What is it with tori, haan? Halfway through our dinner my mind was desperately trying to scramble up four digit combinations of the Pizza Hut number, even as the perpetrator of the crime sat opposite me, looking admiringly at the green gunk that lay between us. Just the day before I had flattened out the paper boat our seven year old son lovingly makes from the local advertorial pamphlets we receive every day along with the larger ones that have a national circulation. Pizza Hut was celebrating fifteen years of their presence in India and had introduced fifteen new ‘Indian flavours’. First thing in the morning, even before the Sensodyne treatment, the sight of the exquisitely photographed fifteen Miss Pizza Huts, with ‘depth-of-field’ toppings and trembling Mozzarella strings connecting the hovering slice with the rest of the masterpiece, had cheered me up immensely. Left to me, the tiara would’ve gone to Miss Sev Puri (No. 8 on the ‘irresistible’ list and no relation to my college friend Sunit Puri). All that I needed, then, was a tiny window of opportunity: “The gas is out!” “I’m sorry but something’s not right with this aaloo-gobhi – here, you try it.” “Tori! Again!”

“3988, 3988,” whispered my wife, resigned, as though the number had been extracted from her after a needlessly long session of water boarding. “Thanks” I said guiltily and reached for the mobile.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, followed by piercing squeals of a hundred violins gone berserk. We rushed to the main bedroom where we had abandoned our son to watch Doraemon, Ben10 and all the rest of the creatures who inhabit this parallel world. We barged in thinking the little rascal had illegally switched channels and was in the middle of watching a Ramsay Brothers tour de force. Instead, we found him munching Pringles and watching an English news channel disinterestedly. He looked up, surprised; then, having understood the raison d’etre of our raised eyebrows and open mouths, calmly extricated the TV remote from under his bottom, and nervously offered it to us. The reunited family now turned their attention to the television.

Of what little I could gather – peeking and dodging through the weather, markets, breaking now, top 10, SUV insurance, and razor blade tickers – China had denied a visa to an Indian diplomat. From the accompanying music one would have thought they had teamed up with Pakistan and other friendly neighbours and attacked the eastern front. The screen was, as usual, split into eight equal portions – just like a Pizza – and it was difficult to identify those on the panel. However, since the same bunch showed up every day of the working week (hurrying their dinners up I imagine in time for the news show; the final munch or a quick brush of the lapel sometimes caught by the camera), I thought I could recognise the gentleman with a cherubic face and a scruffy salt-and-pepper wig. All of a sudden one of the eight squares started to expand and soon took over the entire screen. The footage was a slo-mo of the rebuffed diplomat trying to get inside a car. A plethora of red arrows helped the viewer locate the precise moment the man entered the Ambassador. The music reached a crescendo. In all the hullabaloo I could have sworn I saw not only the diplomat but also his identical twin get inside the car. But it was a double-take, and next, the background score softened, to allow for the natural vroom of the Ambi to be heard in all its glory; it rose quickly afterwards to its earlier din as the car drove off into the sunset, managing to run over a few over-eager cameramen in the process. “What synchronisation!” I thought, “Some unemployed FTII graduate has spent an entire afternoon on this.” As the square dutifully condensed to take its spot on the top right-hand corner, and as the anchor resumed his futile attempts at being justice of the peace, bored, I switched to another English news channel.

Here, too, the story being unfurled was that of the disconsolate diplomat, except that the accompanying music was of the chamber kind. Naturally, the emphasis was gentler, the slo-mo even slower. However, the footage being nearly identical to that of the first channel, down to the concluding shake and fall of the camera (the foot soldiers of both channels probably recovering on adjoining ICU beds), the stress was not on the diplomat’s bulbous nose, or on the mole next to it, but rather, on the ducking of his head before he perched himself on the outrageously cushy confines of the lal-batti. The head duck was synchronised with the cello, quite understandably.

For a Bharat perspective I flicked forth to a Hindi news channel. The inscrutable diplomat was here too, but the music was Indian classical. The footage was looped, to allow for the raag to come to its natural conclusion. Someone owes Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasiya a considerable chunk in royalties. For a fourth and final opinion I switched to the unapologetically downmarket Hindi news channel, the one where astrologers double up as anchors. The diplomat was nowhere to be seen. The anchor was in the process of shouting out the last of his top-twenty headlines, and because it was this channel’s policy to do so in two minutes flat, little drops of sweat could be seen jostling for space on the poor man’s forehead. The ticker advertised a new, ‘scientific’ rudraksh. This time round both, the background score, as well as the anchor, appeared to be the brain-child of the Ramsay Brothers. I quickly switched over to the antics of Ben10 and his chainsaw-wielding gang of marauding Japanese delinquents, to my son’s utter relief.

To paraphrase the Hon’ble Supreme Court: “What the bloody hell is going on?!” How did we come to this? Who is this evil genius of a news editor? I can picture him, comfortably reclined on his swivel chair, his eyes shut in contemplation, his monstrously oversized Louis XIV imitation desk adorned with a lladŕo figurine and a pair of size 12 brogues courtesy his crossed legs, with a platoon of harried lower rung looking on, waiting to catch every word, and he says: “Manmohan Singh: quiet, unflappable, boring; tori: Beethoven’s seventh, third movement.” Vigorous scribbling. Pens poised on notepads. “Sonia Gandhi: enigmatic, remote, sought after; iceberg lettuce: Mussorgsky/Ravel, Scheherazade, first movement.” Duly noted. “Mamata Banerjee: confident, fiery: bhut jolokia; Carl Orff, Carmina Burana.” One man dares to look up from his notepad, confused; the one standing beside nudges him with his elbow and steps on his chappal. “Indo-Pak news: dramatic, electrifying, ebb-and-flow; dal bukhara: 2001, A Space Odyssey.” He’s in the zone now, our man. “UP Bihar politics: contemporary, rustic, finger-on-the-pulse; Kakori kabab: AR Rahman, Roja Rangila; Farmer suicide: gloomy, inevitable; lauki: Mallikarjun Mansur, Megh Malhar; Khap honour-killing: Hitchcock, Psycho; BJP internal wrangling: Moz-…Brah-…Verd-…” Astonished, the men all look up. The nose bridge is pinched and the chair rushes back down. “Arre Spielberg ki kisi se thoak de yaar; chal, bas, enough for today.”

Good Music, like good food, is divine; it has the capacity to reach, and then swim around like a delirious shoal, the so-called inner soul. If the tori is made well, it can please even a Michelin chef. A first class Margarita need not be garnished with sev, parmesan will suffice. Take it from someone who’s chomped on a bhujia veggie supreme.

A good film or a documentary, or even a news report, works much along similar lines. And while mixing these diverse streams up can, on rare occasions, produce a torrent of bliss and much soul-stirring for the recipient, there is a time and a place and a need for it. A background score can help a visual attain near perfection – who can forget Lawrence of Arabia or Kaagaz ke Phool? On the other hand, muzzling it at critical junctures can also work wonders: Bergman’s Virgin Spring, Bresson’s Mouchette, and Ray’s Ashani Sanket come to mind. Then there are those who don’t use a background score at all: Dardenne Brothers, Dogme 95.

In other words, a serious, informed, judicious choice must be made by the artist or the person in-charge. If you must, assault our senses with background scores – the kind that impel those on the mat to rise up momentarily just to collect enough firewood to expedite the process – but use it discerningly, say while reporting the Perth or the Adelaide Test. Leave the poor diplomat alone!

This article first appeared in newslaundry on Feb. 21, 2012.