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Nation’s first families on TV
I’ve always been puzzled by why most cricketers tend to preface all their replies with the words “Yes, definitely”/“Yes of course.” Poonam Saxena elaborates.
All the people you never thought you’d see on television were on television recently, starting from members of the nation’s First Family to members of the nation’s First Family (the other one). On NDTV24x7, Barkha Dutt sat on the ground in a garden and spoke to Priyanka Gandhi who was also sitting on the grass.
It was all very casual and informal, and I waited eagerly for them to exchange girlish confidences. Disappointingly, they did nothing of the sort but Priyanka did tell us (quite endearingly) that her brother was always Indira Gandhi’s favourite grandson and she’d felt a wee bit bad about it.
Meanwhile, on CNN-IBN, Suhasini Haider interviewed Manmohan’s Singh’s wife and two daughters. The three women were seated in a tastefully done up room and equally tastefully colour coded in shades of red and cream. They responded discreetly to Suhasini’s gently probing questions. No one said anything very earth-shattering but the novelty was just seeing them together for an extended interview.
Meanwhile, NDTV24x7 also telecast an interview with N R Narayana Murthy. For an instant I thought it was being conducted in the indoor equivalent of a football field, the studio looked so large (maybe the cameraman just likes vast empty spaces).
But reassuringly, the interviewer (Shweta Rajpal) and the interviewee stayed firmly in their chairs. Just as I stayed firmly in mine — because I found the interview quite watchable. Shweta has a very pleasant screen presence, and doesn’t gesticulate wildly, as if she were explaining complicated dance mudras to her guest (which is something so many anchors do, it would be difficult to list all of them without running out of space; maybe they do it to match their equally
complicated, jalebi-type questions?)
As far as IPL is concerned, the one person who is doing lots of interviewing is Chang, of Indian Idol fame. He’s not getting much chance to sing on the field but he’s quite a natural in front of the mike.
Certainly better than most of the cricketers who are interviewed by him (and by other people). I’ve always been puzzled by why most cricketers tend to preface all their replies with the words “Yes, definitely”/“Yes of course.” Let me explain.
Suppose a match is over. At the prize-distribution ceremony, the captain of the losing side is called up and asked something like, “So your team didn’t play very well and you didn’t do much either…”
Answer: “Yes definitely…”
Next question: “The other team was good in all departments.”
Answer: “Yes definitely…”
Next question: “Didn’t you think XYZ’s bowling was very disappointing?”
Answer: “Yes of course…”
Only once these words are said does the rest of the answer follow. Wish one day someone would ask, “Man, you were really the pits today weren’t you?”
And finally. In the world of Hindi entertainment channels (sometimes I wish this particular world didn’t exist; I wish television companies would try to explore other worlds with more evolved life forms), Colors jumped ahead of Star Plus for two weeks, then slid back to the second spot once again.
No doubt this ratings seesaw will continue for quite some time, but my question is: what’s in it for us (as in, the viewers)? We’re constantly being told that more competition equals more choices for the viewer.
But take a look at the choices — a young girl wants to get married, another young girl is just going to get married, yet another young girl has just got married, and guess what, there’s this other young girl who has been married for a while now…
Things have come to such a pass that if the young girl was replaced by an older woman, it would be positively revolutionary. (I can just hear the scriptwriters: “Really, are there any girls above the age group of 12 to 17 who want to get married? How strange!”)
With apologies to Star Trek, they should seriously try to go where no woman has gone before.
