We first watched MJ on videotape. It was the eighties, a one-channel, VCR India before satellites brought the entire world to the flat TV screen. Jacko was electrifying, mesmerising. More than 25 years later, he’ still electrifying, mesmerising and all the more astonishing for having performed the way he did so many years ago.

Throughout Friday and Saturday, TV celebrated him but it wasn’t until you watched those old videos on the music channels long into the night that you appreciated the fact that you never saw anything like it before — or after, in the explosion of MTV which followed. It’s the sheer physical presence of him, fluid as water, smooth as oil, commanding and controlling muscles we don’t even know exist. And then, there are the stories he told: today’s music videos maybe technical perfect but nobody tells a story like an MJ video — just watch ‘Billy Jean’.

Michael Jackson created history and made the news. For more than 24 hours Indian English news channels devoted themselves to his life and death. English news gushed all of Friday, CNN and BBC tempered praise for his music with a reminder of his personal eccentricities; so it was left to Hindi news to treat MJ’s death as only Hindi news channels can: they found an Indian angle to it! The post-mortem, India TV and Star News said Friday night, was being performed by a doctor of Indian origin — as if this was the single most important aspect of the procedure. Then, they turned it into a juicy medical mystery peculiar to their crime shows: who is the Thriller’s Killer, Aaj Tak wanted to know. India TV suggested it was suicide, depression, cancer, drug overdose and even murder. The man and his magic became masala chai by Sunday when India TV said he wanted to be an Egyptian ‘mummy’.

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