War and Love

By the end of the week, the Allies were getting a ring around the collar; it was kinda hot under there. The veneer of calm was tearing sl...

By the end of the week, the Allies were getting a ring around the collar; it was kinda hot under there. The veneer of calm was tearing slowly, like cloth on a thorn. When the three GI Joes (!) had been captured by the Yugoslavs (or was it “kidnapped”as NATO alleged?) and displayed on TV as proudly as the Indians once dangled scalps, the Allies were tomato-faced. There was anger, there was embarrassment. Remember the Geneva Convention, they warned, if so much as a single hair on an American soldier’s head is disturbed, they frothed…Don’t worry, gloated the Yugoslavs imperturbably, no harm will come to the prisoners, they promised the men’s families. On TV, especially for TV.

Increasingly, you wonder how on earth wars were fought before and without television. Seriously. Because this one is being fought on the small screen. For a very good reason: it’s not just about winning the battle; it’s also about winning international public opinion. We’re being targetted: we’re witnesses to a war, we’re the jurytoo. The official posturing, the propaganda, the threats and ripostes, the war games are being beamed across the world — as much for our consumption as for the opponents. As the world watches, the collective might of NATO holds press briefings where officials bend over backwards and forwards to release hot air while Yugoslav President Milosevic, calmly shakes hands with a dissident Albanian leader.

What’s missing is an alternative view. No matter how hard they try, and we don’t know if they try all that strenuously, CNN and BBC, SKY News (on STAR World) will provide air cover to their governments. Whatever you see of the Serbian point of view, good, bad, indifferent is refracted through their lens. Similarly, if you are unfortunate enough to be watching only Yugoslav TV, you’d think Milosevic is the Pope, the Allies, Infidels. We’re not getting a view equally distanced from east and west.

Once upon a time, a Third World newspool, a NAM news agency was mooted and tried out but failed as dramatically asthe movement they represented. In international conflicts, we need a ringside view, not one from the locker rooms of the respective combatants. We don’t want a First World or Third World view, necessarily: but one that is independent of the sides involved. An ideal opportunity, you’d think for our news channels, or even Doordarshan. Correspondents could have been sent out to report the conflict? Current affairs programmes like Zee’s erstwhile Diplomacy Show could have clarified the issues at stake?.

And so to Hasratein (Zee). Curtains. For one of the longest, most popular and unusual serials on Indian television. Savi’s husband was right: he said she would end up solitary in her independence. She does. But not before she is reconciled with a KT who remembers Pooja and her long enough to hug them in recognition; not before his wife Asmita is moved by her devotion to admit that Savi loves KT as much.

A neat conclusion, perhaps too neat for a serial as turbulent and untidy as this one. Ajai Sinha’sHasratein will certainly find a place in television history. It was one of the first to explore adultery, illegitimacy, the complex web of desire, intrigue, love and hatred in extra-marital relationships and the entanglements which follow for everyone involved: parents, children. etc. In doing so, it significantly asserted the right of a woman to choose. As played by Seema Kapoor, Savi was admittedly different from the one she would end up as: Kapoor’s Savi was passionate to the point of hysteria, a woman enslaved by her emotions. As portrayed by Shefali Chhaya, she became mature, gracious yet always determined; not that all passion was spent but it was tempered with the need to be a person on her own terms.

After Hasratein, look at what’s currently happening: in Heena (Sony) the bride discovers on her wedding night, that the husband is in love with another woman; in Kora Kagaz (STAR Plus), the husband abandons the wife after marriage for someone else; in Tanha (STAR Plus), a woman is deserted by her fiancejust before the engagement; in Adhikaar (Zee) the husband is planning to seduce his new wife’s maid…TV producers claim these are reflections of reality. So it doesn’t happen only in the West or on The Bold and the Beautiful, eh?