And the 80-year old legend looked straight into the charmed hostess’ eyes. "I’m ready to face death," he said.

Time stood frozen in its stunned tracks, as Dev Anand, reversing every law of autumnal stock-taking spoke of his past, so exuberantly and so fast, it seemed like yesterday was a teaser trailer for tomorrow.

The two-part Rendezvous With Simi Garewal was a tour de force in the truest sense. As the anchor astutely summed up at the end, Dev Saab’s indomitable personality encapsules not just 60 years of cinema but also a legion of socio-historical changes.

Those monumental shifts in time tumbled out with the clarity of diary jottings as the man at the vortex of the vibrant verbosity simply pulled at his memory chords letting lose a cascade of memories from an era that can never lose its sheen.

The polished whoop-work of the tete-a-tete must be discussed. Most talk shows only put the celebrity at the centre and leave the rest to the memory gods. Simi Garewal truly takes pains to bring her guests alive in unexpected ways. Pages from Dev Saab’s diary were used on the show to create a sense of pasteurized past, as though the filtered fragrance of memories would give us reason to hope for a better future.

Hope is what Shabana Azmi filled us with when she appeared on BBC’s Question Time India. There she sat next to Moushumi Chatterjee. The two formed a neat study in contrasts. The one reliable, eloquent and assertive. The other...well Moushumi! She dropped gems like, "Better film stars in politics than the underworld."

Sorry, I’m a bit lost here. But what’s the connection? She giggled through questions on her candidature and wisely stayed mum when questions about the sari tragedy in Lucknow were raised. She grinned when Shabana mentioned Roti Kapada Aur Makaan.

Moushumi probably thought Shabana meant Moushumi’s film of that name. Fortunately for Moushumi, Shabana was extremely accommodating and sisterly towards her colleague, even winking at her at the end while suggesting some film folks bring neither glamour nor substance to politics.

It was a lively chat and remarkable for the strong feminine presence. The two usually vocal and belligerent men on the panel Mahesh Bhatt and Shatrughan Sinha were comparatively quiet that evening.

Laloo Yadav was one talkative man on CNBC’s The Encounter. As usual interviewer M.J. Akbar was ironical and subtly aggressive. Laloo of course never caught on. How could he? He was too busy blasting his own trumpet at full volume about how many seats he was going to win and how the BJP had understaken a conspiracy to malign Rabri Devi and her husband and how — best of all — a charge-sheeted RJD candidate had to be given a go at the elections because he was from the minority community.

Huh? As I scratched my head Lalooji dropped the crowning glory. "Someday I’ll definitely head the nation". Oh damnation! I couldn’t but nod my head when Mr Akbar concluded, "There’re many shortages in Bihar, but never a shortage of answers."

One shortage that I felt acutely was that of a common communicating ground between the interviewer and his subject. Laloo Prasad Yadav’s English is a tourist attraction at a time when we aren’t really applying for a visa. Likewise Govinda with Vir Sanghvi on Sab TV Sunday night. He swung from drawling Hindi to crawling English trying to answer charges of latecoming and other shortcomings.

The serial scene is hardly looking bright and shiny. Zee has introduced two new serials. The sitcom Hum Sab Hain Baraati has talented comediennes playing wedding planners. But it’s like creating humour out of dead meat. The lines brazenly make fun of women. Delnaaz Paul‘s Gujarati accent keeps popping in and out, while her screen husband Dilip Joshi makes death wishes on her behalf.

And poor Sulabha Arya! She hams so hard you fear for her jowls. I guess every member of the cast is going by the dictates of the director. The poor wit of the sitcom only verifies the belief that humour on television is still in its nappy, rather than nippy.

The soap Lavanya is more melodramatic than all of Kalpataru’s feature films put together. This week after the death of her boyfriend Lavanya agreed to marry the man of her father’s choice. While the saat pheras went on her, her father suffered a heart attack and died. The scene of sindoor being applied to Lavanya’s forehead was juxtaposed with her mother wiping her marital mark off her forehead. Then the director got seriously ambitious. He made the girl question the whole system of only the male heir being allowed to perform the last rites.

Before we could chew into that the soap poured a whole truckload of events on us, as though the thinking viewer was a strictly prohibited on television.