by Karan Thapar
However, I knew that Eyewitness needed stardust and spangle to attract attention. I was confident that our correspondents could deliver the journalistic goods, but we needed a recognized celebrity face to front the venture. I, therefore, wanted a co-anchor who was beautiful and well known and whose personality would act like a magnet.
Sharmila Tagore was my choice. Shobhana was a little hesitant. She wondered whether Sharmila would fit in. Would her presence soften the image of tough journalism that we wished to project? Shobhana’s doubts were understandable, but she was also willing to try something new and different.
I clearly remember the day Sharmila dropped by so that I could explain what I had in mind. We chose to meet at my flat in Vasant Marg, Vasant Vihar, on a weekday afternoon for a cup of tea. I’d only just moved in and my two househelps, Umed Singh and Chander Singh, were still learning how to run a bachelor home with a certain degree of style and precision.
I was keen to make an impression on Sharmila. I knew she would be tempted to accept the role I had in mind for her if she felt comfortable with me. So I taught Umed and Chander how to lay a tray and serve tea. The truth is, I was imitating what Mummy would have done. And I was particularly pleased with the organdie napkins that I had found in a kitchen drawer. They dated back to my marriage but had never been used. With these, along with some freshly bought pastries and proper pastry forks, I hoped Sharmila would be duly impressed.
If anything, Chander and Umed were more excited than I was. After decades away from India, Sharmila’s fame as a former Bollywood legend didn’t mean that much to me. I knew who she was; after all, that’s why I wanted her as a co-anchor. But her enormous glamour and star status were qualities I didn’t fully understand. Chander and Umed definitely did.
They positioned themselves by the kitchen door, waiting for the bell to ring, both determined to dash to the entrance to let her in. I could see they were in competition.
It didn’t take Sharmila long to realize the impact she was making on the two of them. I guess she’d experienced this many times before. Like a good actress, not only was she conscious of it but she willingly, if teasingly, played along.
She began by admiring the napkins and praised the servants for choosing them. I didn’t dare mention that I was the one responsible. She then complimented them on the tea—which she barely touched—and almost went into raptures over the pastries which, incidentally, she didn’t eat. But the act she put on—it would be unkind to call it a little bit of nakhra—cast a spell on Umed and Chander.
We were in the TV room, my favourite in the flat, and Chander and Umed now positioned themselves by the door, but just out of sight. They didn’t want to miss a moment of the time Sharmila spent at our home. This, for them, was possibly the biggest encounter and certainly the closest with a major film star. They were still bachelors in their twenties. So, understandably, they were in seventh heaven.
Tea over, Sharmila decided that she wanted to see the rest of the flat. It was an unusual request, particularly since this was her first visit and she had come for a business conversation. I suspect this was her way of giving Umed and Chander a little more time to admire her.
‘Main aap ka ghar dekhna chahti hoon (I want to see your house),’ she said as she walked out of the TV room. The two of them were stunned but delighted. ‘Mujhe aap dikhaoge? (Will you show me around?)’
The two of them grinned from ear to ear. Delight was written all over their faces. But they were also so very shy. So all they managed in response was a sheepish grin.
They took Sharmila to every room in the flat. Now, fully aware that she was the cynosure of their eyes, each time she caught them looking at her she would playfully flick back her hair in a gesture that was at once both sophisticated and coquettish. I could see that Umed and Chander were thrilled.
After this I knew Sharmila would agree to be my co-anchor and, in fact, she did. However, what I hadn’t expected was that most of the members of my new team—both male and female—would react to her in the same way as Umed and Chander. She bowled everyone over. In turn, they loved being around her, chatting, laughing or just being there to help.
Once Sharmila was on board, the concept of Eyewitness automatically altered to accommodate her and play to her strengths. Alongside the tough journalism, we decided to blend in elements of a conventional chat show. Each episode featured two celebrity guests whom the anchors, Sharmila and I, would talk to. In between our conversations, the journalistic stories would play out.
In the early days, Sharmila found the interviews she had to do daunting. She wasn’t used to them, but because many were with colleagues from Bollywood she was particularly keen to make a good impression. Sparkling in front of fellow film stars was more important to her than me.
‘I get nervous just before we start,’ she confided. ‘It’s those last few moments before we begin when my mind seems to go completely blank and I panic.’
So I devised a way of distracting her as the camera director counted down to the start of the interview. Sharmila always had an earpiece on, which kept her in constant communication with me. This meant that while being offstage I could chat with her and direct the interview she was conducting. To overcome her nervousness, I decided to use this facility to make her laugh. It seemed the best way of relaxing her in that last critical minute before the interview began.
My trick was to sing the opening line of a Bellamy Brothers hit number and it never failed to make her giggle: ‘If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me!’
My singing voice was no better than a croak. Yet, Sharmila would blush like a little schoolgirl and whisper back, ‘Silly boy!’ But it always relaxed her and she never let me down in any of the interviews that followed.
