Harsha Bhogle act: How camera manipulates us

Rohit Mahajan

It’s instructive to study the Harsha Bhogle ‘intruder’ episode, in which the famous commentator — the ‘Voice of Indian cricket’, as Sachin Tendulkar noted — seemed to have been attacked by an intruder at home while doing a livestream on the IPL. The livestream, being watched by perhaps hundreds of cricket fans online, took a serious turn when the camera Bhogle was addressing was knocked down by someone and he shouted phrases that suggested shock and distress — ‘Oye, kaun hai? Kya hua? Kahan se aa gaye?’ His visuals disappeared, his voice then fell silent.

It seemed that his home had been broken into and he was attacked by a stranger. The news spread like wildfire online, and netizens were suitably alarmed.

More than half-an-hour later, his wife, Anita Bhogle, tweeted that all was well, and that it was just ‘a promo that went viral and unfortunately got everyone worried’. Bhogle, seemingly embarrassed, apologised and tweeted that ‘It became more viral than I anticipated’.

Bhogle is known for his charm, gravitas, cricket acumen and the ability to gently elicit insightful responses from his famous subjects. With this ‘cry wolf’ act, he has now shown that even at 60 years of age, he’s not averse to performing an alarming act for a marketing gimmick — attracting eyeballs, making money, in other words.

A stage

The world’s a stage and we’re all actors, noted Shakespeare. He was right about this, as about many other things. We’re now living in an age when everyone seems to have a camera at all times — India, for instance, had 1.2 billion mobile phone subscribers in 2021, and of these around 750 million were smartphone users, noted a Deloitte report.

With man, woman and child always carrying a camera, and always linked to the world with a fast Internet connection, nautanki and histrionics have gone extremely mainstream. You don’t need a stage or an audience — the camera’s eye sees your performance, the Internet distributes it instantly to your audience. They could be just a handful — maybe just immediate family — for life’s minor actors, but thousands for relatively major actors like Bhogle, and millions for life’s super-actors like Virat Kohli or Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The camera regulates us. The CCTV system works on us to improve our behaviour — when they’re around, we operate with the assumption that someone is watching us all the time. But visuals from CCTV footage aren’t necessarily representative of all of one’s life and personality. We act and behave differently when we’re being observed than when we are not being observed.

Conversely, people in public life and celebrities use the camera to project the best possible image of themselves. This is quite natural, for we all want to be liked for being nice and kind.

I told a cricket journalist from Pakistan that it’s gratifying that Pakistani YouTubers speak so positively and enthusiastically about Indian cricket and cricketers and, often, even India in general. His reply was a dampener — ‘It’s so because they can get so many subscribers from India!’

His opinion might explain why Shoaib Akhtar, the former Pakistan fast bowler, speaks well about India — even though he also seems to have visions of a bloody conquest of ‘Hind’ in the future through a ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’.

In a recent video of Akhtar and Harbhajan Singh, the Indian cricketer talks about how the IPL has changed the finances of Indian cricketers, and Akhtar responds: ‘You’ve bought six houses, I know!’

When the IPL was launched in 2008, current India captain Rohit Sharma was only 20, and he was bought at the auction for $750,000. He needed guidance and mentorship at that stage, but he didn’t get it — the IPL party culture sucked him in. Herschelle Gibbs wrote in his biography that though Indian cricketers were not big drinkers, he noted Sharma’s ability to ‘put a couple away when he puts his mind to it’. Sharma put on weight and his career suffered and he was not part of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning team. Such a monumental waste of such monumental talent, people said. Sharma, however, with an effort that must inspire all of us, resurrected his career and is now an all-time great in white-ball cricket.

Stories such as his instruct and inspire. You can’t blame him for his inability to keep his focus in the face of fame and riches when he was just 20 — as the Bhogle episode shows, when it’s fame and riches, it’s difficult to think straight even at 60. 

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