Captains of industry, and the rich and famous who seldom find time for a telephonic interview with the print media of the non-frivolous genre, are enamoured of it. It’s quite astonishing how some professedly busiest politicians and businessmen, who are perpetually in ‘meetings’, find the time to haul themselves to distant studios to dutifully deliver a few sound bytes in response to inane questions posed by dimpling PYTs.
But popular television is a two-edged sword which can destroy carefully built reputations in a matter of minutes. Consider the case of former Bollywood film star and once popular television hostess Simi Garewal, whose 30-minute weekly television chat show Rendevous with Simi Garewal lured the glitteratti — businessmen, writers, movie stars, entertainers and celebrities — to subject themselves to elite drawing room interviews by the eponymous hostess. They didn’t seem to mind in the least the time expended, or the vapid questions centred around their personal lives and lifestyles posed by Garewal.
Given her star power and familiarity with the television medium, it’s surprising that recently Garewal suffered a steep fall from grace on national television, which has perhaps ended her career on the idiot box. Invited to serve as a panellist on popular newscaster Barkha Dutt’s Sunday night prime time We the People programme to discuss the whys and wherefores of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai, after making initial politically correct noises, Garewal went ballistic. Out of the blue, she made the observation that on looking down from any of Mumbai’s posh high-rise buildings, one can see Pakistani or Bangladesh flags fluttering in slum shacks and huts below.
This completely out of context statement, which Garewal insisted is true, visibly dismayed Dutt and nearly provoked a riot on the sets of We the People, which is filmed in live audience format. Since then, with print media columnists routinely making snide remarks about Garewal’s over-the-top outburst, her career in television seems all but over. That’s the power of television: it can destroy great reputations in a few seconds.