Each episode of Eyewitness had something for everyone in the family: journalism, a witty chat, a performance and a quiz. The idea was to encapsulate in one or two hours what a normal independent channel would show over a whole day or even a full week. In those days Doordarshan did not accept programmes from independent producers and there were no privately owned satellite-linked television news channels. Eyewitness ran for nearly six years, first on video with a monthly subscription and then, after Doordarshan started to open up, as a weekly half-hour sponsored programme. Once it established itself on Doordarshan, we launched a sister programme called The Chat Show, which was also a half-hour weekly.
The Chat Show was a conscious attempt to introduce a programme to Indian audiences that would resemble the sort Terry Wogan, Michael Parkinson and Michael Aspel were doing in London. Each episode brought together three celebrity guests, who were either in the news because of a book or a movie or a song they had just been involved with or simply because they were fascinating people the audience would want to know more about.
In each case, the conversation was more a light-hearted chat than an interview. We would talk about their lives and, most importantly, revel in their anecdotes. The secret was to get them to tell stories. This worked because not only are stories self-contained and fun to listen to, but good raconteurs enact them and, thus, breathe another level of life into the storytelling. Finally, audiences can more easily relate to such anecdotes than they can to hard-nosed political discussions.
In 1995 The Chat Show won the Onida Pinnacle award. Alas, this was the only year when these awards were given. Thereafter they were discontinued and, therefore, no one has ever heard of them!
In the 1990s India was a very different country to the one we know today. The Ayodhya Mandir–Masjid dispute was at boiling point. Militancy and terrorism in Kashmir were at their height. The economic reforms that went on to transform India had just been announced and the country was in the process of being overhauled by them. On top of all this, we had a minority government and the Congress party, after decades of Nehru–Gandhi domination, had as its president someone from outside the family. He was also the prime minister.
Not surprisingly, politics and controversy d
ominated Eyewitness’s coverage. Our young correspondents enthusiastically reported on the uncertainties and insecurity prevalent in Kashmir, on the tensions and divisions centred around Ayodhya, as well as the opportunities created by the Manmohan Singh reforms. Thus, Kashmiri militants, who had till then only been spoken of, were seen and heard on Eyewitness; wild Hindu sadhus and obstinately, if not darkly, conservative Muslim mullahs would angrily clash on our Ayodhya footage; politicians of all stripes would be toughly questioned and often left floundering for answers. This was new to India and, even if our audience was limited, it loved our content.
On most occasions, hours after a new video was released, Eyewitness stories would make headlines in the newspapers. We would release an advance video to the Press Trust of India, who always gave us a good spread. In addition, we would assiduously fax our press releases to all the newspapers and often ring and encourage them to use it. They usually did. Thus, Eyewitness acquired a reputation and a standing that otherwise would have been difficult to conceive of.
It’s hard to believe that all of this happened at a time when India was used to treating politicians with kid gloves and often placed them on a pedestal. Rarely were they available for questioning and, when they were, it was done deferentially. Questions were asked hesitantly. If they were dodged, which they usually were, the interviewees weren’t pursued. Inadequate or even obviously false answers were not checked, leave aside called out. The politician was the boss and the journalist was subordinate.
It was this that Eyewitness—and also Newstrack—challenged, shook up and changed. We wouldn’t just ask tough questions of politicians but often quarrel with them. We would raise issues that we knew were likely to embarrass them and then highlight their red faces and awkward silences. Even their indecorous behaviour or gauche manner was underlined and repeatedly shown.
For urban middle-class English-speaking India, this was revolutionary. Even though our journalism was not as good and our production values often weak and occasionally appalling, the audience thought that they were getting a taste of what the West was accustomed to. It made them feel good.
What we didn’t know at the time was that there was a wider audience that also watched with glee. These were not natural English speakers but they aspired to be. And because the language represented a dream they wished to achieve, Eyewitness and Newstrack became a means of doing that.
Over the six years of its existence, Eyewitness interviewed prime ministers like P.V. Narasimha Rao, V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar; opposition leaders such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Farooq Abdullah; a range of saffron-clad sadhus and bearded mullahs; most of Bollywood’s actors and actresses; a variety of sportsmen, particularly cricketers; and a few foreign heads of government such as Benazir Bhutto and Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi, both of whom were prime ministers of Pakistan in the early 1990s. Although Rajiv Gandhi died within three months of Eyewitness’s launch, we managed three long and very revealing interviews with him.
However, the interview that I most vividly recall was with Amitabh Bachchan. Recorded in 1992, it was meant to mark his fiftieth birthday. Long before Kaun Banega Crorepati and even before the financial crisis that crippled his company Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL), he was then both a hugely popular actor and an unblemished personality.
Although Amitabh had appeared in an earlier episode of Eyewitness, just months after its inauguration, this time round Amar Singh, then a director of the Hindustan Times and a close friend of his, had arranged the interview. Since this was a prized opportunity that would not repeat itself, we decided to do a fifty-minute interview and show it in two parts in consecutive episodes of Eyewitness.
The interview was recorded in the drawing room of Pratiksha, Amitabh’s first home in Bombay. He was seated on a sofa with his wife Jaya beside him. His children, Shweta and Abhishek, whom we intended to talk to as well, were watching from a sofa at the other end of the room.
