Cringeworthy tributes

BY Jyoti Punwani| IN Opinion | 21/07/2012

Most television channels took their viewers for granted while presenting their lopsided eulogy of Rajesh Khanna.

Those who went overboard on the superstar ignored socialist Mrinal Gore, says JYOTI PUNWANI. (Pix: Times Now)

HERE’S LOOKING AT US

Jyoti Punwani

I watched mesmerised all evening till after midnight as channel after television channel paid homage to Rajesh Khanna. Having been a teenager when he burst onto the Hindi film scene, I could recall the hysteria he generated, even though it had left me untouched. I actually knew a girl who had kissed the bonnet of his car. So, the hype the TV channels were generating about India’s first superstar wasn’t all hype to viewers of my generation.

Yet, the non-stop coverage made me cringe too. And it wasn’t just the sight of Arnab Goswami’s starry-eyed gushing. To see the man who carries the “burden of the nation’s security on his shoulders” trying hard to behave like a breathless fan, was embarrassing.

Times Now had other cringe-worthy moments. They showed the wrong clips. The first time they did that, Arnab acknowledged it cleverly. The second time, he wasn’t even aware that the clip being shown didn’t refer to the song being discussed. His guests described a “classy, not sensuous song” from Aradhana, involving only the hero and heroine, which had been picturised in just one take. But instead of showing the unparalleled “Roop tera mastana”, one of the few electrifying erotic Hindi film songs (I still recall how we sat hypnotised as the song played out on screen), Times Now kept showing the only clip from Aradhana they seemed to have had. That was “Mere sapnon ki rani”, an outdoors train song, in which many others besides the hero and heroine feature. How could this be the sensuous song the panelist was describing? But this doubt didn’t assail Arnab, and his guests were too polite to point out his mistake. Perhaps they too were embarrassed by the hollowness of his knowledge about the superstar whom he kept extolling.

Can’t anchors own up to ignorance? Arnab could have just said: “Which song are you referring to? Sorry, the movie was before my time.” Or, he could have asked someone in Times Now who actually knew films, or one who belonged to Rajesh Khanna’s generation, to anchor the programme. That would have been a genuine tribute, not an enactment of one.

But that wasn’t the end of the embarrassment during the Khanna-dominated evening. As bewitching as the clips from the films Anand, Safar, and Aradhana were, which showed the late actor at his best, equally horrifying was the scene of Khanna receiving the IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Clad in a shocking orange outfit, his hair half-hennaed, the ex-superstar made a spectacle of himself by his loud oratory and his extravagant gestures as he received the award. Of course, Bollywood gave him a standing ovation – they had to.

Why should TV channels do so? If this was too important an event to leave out in a tribute, why show it again and again?

Limitations

That leads to another question: Should the media be so uncritical of famous people who pass away? Celebrities live in the public eye; when they die, should we view them with rose-tinted glasses? Rajesh Khanna was indeed the first superstar, a phenomenon, but he was also, quite often, a ham. An artiste’s “style”, if repeated in film after film, remains endearing only to the most dedicated of fans. To others, it shows the limitations of the actor. Rajesh Khanna’s limitations became obvious when his decline began.

Even the reasons for Khanna’s decline were attributed to everyone but himself. Only the veteran film writer Rauf Ahmed had the courage to lay part of the blame at the actor’s door.

Rajesh Khanna was a hero to his fans, but his behaviour on the sets was as undisciplined as that of most Hindi film stars. His marriage to Dimple Kapadia was a sort of a publicity stunt, and, as Rauf Ahmed pointed out, an act done on the rebound after his break-up with Anju Mahendru. Yet, the channels would have us believe that this was a fairy tale wedding.

When every channel behaved as if the Emperor was fully clothed, it took guts for Headlines Today to air the BBC documentary “Bombay Superstar”, which cast a critical eye on Khanna, warts and all. What a pity that it took a foreign channel to make the only honest documentary on our first superstar. The documentary was a bonus indeed, for it featured Devyani Chaubal, Khanna’s confidante, and the best film gossip writer we’ve ever had.

Expectedly, the English press went overboard over Rajesh Khanna, what with the Times of India even making it the main lead. (Wonder what PCI Chairman Justice Katju will say now!) But fortunately, the press didn’t hesitate to point out his limitations. Why did the English news channels treat viewers like idiots? Had they presented an honest appraisal of Rajesh Khanna, would viewers have been outraged? Obviously not. Then why couldn’t they have had a sober appraisal of the man who did indeed create history in Hindi cinema?

Wednesday, July 18, the day Rajesh Khanna died, was also an important day for another star. That was the day Socialist leader, feminist, uncompromising secularist, the woman who made gheraos part of middle-class protest, who never hesitated to go straight to the people victimised by the State, Mrinal Gore, was given State funeral.

Here, both TV and the English press behaved in the same way. No Hindi or English television channel thought it fit to telecast her last rites; the news, or even a picture of the funeral, didn’t make it to page-one in any newspaper in her own city which she had influenced so greatly.

There’s no comparison between the news value a Rajesh Khanna has and one that a regional political leader has. Nevertheless, Mrinal Gore was no ordinary politician. She touched the lives of lakhs of people during her career; she embodied values that have now disappeared from political life; she was one of Mumbai’s best citizens ever. Surely Mumbai’s English press could have devoted more space to her? Surprisingly, there were few individual tributes -- Deepak Lokhande’s in the DNA being the only one though the Socialist leader was active in many fields.

Mrinal Gore reached the peak of her political career in the 70s and 80s, but remained active all through the 90s. To today’s generation, her name may not be familiar. But then Rajesh Khanna too was a star of yesteryear. Yet, the media went all out to recall the latter, speaking to contemporaries, fans, paying personal tributes... Not even a fraction of that was done for Gore. What could be the reason? Does what she stood for have no relevance today? Or is it that today’s editors too (in addition to reporters) know little about her? That’s a frightening thought.