THE LOST WORLD

BY ANANT NARAYAN MAHADEVAN

Last night the phone rang. The ring tone was indication enough of an overseas call. The caller introduced himself as Steven Spielberg that surprised me completely.
"Cut the spiel, Steve," I said, "There are more important names in the Screenworld Directory. Why call me?"
"If you hang up, you lose the role of a lifetime," said the person with a pronounced Yankee accent. If it wasn’t Steven, then somebody was being a mighty good mimic. So I decided to respect the talent and play along.
"I have drawn up the scenario for Jurassic Park 6," he said
" Really?," I inquired. "Whatever happened to 4 and 5?"
"4 and 5 never happened?," said Steve, sounding surprised, "Well, that’s for the audiences to take note of. As for me, I always lose count of sequels which brings me to this Jurrasic Park. It is called JURASSICK PARK…EK THA TV...Indian TV!"
"A movie about TV?," I cried, "What am I in it, the idiot in some kind of a box?"
"Well, Jurassic Park has to be about dinosaurs. So, this one too will feature a dinosaur."
"Great Steve, so what does that leave me with? A walk-on part? Sorry, I can’t compete with Naseer, Om and company!"
"No, mate, you play the main role, that of the dinosaur," remarked Steve with complete confidence.
"Have you seen Dino the Dinosaur? Watch him play the lead in a movie called Raaz and you have the expressionless wonder you are looking for," I said, trying to be the helpful casting director.
"Well, I am looking for a dinosaur from your television world and my research tells me, that’s you Anant," exclaimed the voice in an even more excited tone.
"Search me," I replied.
"Well, here’s what the reports say," continued Steve."You took off in commercial Indian television network in circa 1984 and are still alive and kicking."
"But, I have quit TV," I protested.
He ignored and continued, "I have further learnt that there hasn’t been a single year in which you didn’t feature either as an actor or a director on Indian television in the past twenty years, with some years showcasing as many as three or four of your works. That is some kind of a world record, man."
"Ah, that’s why the rest of the world knows, but not India," I lamented.
"So, you are the last of the surviving dinosaurs and fit my part to a D. Before even you become extinct, I want to capture you for posterity."
I didn’t know how to react to the meticulously researched truth.
After waiting for a while, I said: "Well, you see it isn’t entirely my fault. When we started off in 1984, we had this new and fresh approach to television. Sai Paranjpe, Sridhar Kshirsagar, Kundan Shah, Aziz Mirza, Saeed Mirza, Aanand Mahendroo, Ramesh Sippy, all made serials [now deemed as classics] and created television stars. Now no one bothers to remember them. You are right. They are extinct far as the TV is concerned. They are even threatening to make recent makers like Lekh Tandon and Ravi Rai extinct. You are right. I am going to be extinct soon."
"But not before you, as the dinosaur of television expose the new age villains and take revenge for the extinction of your contemporaries," declared Steve, "JURASSICK PARK [don’t miss the lucky K in the title] will create a serious tehelka."
"Look, it really isn’t the fault of those stupid people who smoke cigarettes, whack from foreign shows and make sure that the bahu’s bindi and saree falls don’t go haywire when she gets up from bed. After all, these guys are not even aware of a Basu Chatterji or a Hrishikesh Mukherjee just like I don’t know too much about dinosaurs," I explained.
"My sequel will feature these guys as the enfant terribles," barked Steve,"and they will come after you to finish you. The story will feature rejections, untold favours to kith and kin, parrots who memorise reams of dialogue and pass off as actors, the complete corruption of television executive producers and the emergence of regressive sagas as weapons to destroy you and your sensibilities."
"And who wins?" I inquired frantically. "Do I die or do I survive?"
"I will have two endings,” he said. “One will be for the audience where you die fighting to uphold the tradition of the names you just mentioned. That will be a realistic end. The other end will have you finish the idiots and bring back the lost glory of the television. Only one print will have this ending. That I will send you, so that you can live with it in your dream world."

JURRASICK PARK…EK THA TELEVISION…COMING SOON!

Bee Gee's Note: Anant Mahadevan is an actor-director who has left the television to concentrate on making movies. His latest film Dil Maange More starred the current teen sensation Shahid Kapoor. And yeah, he is not at all keen to go back to the world of Indian television.