Everything went swimmingly until the first tape change. When we paused to enable the crew to do this, Amitabh spoke about an interview of actor Warren Beatty that he had watched on American television. According to him, what made this show riveting was the interviewer pointedly and determinedly asking Beatty about the women in his life. As Amitabh put it, everyone knew the stories, but it was magic to hear Beatty confronted with them and see his response.
I thought this was a very strange thing to tell someone who was in the middle of interviewing him. Was it a hint or a suggestion that I should do something similar? After all, like everyone else, I too had heard stories of Amitabh’s alleged affairs with a number of actresses although, to be honest, I was not familiar with the details and had certainly not researched these rumours to question him about them. Still, was he giving me a message or, at least, a nudge?
The tape change couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, but it was enough to make up my mind. The temptation was too great. I decided I would take a leaf out of Amitabh’s anecdote and question him the way the interviewer had questioned Beatty.
‘We’ve just taken a pause to change tapes and during this break you told me a story about Warren Beatty,’ I began. After repeating the essential details, so the audience could follow, I added: ‘So let me do to you what that interviewer did to Warren Beatty. There have been a lot of stories of your alleged love affairs with actresses. After your marriage, have you had an affair with any other woman?’
If he was stunned, leave aside upset, Amitabh did not show it. My eyes were on him as I spoke and he was looking back at me equally intently. But his face was unperturbed. I don’t even recall his expression changing.
‘No. Never.’
‘They say you’ve had an affair with Parveen Babi. Is there any truth to that story?’
‘No,’ he replied again. ‘I too have read such stories. They’re not true. But I can’t stop magazines writing this sort of stuff.’
‘What about Rekha?’
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I detected a slight movement in his eyes. He seemed to take just a little longer to reply. But when he did, his voice was as firm as ever. There was no change in his tone.
‘No, not even with her.’ He didn’t say more. He left it at that.
Suddenly, turning to Jaya, who was still sitting beside her husband on the sofa, I asked if she believed Amitabh.
Jaya was taken aback. I could also see that Amitabh had turned his head to look straight at her as we both awaited her reply.
‘I always believe my husband,’ she said.
‘Do you really mean that, or are you only saying it because he’s sitting beside you?’
Jaya smiled. She now turned her head to look at Amitabh before she answered. ‘Of course I mean it. Why should I not?’
Having exhausted what little I knew on this subject, I reverted to my planned questions and we continued the interview. It went on for perhaps another half an hour, by when I was convinced that the Bachchans had not taken umbrage at the diversion into his love life. I was even more certain of this when Amitabh insisted that the crew and I stay for lunch. Indeed, when we demurred, in the belief he was being polite, his refusal to take no for an answer suggested he was keen that we should stay. So clearly, I said to myself, he’s not upset. He obviously wanted me to ask those questions and he was ready and willing to answer them.
How wrong I was. Like a volcano, anger had been building up inside him and it exploded shortly after we sat down to eat in the adjoining dining room.
It started when Jaya asked Amitabh if he would like some rice. ‘You know I never eat rice,’ he snapped. ‘Why are you offering me something I never have?’
It sounded like an explosion. This time his face also revealed his fury. Together they charged the atmosphere. The television crew and Amitabh’s children, who were with us, were not just stunned but petrified.
‘I’m only offering you rice because, as yet, the rotis haven’t come,’ Jaya explain
ed. She spoke very gently and softly.
‘I don’t want rice!’ Now he was shouting. ‘I never have rice and you know that. I’m not complaining that the rotis haven’t come, but stop offering me rice instead.’
It was clear that this was his delayed and deflected response to my questions. That made it yet more embarrassing for us to be sitting at his table, eating his food. We were—or, at least, I was—the cause of the problem. Yet there I was, enjoying his hospitality as this spectacle played out.
‘I’ll just check what’s happened to the rotis,’ Jaya said. I’m sure she was trying to calm him but then, unthinkingly, she added, ‘Why don’t you have a little rice in the meantime?’
‘Stop it. Just stop it,’ he replied. ‘I’ve said I don’t want rice and I’m happy to wait for the rotis. Can’t you understand that? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you just listen to what I’m saying?’
Jaya left the room and never returned. Shortly afterwards the rotis appeared and Amitabh started eating. The rest of us, however, had no appetite left. We hurriedly ate what was on our plates and excused ourselves on the grounds that we had to get back.
For the ten or fifteen minutes we were there, I don’t think anything was said. We ate in stunned silence. None of us could believe what had happened. He had lost his cool, shouted at his wife and, to be honest, disgraced himself. There was no denying or hiding this fact.
The whole thing left me confused. Part of me was embarrassed. I had trespassed into someone’s privacy, lit a fuse and created confusion. However, another part of me was chuffed. My impromptu questions had clearly hit their target and even if bullseye was not delivered on screen, it was apparent for all to see at lunch.
We had barely got back to our hotel before the phone started to ring. First, it was Amar Singh. Amitabh had been in touch and told him all that had transpired. Amar Singh, who had arranged the interview, felt let down.
