Agent Vinod

Is it just me or have you too noticed the sudden perfusion of Vinods into our parched lives? Read a magazine, watch a TV debate, take notes from a food show, even visit the neighborhood multiplex and they are raining down on you like fluff-covered palash seeds. And in keeping with the nature of things, the fluff blows quickly away depositing the seeds of knowledge and wisdom exactly where they can be nurtured with our precious time and attention, i.e. the unfurnished cranium.

It may come as a relief to the filmi  Vinod that I do not wish to expand any further on this particular genus for fear of being punched senseless while enjoying my sushi. “Stay clear of the man who listens to Royal Challenge cassettes and CDs every night,” advises my father-in-law.

My enquiry is restricted to the three Vinods who unfortunately don’t have a size zero beauty cooing over their six packs. Yes, my thousand-word philosophical treatise shall hope to discover what it is that allows these feather-capped musketeers to run amok on our news channels, swishing and slashing everything that lies in their path to geriatric stardom. Let me start off with the gentlest and then slowly feel my way down the stairwell to the dungeon where the smiling assassin awaits the next cornflour-coated anchor.

What Bob Willis is to cricket commentary, Vinod Dua is to television anchoring. There comes a moment in one’s television viewing life, when one wishes to leave the mad hustle and the daily grind of a city behind and trundle off like a kaawadia in search of a sleepy village far, far away. There is, after all, a slip road to spirituality and contentment that involves taking a dip in the village pond along with the water buffaloes, climbing a village tree to pluck one’s evening meal, and disappearing for a quiet half hour of meditation to a village field with a sloshing tin of Nestle Everyday  in hand. One can always come back to the slithering and squealing metros, the bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, the vacantand sniggering-at-you BRTs, but- one last metaphor, promise -atleast the insatiable dragon of city life can be fed on fond memories of village fun. Such is the magic of village life and such is the magic of Bob Willis and Vinod Dua. Replace Bob with Navjot and Vinod with Arnab and one realises with gut wrenching dread that the sentence still stands. Precisely the point.

One gets the feeling that Bob and Vinod don’t like what they do, and yet they do it so well! Their  beguiling articulation and soothing voice, where syllables start to tear off lazily at the end of a sentence while still resisting the tear -like the emaciated runnel from a leaking tap barely able to keep itself together – has won them hordes of lady admirers otherwise put off by a spongy afro and a pot-belly. You realize at once that they are perfectly evolved for their roles, just like the opposable thumb. Bob would be an unmitigated disaster at descrbing an ice hockey match while Vinod can never be a war reporter. They are, instead, gods at converting higher thought into languid prose, and once they go AWOL you crave for them like an expecting mother craves for imli.  (What the expecting father craves for is common knowledge.)

Those who’ve suffered the television ice age would fondly recall the young Vinod Dua anchoring a children’s show on Sunday mornings, heralding the arrival of a cartoon called Barbapapa. How long should a sentence be, where to put the emphasis, and on which words, is an art known to few anchors. Vinod Dua knew it then. He knows it still. He is an agent for constancy not change.

Vinod Mehta, on the other hand, is an agent for change. After all, those very children who watched his namesake bring us the harmless Barbapapa, fed ravenously on Debonair when they graduated to college. The thought-provoking interviews, the well-crafted literary pieces, the scholarly essays, were much appreciated. Thanks, Vinod! His ebullient personality is reflected in whatever he’s touched so far, be it a Sunday paper –The Observer, a men’s magazine – Debonair, or a woman’s magazine –Outlook.  Which woman, you know.

He appears frequently on television as a distinguished panelist, mostly after he’s had his dinner and a Patiala. I like what he has to say on things, and I particularly like how he says it: with his hand slowly moving clockwise then counterclockwise – a metronomic requirement like the tanpura.

But, hey, the man’s a charmer. His autobiography Lucknow Boy was verbose, polemic, didactic  and self-aggrandizing – exactly what you look for in an autobiography. But foremost, it was written straight from the heart. He’s a natural writer, much like Narayan, and he writes in a language he can understand. If only his editor – the one with the canines – had shown more gumption and vetoed the inclusion of an old photograph of him with a stick-on beard…

He is also somewhat of a conquistador, someone who comes galloping into general view then suddenly reins in his horse, only to stand there for a bit and then move along at a trot for the evening dinner. I suppose his inherent kindness, while it allows him to disrobe a man, prevents him from taking the filthy garb to the cleaners. Many of his fellow journalists have escaped thus from a complete mauling and are grateful. They appear in his Letters columns from time to time.

He reminds one of Lawrence of Arabia: a likeable uncle, self-depreciating, a touch gung-ho perhaps, but ultimately a man who can garner a fan following. Like Lawrence, he’s had a little falling-out with Prince Faisal and is now forever barred from the bearded sheikh ’s tent. No doubt, however, an agent for change.

The stairwell is dark and deep but I have steps to descend…

Vinod Sharma reminds me of my third floor neighbour who rides a Chetak at all odd hours of the day, scaring stray dogs who dare to venture into the colony uninvited. In looks as well as deeds, then. That my neighbour isn’t Jose Mourinho as far as the panelist chair is concerned is because he can’t produce that sardonic smile as only his lookalike Vinod Sharma can.

A kind and affable man to the end, you’ll never hear him use that ubiquitous phrase, “Sources close to 10 Janpath…” as he is not boastful. Whatever the question, you always see him itching to provide an answer and post it with that smile of his. Ten bucks he’s the president of his RWA.

He is not a lawyer, just a journalist, as he keeps reminding us. But can the man defend! Arnab, Rajdeep, Barkha, Rahul, Sagarika – these modern day exocets have tried to target that little pot of amber nectar he hides right under his belly button, the one that finally got Lanka naresh, but to little avail. Be it 2G, Commonwealth, Aadarsh, UP debacle, Bofors, that hard-to-reach kalash is as safe as a public sector job.

He too is an agent.