Suddenly the 30-inch screen blew up into a 70 mm experience. It was the diva’s night out..`No, make that two divas on both sides of the firing line`. On Star World’s Rendezvous With Simi Garewal Rekha glowed like a boob-tubelight across the screen, emblazoning and nourishing it with the moist mystique of her memories.

Flashes of flashback reverberated across the screen as the presentday diva Rekha was transformed into 13-year old Bhanurekha, struggling on the sets in a sweaty masculine leery environment where men referred to this little girl in a big body as ‘kutti cheez’.

Rekha isn’t the first actress to be manhandled prematurely by our male-centric industry. Nor is this the first time that Rekha has spoken about her harrowing fatherless past (``I didn’t know what a father was``). But this was certainly the first occasion when she spoke about her past on television.

Rekha on `Rendezvous` was a refreshing and ravishing experience in a number of ways. The last time she had appeared on television was also the first time, for Simi’s ill-fated, ahead-of-its-time `It’s a Woman’s World on Doordarshan`. In 20 years, time seemed to have stood still for Rekha.

There’s something incredibly poignant about the way time froze in its tracks, as this screen diva, insulated from the hubbub of the real world opened up to reveal her world the way she wanted it to be revealed. The splendid subterfuge of an enigma opening up its petals before the ‘moving’ camera (and really, how emotional can the lens get!) was a great experience .

I liked the way Rekha hid behind her candid front. She came across as truthful and balanced while hedging uncomfortable home truths, only to reverse a lot of the positive impression at the end by suddenly blanking out the truth.

The conversation went something like this: ``And then you married Vinod Mehra?``

Rekha: ``Excuse me, that’s not true.``

Simi spoke about eyewitnesses and historic records of the event. Seasoned interviewer that she is , Simi refused to be cowed down by her star-guest’s refusal to see the writing on the wall. But Rekha was tightlipped and stubborn.

No, she hadn’t married Vinod Mehra. Period. End Of Conversation for the evening. Now the nation holds its collective breath for Part 2 of Rekha’s rendezvous this Sunday when she talks about the Bachchan influence on her life. Let’s see how she gets around that one.

The actress who plays Kashish’s mother-in-law in Star’s Kahiin To Hoga always reminds me of Rekha. The determined demeanour and haughty candour. They’re trademark characteristics of women who live life according to their own rules. The pungent irony of Kahiin To Hoga is that there are two `Bahus` with fatherless unborn children in the same matriarchal household where the aforementioned lady rules with an iron hand.

Kashish is widowed, while her sister (now married to Kashish’s brother-in-law) is an unwed mother. The plot manoeuvrings of Ekta Kapoor’s serials are often far more clever and sharp than they outwardly seem

Never under-estimate the power of a tv producer who can control her audiences’ emotions with ‘remote’ ruminations. Ekta Kapoor’s ‘competition’ on Sony seems to have buckled under. After a bravura start Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin seems to have lost heart.

How else do wo explain the pathetic meanderings of the plot which keeps introducing new female characters (first Navneet Nishan as an aggressive go-getting entrepreneur, now Sandhya Mridul as some kind of a femme fatale) in the hope of keeping `Jassi` as far away from her dream lover Aramaan as possible.

But the strain of continuous chasms is showing. The Malaysian episodes are as pointless as `Jassi’s` he-loves-me-loves-me-not petal-counting exercises .

As for Yeh Meri Life Hai, it borrowed a page from Jassi’s, Saif Ali Khan Hum Tum endorsement scheme, and transposed the whole Boogie Woogie dance competition into the soap. I am afraid the Boogie Woogie team and item-song specialist Sanobar (doing her trademark Meri beri ke ber) were as out of sorts as a Sushmita Mukherjee(a good comedienne at the best of times) doing a takeoff on Sonia Gandhi last week.

Even stranger was Shekhar Suman’s strange concerns on Star News’ Poll Khol. This was originally meant to be a precocious poll analysis. Now it has become a post-poll exercise with Suman almost serving as Star’s inhouse political satirist. That’s fine, as long as Suman sticks close to political analysis (as he did on Sunday when he chastised Laloo Yadav for his high-profile rail yatras when in fact, Suman rightly observed, railway safety remains a key issue in Laloo’s home state).

But why was Shekhar Suman expressing concern over Abhishek Bachchan’s career? If he’s trying to expand his horizons as a serious social commentator why not do an anlysis of his own career-journey from film actor to stand-up comedian to selfstyled social commentator? Hmmmmm. Not bad. Maybe even a soap. Is Ekta Kapoor listening?

Karan Thapar grilled BJP member Venky Naidu mercilessly on BBC’s Face To Face. Thapar accused the BJP of using L.K Advani as a salesman and of being `bad losers`. The politician tried not to get provoked. But you would see it was a losing battle in more ways than one. Ha ha.

Sometimes it’s hard to decide who’s funnier: the politician , the stand-up comedian or Sridevi in Sahara’s one-and-only sahara Malini Iyer. Last week our desi Lucille Ball teamed up with the inimitable Jaspal Bhatti for some serious laughs. Regrettably the risible factor refused to rise in the actor. Bhatti seemed too much in awe of his awesome co-star to make his presence felt.

Quite unlike Jassi who seemed to flower under Saif Ali Khan’s attention when he showed up.

Moral Of The Story: There’s a world of difference between made-for-television Jassi and screen queeen Sridevi and the twain shall never meet.