Five, four, three, two, one, clap!

Being on TV had been a cherished dream till, well, I “came on TV,” which, for the first time happened quite sometime ago. I was thirteen then and was participating in a “state level quiz competition” being aired on Eenadu TV (Telugu). I had no pretensions about being an ace quizzard; the fact that my face would be beamed via satellite to my drawing room, was the highest degree of gratification that I had hoped to achieve as I stepped into the studio for the first time. That my team stood second, statewide (and that my contribution towards this achievement was by no measure insignificant), was an ego booster.

I am twenty-one now and in these eight years that have elapsed, needless to say, a lot has changed. My desire to ‘be on TV,’ however, still persists and, in fact, is far stronger today. It is this desire that makes me accept invitations to talk shows, which Bantoo finds “quite pointless and hilariously boring.”

Bantoo has an opinion on issues that may range from “Why India should not buckle under pressure from the constituents of the Hurriayat Conference in Kashmir?” to “How are the social constructs of the cattle ranchers in Christchurch, New Zealand different from those on the US-Mexico border?”

You might be led to believe that Bantoo is a man well read. You couldn’t be farther from the truth. He is a couch potato (in the conventional sense of the term) and watches sitcoms, talk shows, interviews and “televised Presidential debates” all through the day (and night). And when he’s not busy doing this, he presents his take on not just the issues featured in these programs but on the programs themselves. Only, thus far, he hadn’t been on one.

Just the other day, I received an invitation to be a part of the audience on Question Time India, a ‘once-a-week’ one-hour talk show on BBC World. My first impulse was to politely turn it down, but then the voice on the other end offered me the chance to pose a “planted question.” This bait was too good to resist. I, not only accepted the invite, but got Bantoo invited as well. I was told that a pick-up bus would be there at an appointed place at the appointed hour to take us to venue (Laxmi Studios, Noida) and the same bus would drop us back.

It was Bantoo’s first time on a TV show and upon returning home, he made some entries in his diary, which are being reproduced here (without permission):

“We reached the place from where we were supposed to board the bus late by five minutes, but they were kind enough to wait for us. As soon as I boarded the bus, a strange feeling gripped me. I had a sense of being ‘herded in’ with other people. It was as if there had been a last minute scramble to fetch as many people as was possible (to fill seats up?) I have been to theater performances before, but never had I seen any scramble to get people to be a part of the audience. People would voluntarily walk in and out of the performance, but were never coaxed to do so. This was a strange new phenomenon I was witnessing and I was not amused.

It was a forty-minute drive to Noida and the other passengers (all of whom appeared to students be from the same institution) entertained us with their theatrics.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that like Bombay, Noida too had a ‘film city,’ which was essentially an area that had a host of studios and production houses. We stopped at the entrance to Laxmi Studios and were escorted inside. In keeping with the observances of civility, we were offered a ”welcome drink” after which we were asked to deposit our cellular phones in exchange for a token.

Ten minutes later we were ushered into a studio, which appeared much smaller and clumsier than it does on TV. While Aman was seated on a chair reserved for him (he was surrounded by women of all denominations), I was made to sit with the group of students who had traveled with us on the bus.
The audience, I noticed, comprised a curious mix of people. I figured that nearly half of them were students (most pursuing degrees in media or allied fields), a fourth were working professionals and the rest consisted of housewives and senior citizens. Thus, an attempt had been made to conjure up a representative set of people from varied backgrounds, who had some bit of proficiency in the English language. But whether or not such an audience does really represent the pulse of the nation as a whole, is a question that can spark off an acrimonious debate, so let me stay clear of that.

To begin with we had a “mock session” where Karan Thapar, whose company ITV produces the show for the BBC, and one of his associates impersonated two famous politicians belonging to rival political parties and Sagarika Ghose, the hostess of the show, along with the audience had fifteen minutes to rehearse the whole sequence of events that would, quite literally, be played out.

Indeed, the whole show was extremely meticulously orchestrated. Each word that Sagarika uttered was scripted and at each step the people sitting in the Production Control Room (PCR) were instructing her. The story was no different when it came to camera movements and the way the lights were being handled.

Even the audience was instructed on the smallest of matters- from when we must clap (and for how long) to where we must look and when. We were sensitized to the presence of the crane-mounted camera that maneuvered over our heads in a strange manner.

Selected members of the audience (including Aman) were given prepared questions and were required to speak them verbatim when their chance came. Quite frankly, before going on this shoot, I, as a viewer, was ignorant of the fact that quite a bit of what appeared to me as being spontaneous, is pre-programmed, not much different from a well rehearsed play.
Indeed, the discussion flows naturally for the most part and the members of the audience are allowed to make impromptu remarks, but most of what leads to this is pre-ordained and the viewer sitting at home is blissfully unaware of this.

While the audience did ‘get a feel’ of what was to come, when the actual discussion began, Sagarika did not quite seem to be at ease. I was certainly not alone in noticing the fact that she was quite tentative with the manner she carried herself about while moderating the discussion. Her persona is a far cry from the charismatic personality that Karan Thapar portrays on screen. She is an accomplished print journalist, a successful author, indeed a woman of good scholarship (a Rhodes scholar), but her ineptitude, when it comes to the medium of television, showed through. Perhaps she can take a cue or two from husband Rajdeep Sardesai.”

I know not why Bantoo chose to close his entry at this point, and I don’t really care, for he is rather snooty himself. However, let me admit that most of what he did actually note, cannot be negated. Let me make a few observations of my own.

The people sitting around me were senior to me by many years but that did not dampen their enthusiasm when it came to participating in the goings on. In fact some of them were over-enthusiastic at occasions. Perhaps this was their first (and possibly only) chance to catch the netas on the wrong foot, and what better occasion to do that than on international television!

As I had a seat reserved for myself, I had acquired a bit of (undeserved) respectability among those sitting around me. Enquiries about what I did and how I got to be the ‘chosen one’ for the planted question were made and I was looked at with a sense of awe, in which, it goes without saying, I reveled.
In all, this visit did give me some new insights into how the Tvwallas go about their business. Is not the fact that Bantoo and me have written nearly fourteen hindered words chronicling our experiences, proof enough?