After all, Veerappan, the bandit king of the South, is the only known village dacoit who sends video cassettes for ransom.

Said Veerappan, ‘‘I was no one before TV came into play. For me it is Lights, Camera, Action, Shoot each time I do a kidnapping. I do not undertake any kidnapping if my director says the light is not good. We are trying to reduce the time of the cassette reaching the victim to three days. But you know that in the jungles, it’s difficult to get good men for non-linear edits. There is another negative side to it. I now have more cameras than guns, more film crews as gang members than dacoits.”

Cricket, I thought, is one area where the impact on TV would be enormous. But again, the Indian captain was far from happy. Said Saurav Ganguly, ‘‘I am just p…d off with our sports coverage. Ever since our victory in the Natwest series, coaching academies in India want to emulate me. But they’re not showing my cover drives, rather, replays of me without a T shirt and me saying F… that F… that F… that. They are also telling the youngsters to wear a vest underneath.’’

Visibly tired I was chewing on it all at Shabirs, a Kashmiri restaurant. The owner was yelling at me, ‘‘Look at what TV has done to me. I am now running a restaurant. If only there was live coverage for my Delhi visit. I would have been contesting the elections in J&K.’’ I looked him up, he was Shabir Shah.