Mayank Shekhar: The stellar art of non-conversation

Since this was quoted to me I dont recall the original author of the gubbara principle of interviewing Wherein the art of scoring a great journalistic interview lies in treating the interviewer like a balloon pumping him up with immense praise over at least threequarters of the conversation By which time hes totally on your sideAt some point with no space left for any more air and flattery you smartlycasually prick that excessively bloated balloon finishing the chat off with the most uncomfortablecontroversial questions when he least expects them He has no option but to comply As a rare if not the only Indian journalist who for about three decades has made a living almost entirely from interviewing public figures on national television Karan Thapar clearly follows the opposite of the gubbara principle going for the kill right from the first shotThis explains the two interviews of politicians hes best knownrevered for The irony is that through those two very interviews at least consciously we learnt nothing about the interviewees themselves One being Narendra Modi as Gujarat CM who walked out in three minutes flat The other J Jayalalithaa as Tamil Nadu CM whod so had it its unlikely she wouldve revealed anything anywayDid they both make for great television Absolutely To get that you only have to acknowledge currentaffairs anchor Thapars art of conversation as being hinged not so much on interviews questionanswer often staid even staged but deeply entertaining duels in the spirit of a crossexamination at a British parliamentarystyle debate where participants usually two on either side of the motion are dressed impressively in formal suits rebuttals are delivered with flourish and debates conducted naturally with less interest in understating or even granting an argument as much as in demolishing it Youre in it to win itApplied to a oneonone format this would mean taking a temporarily adversarial position backed by persistence right from the point of bringing the guest to the table countless calls and metaphorically banging his head on it before its all done You shake hands then And hope to meet another day Much of where Anglophile Thapars style comes from is present in his memoir Devils Advocate The Untold Story which he literally dictated to his secretary perhaps like Bertie Wooster to Jeeves Son of exArmy chief Thapar was president of Cambridge Union top debating societyAn early lesson he learnt while working with Channel 4 was from its programming head John Birt who famously believed there were only four answers to any question an interviewer might askyes no dont know and wont tell The job of the interviewer was to collapse the last two into the first two Having lived in two deeply political capitals New Delhi and London Thapars book is understandably littered with several namedroppingshe was Benazir Bhuttos BFF close to Aung San Suu Kyi Growing up he hung out with the Prime Minister Indira Gandhis kids Sanjay and Rajiv The latter as PM got him a job with an IAS Secretarylevel rank in Doordarshan and thereafter with the Hindustan Times television companyThis level of proximity between journalists and powersthatbe is often derided as Lutyens class in political circles and of late on social media Its fashionable to treat media misnomer for press which is only a plural for medium as a monolithfor it primarily operates on access or patronageThis is a popular political tool to diminish a voice Within the circle itself you only have to watch Thapars contemporary Madhu Trehan interview him twice supposedly in his style on Newslaundry to get a sense of how much everyone pulls each other down like bickering babies anyway making Twitter trolls seem tepid in comparisonEither way the act of interviewing at least for that moment places upon the host a certain amount of power given every word has an audience that he can either exercise to gently draw out his subject by being curious on the audiences behalf or push them into a corner to score a point The best interviewer according to Indian televisions top firebrand Arnab Goswami as he told me once is James Lipton who conducts In The Actors Studio with Hollywood stars Each episode is a compelling profileThapars Devils Advocate style works best only with politicians since other public figures from popculture in particular owe you nothing You didnt like her moviemusicyoure free to not hearwatch it Unsurprisingly Thapar says his toughest interview was with the reticent AR Rahman although that chat was quite genial the warmth if you may was missing Maybe thats what hes incapable ofStill it can be a tricky thing to converse with those who arent strictly speaking social equalsI say that since the audience is interested in the interviewee not so much the interviewer There is also an understandable even inevitable possibility of getting starstruck I find Thapar fittingly starstruck before the camera Only that hes convinced hes the star This could annoy some viewers let alone the subject Frankly Ill take that over the perennially servile or the selectively ferocious any dayMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates