Penblunt & Hogwash

Entertainment for the unwashed

PENBLUNT

Ninad Seth plonked himself on me, practically.

It was hot times with Nimbus Sports and the Information & Broadcasting Ministry at each other’s jugulars on the compulsory feed – to DD ‑ of ODI cricket matches involving India.

I was at the Press Club of India having a smooth vodka and biryani, when a scrubby looking young man with intensely powerful eyes and even more powerful eyeglasses came and crashed on the chair next to me, asking for a box f matches.

He said his name was Ninad, which sounded like an awful lot of noise, and he was noisy alright. Very intelligently, though.

I introduced myself as working with one of the top portals on the entire broadcasting industry.

Ninad said (without preamble) “Do you have the mobile of Harish Thawani?”

I gave it to him and he said: this solved a huge problem

He launched himself into how he would sc**w the government which had denied free market play to Nimbus. I did not argue… why give out my depth of ignorance? After all, he had been, he said, a business reporter and covered media a lot.

Subsequently, he kept calling me off and on, making demands and offering to wine and dine me at the India International Centre, a genuine no-conditions offer.

Three weeks later he said the same thing: Nimbus had been denied market play.

“Do you think Harish would be able to make all the money he has invested?” I asked

“No, don’t think so.”

“Well, then if Doordarshan is offering 75 per cent of the income generated by them through cricket revenue, why should he opt out?”

F**k, no one told me that… is that true?”

“Look here, if you cannot get the investments back, and DD offer you just two bucks they are generating, should you not take it?”

He agreed that that would be prudence, but he had another issue: why fix the price of something that is not an essential commodity?

“Is cricket not an essential commodity? After all, don’t people have a right to be entertained? Is it that just because most Indians are poor, is left to do manual and menial labour, come home, watch some low-IQ serial, or just copulate and crash for the night? I don’t think so.”

Being from the red background (Sorry, not CPI-M… more scarlet), I had once done a lot of reading on arts and the official Marxist position is we work to procure freedom from want so that we can not just procreate, but create.

In other words, to be entertained and to entertain is our birth right, which the classes deny the masses.

I would like to ask all of you: do you think just because a poor family in a bustee, chawl or slum has no money to subscribe Nimbus, they should be denied the right to watch cricket, though DD is willing to pay just for that purpose?

Cricket today is the highest and undoubtedly the cleanest (like any sport) entertainment available in the country. “And mind you, today even women in large numbers watch cricket,” my mentor in media reportage, Ashok Mansukhani had revealed to me sometime ago.

The minister had said that Nimbus was being ‘unpatriotic’ by denying the feed to DD, which is a free-to-air channel that even paupers having a TV set can watch. Was he being ultra-nationalistic?

I have never been a government Yes-man, but does Dasmunsi have a case here?

What is patriotism? Is it, going to Kargil and dying because some blubbering army bosses didn’t know Pakistanis had set up bases in India? If Amitabh Bacchhan acts in a film on Kargil and does not charge a penny, would not that be patriotism?

I support the minister.

What he probably meant (but in his seething anger could not articulate properly), is that denying the largest numbers of Indian TV viewers the spectacle of the century is unpatriotic, particularly because the government was shelling out its money to the ratio 75:25! Nimbus had not been asked to provide anything for free.

“Great point, dada,” yelled Ninad over the Press Club din generated by increasing volumes of alcohol was seeping into the scribes’ brains. “Write about this,” he Ninaded, (read hollered, a coinage reserved for him).

Well, I am fairly convinced we have a point here. Right to entertainment ought to be enshrined as a fundamental right.

I remember a landmark judgement of Bombay High Court (SC had upheld it): it was case of a peon attempting to self-immolate because of acute poverty, and the concerned commissioner refusing any abetment.

The cops filed the usual stuff: attempt to commit suicide; you cannot deny right to life even to yourself.

But his lawyer argued that it is better to die than live in his abysmal condition, so right to life included a right to life with dignity, and hence, implied a right to death if life is so inglorious.

I do not remember whether the last part was upheld by the court, but it did uphold that right to life implies life with dignity.

You cannot deny the right to entertainment, especially to the poor, especially when the exchequer is paying from its coffers.

Well readers, I place this for debate!