On Saturday night I had the singular pleasure of sitting through what looked like a discussion on sex, sex and more sex on Aaj Tak. Being a Hindi channel one would think the purveyors of this society-cleansing exercise would at least get the sex-related words in Hindi right. But, no. The discussion resorted to the American high-school sex-manual jargon like “shaadi se pehle sex”, “virgin” (pronounced bhar-jeen ) all meant to tantalise more than inform or enlighten viewers. If Aaj Tak was truly serious about spreading awareness, the channel should have got more authoritative voices than the two models/starlets who tried to be ‘frank’ but ended up sounding more contradictory than compelling.
Sex seems to be the guiding force this week, what with Star News’ Sansani doing a whole late-night segment on the advent of blue films being made by secret cameras. I didn’t mind the host’s concern. But why get so salacious about it? Why show clippings of hapless girls being put into compromising positions by men they trust? Isn’t this filming of their humiliation like a double rape? There should be rules against the way banned footage is used on television. A line needs to be drawn between expose and exposure.
The best happening of the week was Ajay Devgan and Kajol on Star’s KBC. Ajay looked lean and thin and silent. Kajol seemed her usual ebullient self. In fact, I had run into her at the mahurat of her buddy Karan Johar’s new film just after she had recorded this segment of KBC. And I overheard Mr Bachchan, who’s also part of Karan’s film, teasing Kajol about winning too much money. Win, she did. The questions were a bit weird. For example, what’s the ISD code for Russia? Kajol burst out laughing. The host chatted them up reminding them of his association with their respective parents. Bet you didn’t know the first film that AB signed was with Kajol’s mom, the talented Tanuja. “Oh, yes, I’ve seen that film!” Kajol rolled her eyes. “So you’ve suffered through that?” AB deadpanned.
Nope. It doesn’t get any more ironical than that. The Kajol-Ajay segment of KBC was special on many counts. It showed how celebrity couples stretch their stardom to make a connection with the needy and stressed.
Subhash K. Jha
