Let's look at the figures, lest someone thinks we are being unfair.Everyone makes mistakes but this not just a mistake, it's a miscalculation.

What's worse is that on the basis of these projections, everyone on the programme embarked on a blind journey into a dead end, all the while believing they were cruising down the highway. In retrospect it was a theatre of the absurd. Imagine the scene: all these politicians and `experts' discussing the meaning and implications of a BJP victory in MP, basing their assessments of thepolitical situation on that victory and we, sitting at home listening to them discuss what wasn't to be. It was pretty much like a bomb hoax: people desperately searching for something that isn't there. Misleading. Weird. More, it was a complete waste of our time and Doordarshan's. It shouldn't happen again.

Meanwhile, STAR Plus has gone more desi than dhahi bhallas and dosas. Now, for all English language entertainment with the exception of A Mouthful Of Sky (which is more Indian than English, anyway) you have to ask for STAR World. And, pay for it, too.

So it was a wonderful and complete surprise to see Divas Live last Wednesday, on STAR Plus. If this is cultural colonialism (and not Colonial Cousins), then let us be subjugated. Aretha Franklin, Celin Dione, Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey and a country singer whose name was missed. And treat of all treats, Carole King. For anyone remotely near fortysomething, King was Queen; for anyone older, Aretha was A naturalwoman - the song King wrote and Franklin made her own. The five women, dressed in black and revealing varying degrees of flesh, sang at a New York concert. Franklin's entire, fulsome figure trembled with each note she sang, and Dion almost kneeling in her enthusiasm, was just booti-ful. She sang My heart will go on (Titanic), the only song we know of which has sunk a ship. When the five women sang A Natural Woman in unison, you felt the earth move under your feet.

We'll have to withhold gratitude for other serials. Kora Kagaz is interesting: Renuka Shahane is developing nicely as the ice-wife who refuses to melt just because Amit Behl's husband is giving her glowing looks. This lady is not for yielding, oh no. In last week's episode, each time he approached her with sheep eyes, she either refused to meet the woolly look or shot him a warning glance. When he tried to follow her upto the(ir) bedroom, she swivelled around like a compass, almost throwing him off balance. The point is:how long can she hold out? How long before the fire (oops! dirty word) consumes her? Obviously, it is going to be a long and slow melt down, otherwise what will happen to the story?

Tell you what is immediately and noticeably different about Tanha (STAR Plus). It has no loud music. Just lilting, gentle flows the sound. Then it is pretty much in soft focus. The harsh angularity of most serials is missing. The other difference is the absence of dramatics, extreme postures. At least so far. There's a gentility here, almost a softness. What is wrong with the producers? Are they so soft in the head, they imagine the serial will go down well with Indian audiences who have been bred on exaggerated, overacted dramas?

This gentler approach must be the Pakistani influence of Ms.Moin who has written the script for Tanha.

More than this it is impossible to say because in the first episode of any soap, you spend then entire 23-odd minutes making the acquaintance of the characters. So it'show-do-you-do and then goodbye.