The Image War

NOVEMBER 1997 - The images this week off the idiot box have reflected the confusion and anarchy that is standard feature every time there is a function involving the people. The Prime Minister’s motorway function was marred by a gross show of ill discipline and scant respect for order. In a way it does truly reflect the state of the country where chaos always seems to rule supreme. People shove one another, the agents of law and order shove the people, the people shove them back, shouting and scuffles abound, the chief guest is perched precariously at all times and disasters lurk around the corner. It’s always been like this and I suppose it always will stay like this.

From across the border or the great divide, flow other images, courtesy the new channels that rain down at more home homes than you and I can imagine. They represent a side of India that tantalizes everyone. The images flood the senses here. Each and every ‘Indian’ channel seems to have endless groups of men and women dancing their hearts out in great musical extravaganzas. Sometimes it does look like India being one large party that shows no signs of slowing down. There seem to be thousands who are making careers out of dancing and gyrating non-stop to one provocative number after another. Certainly India has no shortage of this kind of talent. Equally hard at work are the comperes in western attire who move and groove, seemingly just at ease in mini skirts as they are in skimpy costumes. The natives are having a ball, so says the idiot box. The girls and boys who represent the new generation Indians on television are on the streets of Bangalore and Madras and elsewhere, singing with the crowds, dancing on the streets, hopping into rickshaws, chatting up the locals and pouring out the new Indian masala mix, Minglish, which is a mixture of English and Urdu all jumbled together.

In sad contrast, or so it seems, is the national channel here, where the colours have gone out of the sets to be replaced by men who lecture endlessly on usually the most inane subjects. Moral purpose is high here as is the dreary quotient. Audiences yawn and fall asleep listening to the drone of Pakistan’s self-appointed and mostly self-proclaimed messiahs of wisdom and light. They have little choice because few have that luxury. For the bulk of people who make up the audiences here, the choice is watch or not watch. The escape routes of satellite or even the VCR, are closed. So families sit evening after evening, bored further and further into gray depths and only very rarely offered anything that can be termed even half exciting. No flashy dance routines here, no seductive comperes to tempt the faithful and no provocative dialogue to rock the brittle foundations on which uneasily rests our national conscience.

Ironically, both channels, the mindless Indian and the sanitized Pakistani one, are not representative of their respective countries. Both are sad parodies and fine examples of how the image overshadows reality. The Indian scene is not what television would have you believe. There are no damsels stalking the streets in the most revealing clothes, chatting with anyone having a minute to spare. There are hardly any French speaking waiters or languid hostesses in evening gowns in the normal Indian home. Indian fathers are not to be found in casinos or signing multi-billion dollar deals with wily-looking Chinese business tycoons. All this admittedly must be happening, as indeed it does in dull Pakistan as well, but the images that float across the waves suggest as if these are indeed commonplace. This is alluring and exciting but not true.

There is no doubt that there are dynamic and progressive sectors in Indian society where the march towards a bright and prosperous future is very much on the agenda. In the performing arts, in literature and in fields of science and technology, the Indians are already far ahead and gaining ground. There is surely a great deal of cosmopolitan living that is featuring more and more in the Indian scene, but there is a larger and a great deal more sobering truth that lurks beyond the dancing fringe. That part of India is far more real than the nightclub India of exotic wines and bewitching belles. Yet that is rarely shown and if at all, it is carefully papered over, like the ‘extras’ in Gandhi which prompted someone to remark that never had so many Indians in starched clean clothes been spotted together. A friend who landed at Mumbai not so long ago remarked that the first thing that hit him as he stepped into Indian air so to speak, was the unmistakable and pungent stench of urine. His first impressions of Mumbai were shanty towns and beggars. When he proffered a rupee note to a beggar at a crossing, the cabby turned to him and said, ‘Sahib, please don’t spoil the rate.’ All Mumbai perhaps does not carry the smell that greeted my friend but that’s one picture of India and the other one you are all too familiar with for me to repeat.

Personally I don’t blame the Indians. Like us they too are bogged down with mammoth problems that defy solutions, but at least they have decided collectively that the image they all must project has to be one of brightness and promise. We have decided that we don’t need to project any image at all, assailed as we are with a host of other images about us which travel around the world. It does not require a genius to figure out which image will bring in rewards at the end of the day.