Opinion Telescope: A wedding to the rescue

By the way, Shekhar Suman’s satire on a show (ABP) by that name was about the only genuinely amusing sight and sound of this ill-tempered election yatra.

Now, it would be beneath us to comment on the comments of the chief protagonists from the BJP and the Congress, especially in the last week. Instead, we will be lofty by saying that we sincerely hope that the ugliness in this campaign is not repeated in the assembly polls due next year — and there will be quite a few by next winter when Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan visit the hustings — otherwise we may just have to switch off our TV sets.

Alternatively, increase the ratings for Netflix, Amazon Prime & Co. Or watch cricket. Or “Virushka”, together and separately.

But if the BJP does not realise its president Amit Shah’s poll promise of winning 150-plus seats in Gujarat which he last articulated in a good, combative interview with Sheela Bhatt on NewsX, it will not be for want of trying — by some news channels which have done everything and more to help the ruling party.

Primarily, this has taken the form of attacking Rahul Gandhi and the Congress as often as possible — to the extent of digging out a photograph from 2013 in which Times Now along with Republic and NewsX told us that Congress leader P. Chidambaram was “in the same room” as Taliban leader Maulana Abdul Zaeef. In the current narrative, that is tantamount to sleeping with the enemy.

Which sets the grey cells thinking: What will happen when the ruling party has to breathe in the same air in the same room as the Opposition in Parliament from tomorrow? Will it also be infected with “secret” microbes and anti-national bacteria? Or does it work the other way around?

To return to the high ground, did you see Virushka’s wedding videos and were they not looking happy, or what? Such a relief on Monday night to enjoy the brief glimpses news channels snitched from people present at the Italian villa venue of the wedding, away from the grim faces of #Gujaratgaalipolitics (Republic).

And yet, it is hard to forget that even as TV news channels launched themselves into the election campaign and hit a new low by concentrating on Mani Shankar Aiyar’s “neech” comment on the PM, they did so at the cost of man who was bludgeoned to death and then burnt, perhaps still alive, by Shambhulal Regar. Didn’t Mohammad Afrazul deserve more attention than Aiyar, last week, when the video of this horrific crime had gone viral? Why give the latter such undue importance and ignore the former as did most English news channels barring India Today, Mirror Now and NDTV 24×7?

By the way, have you noticed that Times Now, Mirror Now and ET Now all treat the news of the day very differently although they belong to the same stable?

But we digress. Away from the politics of the present day, you may like to travel back in time and discover that politics were not much different then. Porus (Sony) sees as many men back-stabbing others as we do now. Meanwhile, “desh ka rakshak”, “matribhoomi ka pehla rakshak” Purushottam aka Porus “aa raha hai” to save “Bharat, Bharat, Bharat” from the wicked ways of Sikander — aka Alexander.

Coincidentally, this lush and lavish production, maybe the most expensive production ever on Indian TV, which could teach Baahubali a trick or two, sees the two warriors born almost simultaneously. Am happy to be able to report that for the most part, we see real babies and not baby dolls, although new born baby Porus looks at least two-years-old.

Is today’s historical and political narrative retrospectively informing the past in shows such as Porus, or is the past reviving the present “Bharat Mata”? Maybe historians could watch Porus and tell us.