Faces. Dr Kelly’s with its features retrenched, desperately seeking to evade the Parliamentary inquisition. His expression said everything he could not: that he was deeply mortified at being exposed by the British Government as the BBC source for its stories on the ‘‘sexed up’’ Iraq dossier. His face read like the chronicle of a death foretold.Then Vivek Oberoi’s face. In the hazy, shaky Aaj Tak shots of the actor in the hospital ICU, Oberoi looked like a pale imitation of himself and a mite breathless, as well he might if he was suffering from pulmonary or fat embolism. Fortunately for Oberoi, he did not hear NDTV 24X7’s Srinivasan Jain, serenely, inform us that in a recent, similar case, the patient had died, else he may have turned a whiter shade of the bed sheet!Perhaps, then, he blanched at being on camera in the one place he could reasonably expect never to give a shot. You must marvel at Aaj Tak’s intrepidity, and the hospital’s laxity.Next came Karishma. We came face to face with her by the Miracles of Destiny, and the Supreme Court which allowed the serial to be telecast, pending further proceedings. She filled the TV screen with not one or two but three faces (Sahara Manoranjan). There’s the smiling countenance of the youthful Karishma, there’s the bespectacled visage of the grandmother Karishma and there’s the pig-tailed gamin Karishma who’s not Karishma but Kiran played by Karisma.Karisma Kapoor, in triplicate, is a triple delight to her fans but for the average viewer, at least one too many. Particularly when, in spite of approximately half a century between the oldest and the youngest K, her face is unchanged as if she wore a mask for 50-odd years. The only wrinkles that appear are in her saree. Her grey wig, though, was very grey.The serial features more film has-beens — all of them male — than any other show. So far, they have made fleeting appearances — as if they don’t want you to notice them. Karisma you notice as the dour Devyani ji; she smiles only in flashbacks (of which you can expect many since they permit her to play a woman closer to her own age) as if her memories are too grim.Or else, she boggles through large glasses which magnify at the venality and greed of her two sons. Yes, Karishma is a rich, self-made business tycoon with weak-kneed men for children who hate their Mama but love her wealth. It’s lonely at the top of the Devyani Chambers — no wonder, Karisma’s fish-faced.At least she’s not gruesome. The next two faces are. Last Thursday, photographs, said to be of the Hussein brothers — Uday and Qusay, were prime time attractions. CNN and BBC World, who had discussed them — the faces and the brothers — throughout the day, could barely contain their unseemly excitement when the photographs were, finally, released. It was rather like the countdown to a space shuttle launch — the photos are getting ready for release, the photographs will be released in a few hours, the photographs will be released any moment now, 10, 9, 8.. The photographs have been released. Within minutes, if not seconds of the release, BBC and CNN had the photographs on display in a photo-finish. BBC won.CNN warned us that the pictures were ‘‘graphic and gruesome’’ and not for children. There was considerable moral ‘umming’ and ‘aaahing’ over the telecast of the images which must have perplexed the Indian viewer accustomed to seeing dead ‘militant’ bodies on Indian channels.The bearded, bloodied faces of the brothers were telecast repeatedly and at great length across channels. On Friday the Husseins’ faces returned to prime time, this time in video footage and accompanied by their near-naked bodies. The reason for this indecent exposure is baffling: did the Americans believe that untouched faces lie but ‘touched up’ bodies can’t? Personally, we favour another explanation: if you are going to expose the male body, go The Full Monty.Meanwhile, American President Bush had evidently enjoyed whatever he saw. Pink in the cheeks, eyes snapping and a wolfish grin, he spoke of a ‘‘free’’ Iraq and a free America which was freeing Iraq. ‘‘Our nation,’’ he proclaimed, ‘‘is incredibly brave.’’ Uh?
