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Magazine
Private faces in public places
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Politicians are canny performers, especially on television. AMITA MALIK looks at who's the best.
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WHEN General Musharraf appointed himself President of Pakistan, he planned his TV debut carefully. In Lyndon Johnson-Bill Clinton style, he appeared in modish civvies on the lawns of his bungalow, complete with wife, grandchildren and dogs. Now dogs were instantly out, as far as the mullahs went, so they disappeared from the screen forever. But the begum was not to be discarded so easily. She defied the mullahs, sat giggling on the love seat of the Taj Mahal for photographs with the President, as did the Chinese premier and his wife on their recent visit.
But she confessed sadly to Cottage Industries that she could not buy the obligatory Indian handicrafts thrust on every visiting dignitary's wife, because the general had not given her an adequate allowance for what she really coveted. She also duly sat with the VVIP's, but in funereal black, for the SAARC official photos in Kathmandu, while Begum Zia of Bangladesh, who normally wears multi-hued wispy chiffons and pearls, put on the Bengali widow's borderless white saris, limped into her seat at the high table and asked our chivalrous Prime Minister for tips on knee operations for arthritis. Sheikh Hasina stuck to beautiful Dacca saris, winning instant brownie points with Indian women, while Begum Zia's chiffons left them bored.
Well, world leaders now have to be canny TV performers and one must confess that, even when a trifle long, President Musharaff's TV speeches are not only carefully planned for specific audiences and make headline news internationally, but also keep both Indians and Pakistanis on a nervous edge. He usually gives a virtuoso performance for which the Method school, but not Berthold Brecht, would have given him high marks As a TV performer, he leaves the critics batting for him at best, and horribly confused at worst.
Contrast our leaders. Vajpayee is definitely not telegenic. His bon mots and allusions and couplets, with long pregnant pauses in between, are strictly for Non-Resident Indians in the United States and his constituents in Lucknow, especially where important foreign policy statements are concerned. L. K. Advani's no-nonsense brusqueness scores more points because it has no frills. Curiously enough, the most entertaining Bharatiya Janata Party performer on TV, but for the wrong reasons, is aptly our Telecommunications Minister, the impressible Pramod (did a Kolkata paper not call him `Promote'?) Mahajan. Hand it to him, he does communicate, with a disarming `I-am-a relaxed and trusted spokesperson, always a jolly-good-fellow' air on the small screen. Even Tony Blair asked him to drop in at 10 Downing Street because he appreciated Mahajan's "wit and wisdom". A compliment, which appeared to be mutual.
But when it comes to the BJP, the star performer is our sparkling Arun Jaitley. He made his media debut on All India Radio's "Yuva Vani", together with Sunil Sethi, Ramu Damodaran, Rajiv Mehrotra, and Komal G. B. Singh, the original and proud discoveries of producer Rita Mukherji, who groomed them into fearless and well-informed star performers. I remember Sunil Sethi and a girl student reducing Dom Moraes to impotent anger when he was at his peak. Jaitley is personable but does not look or dress like a politician, (which makes him PLU). He is sophisticated, articulate, young, combines the sometimes-fierce alertness of the top lawyer with the Discreet Charm of the India International Centre Bourgeoisie. I give him the highest rating among politicians — Jaipal Reddy with his oxymorons, ever the former English Literature Professor, Somnath Chatterjee with his tart comments, tempered by parliamentary finesse, Jairam Ramesh with his economic expertise and the cool and unflappable Sitaram Yechuri are among my favourite performers. Among Indian polticians, that is ...
And now we have a most unlikely media star in the firmament, our new President Abdul Kalam. His humble-fisherman's-son-to-President life story will provide copy for years. Not to forget his missing his engagement because he apparently forgot the date. His disarming professorial habit of asking hard-boiled members of the press to repeat his words of wisdom after him (which he himself has repeated anyhow) somehow never seems offensive. His simplicity was so patent. The press, for the record, did repeat them. His shaggy hairstyle and the fact that he offers strong competition to George Fernandes in the matter of casual dressing, render him all the more telegenic.
South Indian performers like Karunanidhi, whose dramatic struggles with the police are now a TV classic, Cho Ramaswamy's caustic wit and T. N. Seshan's flamboyance fade into the background against Abdul Kalam's transparent simplicity and lack of guile.
But when it comes to foreign politicians there is none who can hold a candle to Bill Clinton. Good-looking, sexy, charming and articulate, he can adapt to any setting like a chameleon, whether doing a folk jig with the village matrons of Rajasthan, or being the world statesman, former Rhodes scholar, till very recently American President, giving a virtuoso performance in the Richard Dimbleby lecture on the BBC.
Tony Blair is also trying very hard to be TV-savvy. Very few world leaders have fathered a baby while in office (to the envy of numerous PMs and Presidents nearer home, in need of Helpage pensions). He held his wife Cherie's hand, when coming down the steps of the plane in liberalised India, and she wore saris, shalwar-kameez and Hyderabadi ghagras, but stuck strictly to the European skirt and coat coming down the steps of the plane, a step behind her husband, in Pakistan. They did not hold hands in public.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin, in well-cut suits and fashionable ties, may be short in height, but stands tall and confident when meeting six-foot plus leaders like Bush. He would not choke on a pretzel like Bush, refer to Pakis or forget the names of non-white world leaders (except for bete-noires Saddam and Arafat). His wife may not match the famous predecessor, the fashion conscious Raisa Gorbachev who was in a class by herself, but she wears smart clothes and carries herself with dignity.
I was once in a panel discussion on Star News, my fellow panellist being Andrew Whitehead of the BBC. We both enthusiastically agreed, that as far as canny politicians anywhere go, there is only one Yadav, and Laloo Prasad is his name. His deliberate folksy patois, his apparent gaffes in English, his lungi-banian attire and his offer of freshly churned milk from the cows in his backyard to visiting American senators are not half as innocent as they seem. He makes Bal Thackeray's scoop with Michael Jackson look vulgar and pushy, which is no mean feat. One cannot deny that, laugh as one might, Laloo Prasad's carefully savvy TV performances hold us spell-bound and even asking for more when the world situation is grim, which it mostly is nowadays. And that, surely, is what TV performances are about.
The writer is a columnist and media critic based in Delhi.
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