The trivial overwhelms

It is in this context that Atal Bihari Vajpayee8217;s knee must be seen. The media interest was bound to be there given that he was now seen all over the country as a human being first and then a prime minister. When Amul put up its hoarding on Vajpayee, the transformation of the Indian Prime Minister was complete 8212; from a shadowy figure to a human being to an advertiser8217;s copy. All is grist to the marketing mill. Is it possible to imagine a similar hoarding during Jawaharlal Nehru8217;s time? Pundits might say that in a democracy every aspect of the Prime Minister8217;s life should be open to public scrutiny, but this is clearly a recent development thanks to cable television, and an alternative to official8217; positions.

Newspapers and magazines tend to follow where television goes, and very quickly it becomes the single most important bit of news in the country. It cannot be called trivial by any means, but it is a wonderful alternative to real news. Triviality is the other side of the coin. If too much knowledge ultimately leads to a hunger for less important information8217;, then it is the prospect of money that makes such information palatable. Infotainment is the ad-man8217;s creation; and so is edutainment, but not all information is education. The trivial can sometimes overwhelm. A good example is the surely artificial fight in the print media over which is the better television programme, the Amitabh Bachchan one or the Anupam Kher-Monisha Koirala response. You can make one crore rupees in the former, and a mind-boggling ten crores in the latter, although it must be admitted that when it started, the boggling of the mind was the sole preserve of the Bachchan programme.

There is a sameness about the kind of people who participate in these events; their dreams are depressingly similar quot;spend a weekend with Aishwarya Rai in Mauritiusquot;, and their responses annoyingly predictable. India has the largest middle class in the world, and the shows cater to its secret dream: to make money without trying. But it is also a marketing fight between two TV channels. What next? A TV show that promises its winner one hundred crores if he answers correctly just one question each time: how man zeroes in one hundred crores? Followed by a show that offers the same amount if you merely sit at home and answer the telephone? It is easy to get all high-brow about such programmes and pretend that one doesn8217;t watch them 8212; but the fact remains that more people watch these shows than are willing to admit to it. Some of the questions may be ridiculous, the sets may jar, and Koirala might exhibit the onset of myopia every time she attempts to read the monitor, but the people at the other end of thetable are laughing all the way to the bank, and that must count for something.

Some centuries ago, scientists were wont to go about saying, quot;Everything is chemistry.quot; Today it is more correct to say, quot;Everything is marketing.quot; Of the three great Indian concerns or should one say middle-class concerns?, politics, cricket and films, there is nothing untouched by marketing. If Ram Jethmalani makes charges about the Chief Justice of India8217;s age, he is not unaware of the effect on the sales of his book. If the Indian cricket team suddenly appears hungry for a win, and raises the standard of its fielding, clearly market forces are at work. More wins translate into greater acceptability and more modelling assignments. This is not cynicism, but a tribute to practicality. Films, of course, are more directly concerned with marketing.

The public acceptance of a Hrithik Roshan was superbly manipulated by those with a financial stake in him. From a virtual nobody, he became the star everybody wanted to be; the model everyone aspired to; the son every mother wanted. Aware of his weaknesses as actor Dorothy Parker would have said he runs the gamut of emotions from A to B, dancer and all round lover boy, his PR machinery turned it all into strengths. It gave him the cool, brooding image, and ensured that movement was mistaken for grace and speed for spontaneity. A star package was made. One which is laughing all the way to the bank. The playwright Tom Stoppard has written about how you could start a play with a man with shaving cream on his face carrying a turtle in one hand answering a doorbell. It is a dramatic start only because of the juxtaposition of incongruities. But there is a perfectly logical explanation for the turtle that puts the play in perspective. Then things seem not just plausible, but inevitable.

Somehow one had missed the process that made a Hrithik Roshan or a Harshavardhan Nawathe the first to win a crore on a TV show in India or even a fighting fielder out of a Saurav Ganguly. But there is enough evidence to point to the inevitability of these heroes rising when they did. A decade ago that would have been as absurd as a prime minister8217;s physical condition being used to sell butter.