After we saw the news about the slap we didn’t witness, we wanted to slap them for showing us Sreesanth’s crying face for the better part of a night and day and every day thereafter till today. After certain politicians in Maharashtra and Bengal slapped the cheerleaders’ cheeky posteriors with their disapproval, we wanted to slap them back. Cheerleaders in body suits? Might as well be clad in sarees. Given the extraordinary gyrations some of our actresses perform with lascivious intent and effect, fully clothed, we may then see something far more lewd than the cheerleaders’ apologetic wiggle-waggle. All this slapping and crying — IPL is fast developing into a soap opera. Is nothing safe?The news channels welcomed the melodrama with their usual nose for hard news. Sniff, sniff, this way and that till Sreesanth’s tears had been captured from every possible angle. Now, had they shown us The Slap, we’d have gone clap, clap. Oddly, that footage was not released to the media. Odd, because we witness terrible acts of violence, and a hundred slaps a day, thoughtfully repeated in slow motion on soaps, but we cannot watch Harbhajan’s palm strike contact with Sree’s cheek. Boo-hoo.One news channel that restrained its glee and coverage of the incident was the latest English news channel, NewsX. Mid-morning Saturday, while other news channels led and stayed with the dhamaka tamacha and its implications for India’s national security for close to 15 minutes, NewsX got to the incident 16 minutes into its bulletin and left 16 seconds later (or so). Here’s a channel with a difference. It’s not following where others go. It’s giving you bulletins with brief items, news divorced from views. It presents an uncluttered screen: no boxes, no breaking news, exclusives, no three-striped toothpaste lines, sorry news scrolls, just one. Also, the backdrop is not blue, red, a combination of both, it’s a window on Delhi with a yellow pillar (holding everything together?). Finally, a new set of faces. But alongside young girls with straight hair and straitjacketed in pin-striped jackets, are some old acquaintances in Shireen and Arup. And Jujhar Singh who like Kyunki’s Mihir has decided his face was too young for his hair and so dyed it — the hair, of course. Brand Headlines Today, he does that thing with his mouth which gives him a unique way with words. Unfussy, old-fashioned. But what to say of the black/grey and yellow crossbow X? Rather sinister, which might be what the channel thinks of the news but would be more appropriate for Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean. As for the signature tune, NDTV might slap it with a copyright infringement. When there are so many news channels, a new one must have a very good reason for joining them. Merely to launch another news channel in English or Hindi like News 24, is no reason. So far, NewsX is without a rationale. It has a faintly Doordarshan air about it without DD’s wide news coverage, looks amateur, unfinished, is poor on news and views: why watch it? If you want to be BBC — guess that’s the model — you have to be sophisticated. To be simple, precise and still say a great deal is astonishingly difficult — which is why our garrulous channels don’t bother. Welcome back, Shah Rukh Khan — not that he had gone anywhere what with his commercials and IPL. But he’s returned as the quiz-master a year after KBC. Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain? — perhaps the longest title on TV — is enjoyable if your taste runs to embarrassed adult contestants who cannot answer Class I-V questions. Shah Rukh is winsome, childishly pleased by their discomfiture as the kids know the answers to questions they don’t, like which is the deepest ocean, or which is the largest planet? (Who knows and who cares?).shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
