India Diaries - II

All in Bad Taste

- There's only one word to describe the news channels in India. Pulp. Watching Zee News, NDTV and any of the other N channels cover the World Cup, Bob Woolmer's death or anything else for that matter reminded me of the  rags you could buy for a buck on railway stations in Bhopal or New Delhi. Lurid and sensationalist too.

Wait, I thought I was talking about news channels, not the Times of India.

Aaj ki match ka villain kaun - a) Sachin b) Dravid c) Sehwag. Apne jawaab 8284 par SMS karein....

- The only redeeming program on TV for me was the one Barkha Dutt moderates. Unfortunately, it is geared towards a sound-bite friendly speaker and not for any sort of nuanced debates. Even before someone gets a word in edge-wise, she's moved on to someone else.

- What I was probably happiest about apropos news coverage was that I flew out before the Ash-Shek marriage. The Hurley-Nair alliance has left its scars, and the Rai-Bachchan merger would have meant even worse.

'Prateeksha' has been painted a shade of muave that Rai chose herself from Asian Paints' Color World, where you can choose from millions of colors to match your choice. (that's your surrogate advertising right there. The TOI just made a few cool millions).

But seriously, that adds one more pair (Baby B - Rani) to the list of pairs with obvious  chemistry that went on to off-screen alliances with people they don't gel as well with on-screen. Famous examples in the past include Big B - Rekha and Kajol-SRK.

Maybe that's two more pairs, if you have a sense of humor and count Ash- Hrithik in D:2.