Magnetic Malakar

TELLY VISION

Recently, I was in conversation with Michael Peschardt and the veteran anchor spoke about Peschardt's People, his hit series on BBC World, and its increasing Indian flavour.

In Mumbai to shoot for some forthcoming episodes with celebrities including Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah and Vijay Mallya, Peschardt said: "It's not by accident that I'm getting Indian guests on the show. There's a growing interest all over the world to know more about Indians."

Two weeks later, while reading about Sanjaya Malakar, there was proof to support Peschardt's point. The new American Idol-wannabe that Simon Cowell (especially) and many others love to hate, Malakar, a 17-year-old boy with long locks, has all it takes to win the American Idol contest.

He has the looks ("if you go by the verdict of 10-year-old girls", say newspaper reports sarcastically) and the attitude (the Washington Post conferred the title of "Ponyhawk" on him), and he's getting all the attention (a blogger went on a 16-day hunger strike recently to get him out of the show).

And while everyone on the show, and off it, has been talking about the NRI tribe voting generously for him and jamming all the lines, Malakar undoubtedly has the ability to pull the crowds towards him. The slight glitch (if you believe a growing number of audiences and, of course, the judges) is: Malakar can't sing.

It was on YouTube (god bless it) that I saw some episodes of this season's American Idol. There was Malakar singing "You really got me now", while the cameras focused on a little girl in pigtails with tiny yellow clips hugging herself and crying her heart out even as Malakar performed.

No, she wasn't crying because his performance was deplorable (as many comments on the YouTube site suggest), it was because she, like many other kids her age, found it difficult to resist the Malakar magnetism. In another episode, after Malakar groaned into the mike singing No Doubt's track "Bathwater", Paula Abdul commented: "If you're coming out with your hair done up like... Lipizzaner stallions, why did you sing like a frightened pony at the petting zoo?"

Simon added: "I presume there was no mirror in your dressing room?" The best part of this particular episode was this NRI kid hitting back at Simon: "You're just jealous because you couldn't pull it off." Imagine if the programme's desi version, Indian Idol, had contestants lashing out at Anu Malik in this fashion.

What one particularly enjoys is the way columnists, especially in the US, are reacting to Malakar's performance. And Malakar is making his way into not just television column space but also fashion and daily news items.

So there's a fashion columnist of an international newspaper who calls him a "male pop tart using fashion as a stepping stone to fame". Another television columnist writes: "He (Malakar) came across like a shy little child who didn't really understand the lyrics (of 'Bathwater'), while his ponyhawked hair flounced and strutted like a drag queen."

Whether Malakar and his "passable croak" survive the next round of American Idol remains to be seen, but I think Peschardt may have just found another important name he wants to add to his list of Peschardt's people.

(aojha@business-standard.com)