SIGHT & SOUND
Winner takes all
Amita Malik

It is symbolic that the hype over Celebrity Big Brother and Shilpa Shetty overtook the hype even over the Bachchans and people sat up till 2.30 a.m. for at least two nights to catch the final action. Enough has already been seen, spoken and written about the event and how it jumped up to the international status and made Shilpa Shetty not only a lakhpati but, when all the offers have ended, she would probably be a crorepati. So instead of repeating it all, I would like to give my own assessment of Shilpa as a TV performer, without going into the wrongs and rights of her participation or the issues it raised.

First of all, Shilpa conducted herself with poise and dignity, she did not freeze up, she kept her cool and introduced a good deal of sophistication and humour into what she did. She looked lovely, dressed better, and spoke better and if she clearly outdid her opponents, especially the women, it was because she was a long cut above them in background, education and culture. She did not lose her Indianness and in that context it was a masterstroke for her to claim she was also representing Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The subcontinental NRIs responded with gusto, indirectly letting off steam about discrimination, and after a time the whites chipped in too.

Shilpa Shetty’s dignified conduct on Celebrity Big Brother won her many admirers

I have been watching Shilpa for some time and noticed her particularly when she visited a remote area to interact with our defence personnel in the NDTV programme Jai Jawan. Many of our women stars have preceded and followed her. It needs a good deal of poise and understanding rather than starry attitudes about our soldiers, their wives and children. In fact, it is difficult to keep one’s balance between showing intelligent interest in weapons and living conditions and behaving with admiration and warmth for those in lonely outposts.

Of all of them, I liked best Rani Mukherji, who took on a sisterly attitude, kept her stardom within limits and even went into the regiment’s kitchen to cook a Bengali meal. The one who disappointed me was the one who should have been the last to do that: of all people, Priety Zinta, one of our loveliest, most intelligent and normally poised stars. She wore transparent tights and a short shirt, which is hardly the attire for riding tanks. She giggled and made some silly jokes. She was acting badly rather than being her natural self.

A little earlier, Shilpa Shetty had also visited the troops and she was splendid, performing some of the exercises of the soldiers with elan and enjoying them, and speaking with grace as well as intelligence. She displayed the same poise and sense of occasion in London and I would also have given her the prize. Let us hope she keeps it up.

Republic Day follows the same format year after year and I do not think DD’s commentators, except for Sunit Tandon, have moved with the times, with their ever-Sanskritised Hindi which few understand and overplayed patriotism. But this year two things were different: we sorely missed Bismillah Khan’s shehnai and, secondly, we got an ideal commentary outside of DD.

NDTV carried the parade in full and had as studio commentators Lt-Gen V.R. Raghavan, distinguished journalist S. Nihal Singh and Prof Kaushik Basu of Cornell University. Between them, they took admirable care of the military aspect, the political aspect and the international aspect in the context of the Russian President’s visit. It took away in style DD’s dull, literal coverage interspersed with cloying excerpts from the handouts.

I would like to pay my own tribute to writer and radio and TV commentator Kamleshwar who passed away last week. He brought elegance and grace to the Hindi language and imparted high literary quality to whatever he did in the field of the media, particularly TV. Who can forget Parikrama, the way he rescued Doordarshan from its stupor and his unusual scripts like Aandhi (said to have been based on Indira Gandhi’s life) for cinema. Yet Indira Gandhi, for once, did not take offence and gave him the respect he deserved. A great media personality and a great writer has now passed into India’s media history and will always be remembered.

Tailpiece: I find in execrable taste the advertisement on how West Indians have a hard time in India. One ad shows a man who has taken out a West Indian couple in a boat. The man first spits, then takes off his shirt and jumps into the sea to leave them stranded. The other ad is worse: It shows a West Indian taking red-hot chilly food at a dhaba and asking for water. He is refused this by everyone at other tables who cover their glasses, ask children to drink up quickly and one old lady, in an ugly gesture, takes off her false teeth and puts them in her glass to prevent the West Indian from drinking from it. All this was shown even on the day India lost to the West Indies in Chennai although it was meant, in the most crude fashion, to say they could not win. Very poor taste, a slur on Indian hospitality (Indians never refuse water) and a bad commentary on our ad gurus.