Aby's Baby Makes It

FOURTEEN years ago, after Bollywood’s bad man Puneet Issar pumped his fist into the intestines of Amitabh Bachchan during a film shoot in Bangalore, the reigning demigod of India’s film industry refused to die in hospital. After several painful months that were soothed by the collective prayers of an entire nation, the megastar was reborn. Fifteen minutes before the announcement of Miss Greece Irene Skliva as Miss World 1996 on Saturday last, Bachchan was a man born again. The superstar jumped and cheered in a remote corner of Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium while Prabhudeva "humma hummaed" with 20 Broadway dancers on the world’s stage.

 Sanjeev Gupta, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd (ABCL) CEO, touched the wooden bench in front of him: "Fifteen minutes to go. Am still keeping my fingers crossed." The minutes flew even as Police Commissioner Sharath Chandra Burman heaved a heavy sigh of relief over having pulled it off—"his toughest assignment ever". The technicolour cultural extravaganza showcasing India to a 2.5 billion global teleaudience had passed off without a hitch. And as Bachchan shouted "bravo" for Prabhudeva, he could have well been saying it for himself.

Indeed, it was a brave gamble which AB and his CL won from the jaws of near-defeat. When a steady drizzle showed signs of turning into a downpour an hour before the pageant final moved out of the starting blocks, Bachchan looked 10 years older, red vermilion on his forehead, looking at the skies for succour. The clouds relented, probably forced by the kind of divinity Bolly-wood unfailingly portrays on screen. Just like the anti-pageant activists, mostly senior Karnataka BJP leaders, who were forced to go into hiding by battallions of security personnel after calling for a Bangalore bandh on Saturday. And when they surfaced to hold demonstrations in three different points in the city on Saturday evening, they were promptly arrested after some nominal caning and teargassing.

Bangalore’s Anti-Miss World, K.N. Sashikala of the Mahila Jagaran Manch, who had threatened to immolate herself and went into hiding along with the BJP leaders, remained in hiding. And threats of the "Indian Tigers", rumours of Andhra’s PWG Naxalites having infiltrated into the city to disrupt the event, along with "lakhs of farmers marching into Bangalore", remained just that—threats and rumours.

With nearly 15,000 policemen and paramilitary personnel sealing Bangalore in the tightest security blanket ever thrown on a city for an event this side of the Vindhyas, the list of casualties, not surprisingly, was on the lower side: 1,200 arrests and about 25 injured in police action, including 10 police personnel. "Constant preparedness, top of the line action and our sheer numbers brought us success," a beaming Burman told Outlook minutes after the pageant ended. Yet, like Coolie, the pageant could not qualify for being labelled a box office superhit. Director Priyadarshan’s final show was conjured by an overwhelming mixture of colour, culture and confusion. Actresses Manju Warrier, Shobana, Bhanupriya, Juhi Chawla, Sonali Bendre and Pooja Batra, along with Prabhudeva, Alisha Chinai and Mallika Sarabhai—it was an assorted crew that came together to present a pot pourri of performances packaged as India. Which actually was the filmi pop version, as seen through the eyes of tinsel town—Priyadarshan, music director Ilayaraja, art director Sabu Cyril and Bachchan himself—complete with at least 25 dancers in typical song-sequence style accompanying each of the presentations. More baffling was also the fact that the entire ‘presentation’ of India to the world happened before the global uplink and was limited to Indian viewers.

IN fact, as the initial hype of hosting 88 of the world’s arguably most beautiful women began to wear, it became clear that the build-up to the pageant was a lacklustre affair. And the two main subevents—Miss Photogenic and Miss Personality—only went to seal that perception. Held at one of the umpteen farmhouse-cum-resort-clubs that have sprung up outside Bangalore, the conduct of the Miss Photogenic contest defied logic when photojournalists were asked to judge the event by looking at the contestants as they sashayed on a ramp more than 20 feet away. There was none of the promised projection of images of the contestants on a giant screen and there was little to enthuse the crowd or the girls.

The 50 km-drive to Green Valley—another picturesque resort—for the Miss Personality was more wasted as there was little to differentiate the event from Miss Photogenic. The contestants repeated the ramp routine, with some of them even wearing the same outfits they wore during their presentations in Delhi. The music to which they floated on the ramp too was the same, just as the commentary by Steve Morley, son of the Morleys who own Miss World Inc, who went through the motions of announcing the nationality, height and status of the contestants. And some flat attempts to infuse humour and wake up the audience: "A wanna-be judge, an aspiring lawyer, an aspiring legal counsel, we have the entire judiciary here." 

