Opinion When corruption is a TV show

You have to wonder at his timing,if not his motives. Isn’t it odd that he kept quiet for so long? And that he should choose to reveal it so casually in interviews to The Hindu and the TV news channel,ETV? If you watched the ETV interview,the army chief is asked a question about being offered a bribe,easy as pie and out of the blue. He then drops the bombshell as if it’s peanuts. Just like that,as though this was yet another routine question and answer. Curious and curiouser.

With so much corruption in the air and on air,it might be a wonderful idea to ask all public servants to appear on Sach Ka Saamna (Life OK),which is probing individual corrupt practices with the zeal of Anna Hazare. Host Rajeev Khandelwal asks all kinds of leading questions. For instance,he asked contestant Raj Thakur if he had ever accepted a bribe,and paid him Rs 50 lakh for admitting he had (amongst other sins).

Wonder what Shekhar Suman would make of such revelations. Doubtless,something amusing. Nowadays,he amuses himself at the expense of anyone making the news,on Movers & Shakers (Sab TV),the talk show that made him a household joke,literally,a decade ago. Heard him give Rahul Gandhi a poke (his frequent visits to Rae Bareli have made it a Sarai Bareli),Anna Hazare (he needs to fast for his good health),Mayawati (she has so much money she needs to carry a purse even on her statues),so General Singh should be in the firing line soon enough. Suman is a great mimic — his imitation of that “dude” Salman was perfection — and the stand-up comic routine at the start of every episode brings smileys to our lips. The rest of the show,however,lacks bite and irreverence. The guests on the show are usually from Bollywood — saw Om Puri and Prakash Jha — and Suman falls all over himself trying to please them,so much so,it’s a wonder he doesn’t trip over his own toes.

Suman could be our Jay Leno or the pioneer of a Saturday Night Live lookalike — the American TV satire show (Comedy Central). For that he needs to do the following: increase the length of his show from 30 minutes to an hour and find himself a new stylist. He cannot and must not appear on TV in a leather suit that was probably tailored for him when he hosted Movers & Shakers in 2001.

If the show was 60 minutes,he could interview the likes of Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid at leisure. Both of them graced TV with their presence this week. They speak almost as well as they play cricket. Besides,they’re so much more interesting than all our TV discussion shows,it’s a wonder someone hasn’t thought of starting a cricket talk show. After Tendulkar said he’s not retiring just yet,Zee News had a most fanciful idea: it looked at cricketers’ hairstyles to interpret their future plans. We’ve heard of reading tea leaves but this is a new one. The news channel took Tendulkar’s straightened locks and Dhoni’s decision to grow his hair to mean they were trying to look younger and more happening and to recapture their youthfulness so that they could play for longer. If we understood it correctly,the length of Dhoni’s hair dictates how long he intends playing. News 24 also had a unique take on what it called the “retirement race”. It profiled all the players who are trying their very best to lose the race: Tendulkar,Sehwag,Laxman. You’ve got to hand it to Hindi news TV: like James Cameron,they dive where nobody has dived before.