(S.R.Seshu)
Guess, what made Ravi Prakash the tallest TV star that even media mogul Ramoji Rao is jealous of? Apart from his impressive personality, facial expressions, spontaneity, diction and so on, the major plus point for him is, his ability to grill politicians ruthlessly to corner them in ‘face to face’ programmes.
The fact remains that Ravi Prakash made a powerful mark in the psyche of Telugu viewers with his ‘face to face interviews’ in his earlier days (perhaps in Gemini TV). Ravi became a household name and an iconic journo just because of the way he troubled politicians, who otherwise couldn’t be questioned by general public.
For unknown reasons, Ravi Prakash is not doing the ticklish interviews but there is a programme in TV-9 that can be termed as a sequel to the work left by him. That is, Mukhaa Mukhi, by one of the trusted lieutenants of Ravi, Zaffer.
A top class investigative reporter, Zaffer is professionally handicapped by his incoherent questions and pronunciation of certain words, but one should appreciate his dare devilish attitude and no-holds-barred way of dealing things. He literally hurls bombshells on politicians during the interviews. For instance, Zaffer had dared to ask an MLA Chitamaneni Prabhakar whether he is not a rowdy sheeter, in on of the shows. Obviously the MLA lost his cool and jumped in the air with anger and anguish. Another firebrand politician-turned-actress Roja too felt the heat of Zaffer’s probing questions. It needs a lot of guts to ask these high profile, hardcore politicians embarrassing questions in a probing way on the screen and getting away without any backlash. Can any politician worth his salt accept to be barbecued in front of a camera?
The latest victim of ‘Mukhaa Mukhi’ is a TDP MLA Govind. Some of the questions of the anchor are as follows:
“Are you not a land shark?”
“Is it not true that you are known as Kabja (land grabbing) Govind?”
“People know that you are a bellicose (meeku noti durusu yekkuva)”
“Are you not asking IAS officers to come to your home (to take directions)?”
“Have you not taken away the land of NRIs who requested you to sell their lands?”
“Is it not true that RDO prepared a report against you?”
“It is a known fact that you created fake pattas (to grab lands)”
“Why should people pay for your mokkulu?”
“Will you be in TDP by 2019?”
At a point time, Zaffer provoked the MLA to jump to his feet to deny certain corruption allegations. Fuming, he rose from his seat in a huff and countered all the allegations. He kept his hand on a Ganesh idol to make it clear that “By God’s promise” he didn’t siphoned off public money for his spiritual activities. The merciless interviewer calmly asked the MLA to “be cool and sit down” to field some more embarrassing questions.
Anyway, till people relish such interrogative interviews, the sane soles are helpless.
