Big B, Small B and Baby

Who will wipe the TV reporter’s tears over the Bachchan baby guidelines?

Let’s call him Mr 2-Minute Exclusive. His voice is loud but it can be solemn in the face of someone else’s tragedy, and when needed, like after a terrorist attack, it can be a screech as if bullets are coming right at him in the slowest of motion. He hates his boss but has one solitary ambition—to anchor like his boss. He is stressed and probably hates his job too, but to compensate for that revels in what he considers being a public figure. He is convinced there is a higher calling to what he does. He has a three-line understanding of 70 per cent of what he reports on, and much of what he says is the same sentence in five different ways to the same question put to him in five different ways by the boss. But to be fair to him, in his chosen profession, any depth can be a handicap. He is better off dumb.

Last week, Mr 2-Minute Exclusive was blindsided by a body he didn’t know existed. Unfortunately, the Broadcast Editors Association had his editor on it and so he can’t ignore what they are ordering him on the birth of Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s baby. He had been as eager for the birth as the parents themselves. There’s nothing like the high of standing outside the hospital and home, and using astute powers of guesswork and gossip to report ‘Breaking News’. Alas, the editor betrayed him. The editor did so because a retired Supreme Court judge, who heads the Press Council of India, pointed out a few unsavoury things about the profession, and worse, threatened to do something about it. Plus, this is the editor’s opening to befriend the Bachchans.

Mr 2-Minute Exclusive gets all this, but cannot evoke any compassion for his plight. Where did these morals come from? Till yesterday, for every celebrity house he entered, he got two pats on the back. And now? He can’t cover the delivery before it happens, he can’t cover it while it happens and he can’t cover it after, say the rules. He can’t gatecrash, he can’t smuggle himself inside, he can’t bribe/coax/threaten an MMS his way forth. Hell, he can’t even be generous with the truth. He can only run handouts by the Bachchan family, that too for no more than 90 seconds. The unkindest cut of all—forget ‘Exclusive’, he can’t even run a ‘Breaking News’ band on it. He wonders why Aishwarya and Abhishek went through the trouble of having a baby if this was what it was going to culminate in. The only thing he is not upset about is the ban on astrology. That is something for the Hindi news channel’s Aapka Sanvaddata, who is on his way right now to offer a goat sacrifice to tide over this calamitous hour.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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