Opinion Sizing up to the small screen
News TV puffs up movie stars. But other shows diminish them.
The small screen can cut people down to size. Especially film actors. You realise this once youve watched them acting on television. Its different,boss. When theyre the subject of a news report (if you can call it that),the camera and the story inflates them out of proportion. All of Monday,Salman Khan dominated Hindi news channels with Salman ka drama,as Aaj Tak referred to it. They were obsessed with the actor and his Katrina Kaif relationship (what relationship?). India TV projected him as a weightlifter,carrying cement bags. He-man,He-man.
When an actor in a TV series plays a character (not himself),its different. Anil Kapoor. was on 24 (AXN),playing President Omar Hassan of the fictional Islamic Republic of Kamistan. For all the stature of his office,Kapoor was suddenly diminished. Not at all Mr India. He acted well. But,because were used to seeing him as a hero sometimes a bumbling one but a hero,nevertheless to see him play the victim of an assassination plot was difficult to accept; will take some getting used to.
Match fixing,on the other hand,is an old buddy. So the News of the World sting operation that we saw once,twice and a million times thereafter,was no more of a surprise than rain during the monsoon. All of Sunday and Monday and Tuesday it was spot fixing,interspersed with Salman Khan,A.R. Rahmans Commonwealth Games song and comparisons of it with Shakiras Waka Waka (Zee News). Shakira won.
The star of the no-ball show was not the ball or the no-ball,not the Pakistani cricketers allegedly involved in the fixed no-balls,nor Mazhar Majeed,the alleged fixer. It was Dhiraj Dixit,an innocuous-looking Indian with the attractive Pakistani model/actress Veena Malik as his co-star (thats why the French always say cherchez la femme). Dixits was an extraordinary performance: he spoke often,at length but you never quite understood him. Frustrating. Ask Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today. On Monday evening,he tried every trick known to a Spanish inquisitor and more,to elicit clear answers from Dixit on his involvement with the Pakistani players,Malik who had accused him of match-fixing,the spot fixing,etc.,and received answers which left his nice big eyes popping with incredulity. Eventually,Dixit took off the earphones and simply refused to continue the exchange. Kanwal thought he had fixed his man that his media trial had nailed the suspect. So did we; but minutes later we found Dixit in Arnab Goswamis court (Times Now) defending himself in equally unintelligible language. Had he ditched Rahul for Arnab?
To the average viewer,the News of the World video juxtaposed with no balls during the Lords Test was riveting and irrefutable proof of ball fixing if nothing more. The Veena Malik interview to Pakistani news channel Express News was a revelation. Here was an anchor,dishevelled (unlike our carefully suited,coiffed anchors) who didnt mind letting his guest talk. He was calm,he gave Malik a long and patient hearing without interruptions. He let her tell us her story without telling it for her. He made brief interjections,not full length question-answers. A completely novel and delightful experience. Lets import him.
Boria Majumdar illustrated the propensity of Indian anchors and commentators (and maybe Indians in general),to hector and harangue at high speed. The faster he spoke the less we understood. A pity since he had something to say. On Monday afternoon (Times Now) he was no more coherent than Dixit. Slow down old chap,slow down.
The other striking feature of The Fix was our smugness. Anchors and commentators,former Indian players across Hindi and English news channels (so were not singling out any) had a supercilious air of superiority: this could happen only in Pakistan,never India. Should the Pakistan team be banned? was the gleeful question. When Rajdeep Sardesai,during an exhaustive debate on Monday night (CNN-IBN),highlighted the Indian betting angle and then you saw Dixit tying himself up in knots,you did wonder whether the smugness was not entirely misplaced.
shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
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