Jaswant unplugged: Here, there and everywhere. Not a channel was ignored, nobody went disappointed as Jaswant Singh spread himself out across last week. Like a magician he managed to appear on three, even four news channels simultaneously, dropping little bombshells along the way. The good part is that he spoke in driblets, sometimes not extending himself beyond a phrase.

Anchors uninterrupted. They could learn two from Jaswant Singh. Once they open their mouths, they remain open. They’re talkathons, allowing their words to ‘Bolt’ out of their mouths faster than Usain. In a nation where everyone speaks at the speed of light, they’re speech lightning.

They believe that we, the TV audience, like and want anchors who shout at us (and at their guests) and who never stop talking. Of course we exaggerate (not). They seem to imagine that since they are in the same box, they’re also in the same room crowded with other anchors, all of whom are speaking rapidly at the same time, so they must yell in order to make themselves heard above the din. What they forget is that we are not in that room with them, that we watch them one at a time and can hear them perfectly well when they speak at room temperature. Well, you know what we mean.

On the day that the BJP rewrote its own history with the expulsion of Jaswant Singh, the top anchors on English news channels were out there, on air at 9 pm debating what since the general elections has become the news channels’ seasonal favorite: BJP, going, going, gone? On the night, Arnab Goswami (Times Now) spoke the longest, the loudest, the fastest and Prannoy Roy (NDTV 24x7) the slowest and the softest with Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN-IBN) somewhere in between. This is typical of most nights, although Sardesai can give Goswami a run for his tongue. In the company of his two younger, excitable colleagues, Roy, always composed, sounds almost inaudible (is that their intention?).

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