"The contest was not one that would be judged that evening," Steve Morley later explained to Outlook. "The girls are their own judges and the Green Valley event was a show for Liberty shoes, the sponsors of the Miss Personality title." According to him, each girl awards points to the 87 others on various criteria during the course of the event as they interact with one another and get to see the others from close quarters. "I don’t know why this was not made clear earlier," he wonders. Just as Bangalore wondered where all the promised celebrities for the event had vanished. The Sultan of Brunei, Princess Diana, Brooke Shields, Andre Agassi, all of who were sent invitations personally by Bachchan, failed to fly from across the seas.

A bigger blow for Bachchan was the refusal of Rajkumar, the Kannada matinee idol who won the Dada Saheb Phalke award this year, to be the chief guest for the pageant final. A cultural icon with a big fan following in the state, Rajkumar had been personally invited by Bachchan 10 days before the pageant. He had refused to confirm his participation till the day of the final. In the end, the final had no chief guest and Bangalore’s hope of seeing the ‘Who’s Who’ actually ended with a question mark: Who’s who? And the list was modest: actors Sunil Shetty, Venkatesh, Sanjay Khan, and industrialists Anil Ambani and Adi Godrej among the audience; and Aishwarya Rai, Sanath Jayasuriya, Vijay Mallya, Mr World Tom Nuyens, among the judges. And a sprinkling of politicians and their families led by Chief Minister J.H. Patel in an ill-fitting white safari and closed-collar suit and Prime Minister Deve Gowda’s daughter H.D. Shylaja.

BACHCHAN denies he is disappointed by the absence of the anticipated celebrities, or at least is very successful in hiding the disappointment. "If they (the celebrities) are not here, too bad it didn’t happen. I don’t think it has robbed the show of anything," he told Outlook a day before the final. "The main thing is the concept." Bachchan’s brave face notwithstanding, there were few doubts that the event had certainly succeeded in attracting negative publicity for Bangalore and India. While the promised positive spinoffs like increased inflow of tourists will be known as the months roll by and the Tourism Ministry releases figures of India-bound travellers, the anti-pageant protesters had unfortunately only succeeded in reiterating Indian stereotypes abroad. A Norwegian journalist visiting Bangalore to report the pageant innocently questioned a local journalist if it was safe for her to venture downtown, considering she was a foreigner and ran the risk of being attacked by those opposing "cultural invasions".

A Bangalore-based English daily with an Internet edition received several e-mails from disgusted NRI-readers in the US about how major American TV networks reporting the pageant beamed pictures of protests which was followed by library pictures of India being a country of elephants and snake charmers. And it was clear that most of the foreign media, of the total 400-plus accredited journos who descended on Bangalore in the run-up to the finals, were there for the controversy and not the "megashow". One immolation or one bomb blast was all that they wanted. Says the editor of a Singapore-based daily: "All that the international newsagencies have reported out of Bangalore all these days have been the protests, the attacks and the threats." 

And Bachchan knows that. Says he: "You can’t stop the media from writing what is happening to prevent negative publicity. And I can’t say the show will be able to offset all the negative publicity it has attracted. It’s for the people to decide. My job is to put the show up there for everyone to see." In all fairness to Bachchan and his harried managers at ABCL, the protests, threats and public interest petitions succeeded in diverting their managerial energies from the event to the string of never-ending crises. Says Elizabeth Koshy, MD of event-management agency CPV Cause Celebre: "All the energies of ABCL are being concentrated on crisis management than on event management because of all the opposition. As it is they got barely four months to organise a show of the magnitude of Miss World and the last thing they needed were crises." 

So it was sweet victory for ABCL when the Supreme Court stayed a judgement of the Karnataka High Court which had imposed severe restrictions over the pageant. The High Court, while refusing to stay the event per se, had banned the serving of champagne, banned the deployment of the Army and the BSF, and appointed observers to ensure there was no obscenity and nudity in the show. "It is a 75 per cent victory for us," Sashikala had claimed in the corridors of the High Court after the judgement. "But since the pageant hasn’t been stopped, I will carry out my threat of self-immolation."

 Ultimately, like Sashikala, there was none among the various players involved with the pageant who registered a 100 per cent victory. Not the state government which had assured all support but was forced by the High Court to scoot with its tail between its legs, not ABCL or its chairman, and definitely not Bangalore, the chosen city. Triumph belonged to confusion, misplaced ideologies and priorities, political sabre-rattling and myopic undermining of democratic values. Two days before she didn’t become Miss World, Rani Jeyraj told Outlook that there was more to her than just being Miss India or whatever. "There are other things to do in life. I’ve got to carry on." Which is what Bang-alore needs to realise as it limps back to the routine after giving a new meaning to being "the happening city".