Telescope
Shailaja Bajpai
Pooja Bedi knotted one perfectly rounded knee around the other, batted one perfectly curled eyelash, tossed back one perfectly curled wisp of hair and circled her lips into a perfectly rounded `O¿. She managed to maintain this alphabet of her mouth and converse at the same time: oh so, you have the` `hot Pooja Bedi¿¿ on the show, so of course let¿s ask her about sex, she remarked in a huff. (Life is Like That, Times Now).
Ruby Bhatia gave a perfect imitation of a pig¿s snout in her exaggerated pout: for years, I have been getting ``a maya attack - suddenly, every evening, I want man.¿¿ And she exhaled pleasurably, like she¿d had him, too.
Rakhee Sawant felt the heat throttle her in black from the neck down on a steamy Mumbai afternoon: ``Hot lagoon, tho hot hoon,¿¿ she acknowledged when told that men hung her photograph in their bathrooms (Kandy Floss, Sony).
Navjot Singh Sidhu, perfect in every way except his (ab)use of the English language, gazed ravenously at the woman before him. She was wearing something best described as a cross between a night dress and an evening gown to the Oscars that permitted the exposure of considerable female flesh. `You look,¿¿ Sidhu chomped on his moustache, ``like a delicious… brownie.¿¿ This description was visibly incorrect - she was not even shades of milk chocolate - but it pleased the lady so much she turned sweet on him: ``You want a bite?¿¿ (Laughter Challenge, Star One.)
Cut. Wahida Prizm in full ceremonial white with black boots, carries the sword straight as a ruler. Later, when she lets her guard down, the first woman, ever, to command a passing out parade of the armed forces medical services, says she is honoured to do what only men had done till then. In the interviews that followed, no one asked her if she was ``hot¿¿, although she was, nobody wanted to know about her sex life, her maya attacks or her flavour.
Makes for a huge change. Television channels are over-populated with female professionals from the police force to the IT industry, but we still treat them either like sex bombshells just waiting to explode (preferably on the screen) or something men want to, er… savour.
Here¿s by standards a serious actress Sandhya Mridul, also on Kandy Floss with most of her clothes on and that Mandira Bedi statutory requirement for female fashion on TV- spaghetti straps. She was asked by Archana whether or not she was prepared to take off her clothes. No, not right there and then but in a film. Her reply is predictable (depends on the role, the director, etc.) and need not concern us. Does anyone ask Manoj Bajpai that question, and if they don¿t, is it because male stars are not asked such revealing questions, because they have already stripped, or, no one is that interested in the bare facts of their lives? (Sorry, John Abraham.)
Guess the latter. Mandira Bedi: look how she is (un)dressed in comparison to her predecessor on Deal Ya No Deal, (Sony). Madhavan was under cover in shirts, jackets and trousers, measuring a few metres. Mandira wraps a six metre sari (okay five and a half) around her in such a manner it resembles a bikini. And then there¿s her behaviour, all coquettish and thick eyelash salutes - lovely, no doubt but when did Amitabh do or need to do that? No seriously, the variation in the appearances of the female stars, their behaviour or the nature of the conversation and that of any male species reminds us that for all the Wahidas, one thing has not changed: men are treated like of objects of interest while women remain sex objects.
Contact: shailajabajpai@hotmail.com