Sight & Sound
Spot on Bollywood
Amita Malik

Nothing, it seems, can move in India without Bollywood: the Olympic torch relay, cricket commentaries and, of course, politics. All the same, I was surprised when a responsible outfit like Miditech, with Niret Alva as anchor and under the auspices of the National Geographic Channel announced with much hype a programme entitled Bollywood’s Leopards. And my worst fears were confirmed when the programme started with five minutes devoted to Bollywood. Bollywood, with long, sexy song and dance sequences and, of course, complete with Amitabh Bachchan and the inevitable Mahesh Bhatt, got more star billing than the leopards. There were also some nice touristy sequences of the locale, with some leopards occasionally getting brief shots. In fact, one felt that Bollywood had no business shooting in what was described as leopard territory, and was as much at fault as the human encroachers whom the High Court had ordered out. The producers had apparently overlooked this. The Bollywood inserts lent a glamorous, distracting aspect and some good points made about the leopards were lost. The commentator, Prakash, was also brought in and out. Had he been given a less interrupted run, some of his expert comments on environment would have registered better.

The Alvas, I repeat, being sensitive producers, fortunately also gave us some rare shots — of captured leopards being released at far-away reserves, and deer used as bait where man-eaters had been on the prowl. There were also some touching scenes when the mauled body of a child was given to its parents.
But the one-hour meandering programme lost out most in not giving the leopard’s point of view in detail and with sympathy.
It was left to the excellent team of Swathi Thyagarajan / Rawat of NDTV to give us an insight into why the leopards behaved as they did and how this could be tackled. They fitted all that into an information-packed half-hour, with expert comments, which were far more effective than Miditech’s one-hour offering. In addition, NDTV’s news and other programmes did equally well.

The budget took over all channels before, during and after it was presented to Parliament by the Finance Minister. Fortunately, P. Chidambaram is an articulate and communicative telecaster and never loses his civilised manner, lit up at times by a natural smile. He looked weary as he did his round of post-budget interviews, including the soft-spoken but relentless grilling by T. N. Ninan and Prannoy Roy, and a less soft-spoken one by Karan Thapar, but he argued his case well and came out smiling.

Hats off to his physical and mental exuberance and telegenic presence.

I had a fleeting glance of DD’s programme Global Challenges, anchored by Arati Jerath and with Ajoy Bose as editorial adviser. Shall comment on it when it moves out of the subcontinent.