Goodbye Parvati, farewell Krishna and om shanti om, Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki. They’ve been with us for eight years and whereas the serial may not be kahani har ghar ki, it was the story of one family, the Aggarwals, who made themselves at home in our homes. If only they’d left before they overstayed their welcome — by about three years? —they’d have been the perfect guests. Watching their joy and their jokes, their carefree attitude, last week, seemed they, too, were relieved to finally go. Meanwhile, the inmates of Bigg Boss are huffing and puffing till they blow a smokescreen before our eyes. The men’s favorite companion dangles from their lips and when Abhishek Bachchan visited Big B, one of the first questions they asked him was: got a light, sorry, cigarette? Should they be allowed to smoke so wantonly — is television a public space, or not? And since we’re at BB, could someone explain why Rahul Mahajan, nominated every week for eviction (he’s really unpopular with other contestants), never gets the heave-ho, glued to the show like fellow contestant Payal is to him? Abhishek B said Rahul M would be the winning contestant — how does he know? — and seems the public wants to prove him right. From one Big B to the other. Amitabh Bachchan had barely climbed into the ambulance and the entire news fraternity was accompanying him to Nanavati Hospital. Barely had he laid himself down on the hospital bed for tests and the news channels were breaking into the lab flashing the reports in our faces. By evening, he was said to be resting. Hope he wasn’t catching up with his own illness on TV news, or he would have been astonished at the haste with which they were telecasting what looked increasingly like premature obituaries. Yes, it was his 66th birthday but did Zee News and Aaj Tak have to broadcast his entire life history? NDTV Imagine was better with The Unforgettables Tour featuring the entire Bachchan clan but with special Amit moments when he recited “Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein. “ like his heart was hammering out the words. Moments to cherish. And guess who’s coming to Doordarshan? Ram Dev. On DD National, every morning. That we see him wherever we go from every single news channel which contorts the news (joking!) to spirituals like Aastha, hasn’t deterred the national broadcaster from joining them on the mat. It’s all very healthy but there’s one question which doesn’t disappear after every expulsion of air with kapal bhati: are there no other yoga experts in the country who can perform on TV? Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena: Harbhajan Singh and Mona Singh’s Ravana and Sita jodi was thoroughly enjoyable — almost a match for the Harbhajan and red cherry duet on Saturday. But the Australians weren’t happy with the latter and the Akal Takht was unhappy with the former. As they say, folks, problem kya hai? Can’t you simply — enjoy? We don’t understand enough about the financial crisis to be able to comment on the fulsome advice being doled out by market analysts but for once, the tenor was lower than Placido Domingo’s. Yes, it was described as a ‘tsunami’, ‘financial apocalypse’, etcetera, etcetera but perhaps because India has not yet been hit as hard as the US, it was said without the usual panic-striking hysteria. For once, we were not immediately rushing for cover but listening to the likes of Udayan Mukherjee (CNN-IBN) tell us that distress selling would lead to sitting on cash — and you immediately wondered, how (un)comfortable is that? And if leftist economists like Jayati Ghosh were speaking with smug superiority (it’s the Left that didn’t let the government liberalise more and visit further ruin upon us) on the Big Fight (NDTV 24x7), their smugness was preferable to a great big depression.shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
