I’m a late starter in more things in my life than I could care to count. That is how I managed to see the Kaanta Laga video, only a few days before it was banned.

And, yes, the thongs were a bit, er, astonishing. So was Shefali Jariwala’s frozen expression of – what was it? Lust? For that slightly unnerved looking boy that she kept rubbing herself all over? Really? Of course. Most astonishing was that one shot where the camera is placed beneath Jariwala’s little belly protruding rather un-sexily over the tops of Le Thongs and she – still holding that sex-starved bionic goldfish expression – undulated the aforementioned belly, while lifting up her tank top, to reveal…you hold your breath... but alas, the spoilsport editor cuts to another shot.

Now, the one thought that kept going through my mind, was that no matter how low we may drop the bar about what scandalises/outrages/offends, no matter how jaded and stale and ho-hum we may have become after a steady diet of the daily news, politics and Kkusum, something will always pop up to shock your socks off.

So, was I shocked by the Kaanta Laga video?

No, just appalled at the crushing tastelessness of it – as if I’d just bit on eight-week-old dead frog’s leg.

And, should it have been banned? Yes, yes, yes. Because I think exposing one’s underwear and grinding one’s crotch against another’s thigh in the name of dancing is obscene? No.

Obscenity comes in many avatars. Violence, starvation, poverty (of money and ideas), injustice, Mayawati’s 47th birthday celebrations (not to mention the 51 kg cake) and the sight of Laloo Prasad Yadav’s hairy, beery pot belly wobbling to hori geet. All offensive, all horribly obscene. So, showing off your blue diamanté-studded langotis (thongs to you, Monica and Bill) may be just another way that young people express themselves these days. I’ve seen worse in Ricky Martin, Madonna, Britney Spears and countless other phoren videos, aired as many times on our channels, and nary a cheep from the KKK or the Keepers of the ‘Kountry’s Kacchas’. (Maybe they didn’t understand because it was all in angrezi!) I mean to say, is a thong objectionable only when it’s peeping out of a desi kanya’s jean-pant? Besides, many may remind us that Elvis Presley’s pelvis and rock ’n’ roll was once something which decent, well-brought up white folk didn’t listen to and watch. And, in a truly free world, there should be place on the news rack for both the Penthouse and the National Geographic, shouldn’t there?

To me, the obscenity in the Kaanta Laga video (and all other such videos) starts with the song itself. Because it has, without so much as a by-your-leave, taken somebody else’s creation and turned it into a ghastly travesty of the original. That is one of the most horrendous forms of obscenity. What happens in the video is tame in comparison.

So, my point is this. If you must be smutty/slutty/whatever, at least have the gumption to be original. Create your own chaddi-ke-neeche-kya-hai number and then show thongs, things, bellies, billies and whatever else you want to show – it’s yours to do as you please.

What makes all this even more lamentable is that the original creators can’t do very much about the rape of their work. Firstly, because many of them are dead – R. D. Burman, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Nasir Hussain.

Of the ones still around, Prakash Mehra is too out of it, to make an impact even if he wanted to and Lata Mangeshkar did try to protest in her own way. But the copycats would have got away with it anyway because of that one awful copyright loophole – Remix. The ultimate formula of survival for an entertainment industry where so little is original, leave alone entertaining. Or to put it in my own ‘remix’ version of the latest Chaddi series of the Pepsi commercials, “What’s there? Hit ke liye hum besharam hai!”

The banning of the Kaanta Laga video has generated much affronted knickers-in-a-twist outrage about the Talibanisation of the I &B Ministry, etc. But, I think the KKK has actually goofed in its vigilantism. I know dear No-Sleeveless-We’re-Doordardshan Sush (Sushma Swarajji to you) doesn’t look after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting any more. And, I know that no Sangh Parivar sadasya worth his/her pinch of saffron would sully him/herself by watching MTV, Channel V etc., etc., but maybe someone should.

Because so much of this besharam stuff seems to have escaped their net. The Three Angels video, of the remix of Chadti Jawani, is still being aired. Where three, not one, sexy, young things – who, for a large part of the video, wear nothing but unlined, white lace – wiggle their, er, wigglables in ways that up till now you thought were unwigglable. The high point is when the camera zooms in from underneath to one particular nothing-but-white-lace clad bottom and a pair of hands – hopefully belonging to the aforementioned bottom – enters the frame and playfully grabs ’n’ squeezes in synch to the music.

Wait, there’s more. A promo for an album/singer/whatever, called ‘Hunterz’, with nothing but acres and acres of female bottoms in gratifying stages of undress; wriggling/wiggling/jiggling/wobbling and, at one time, being playfully self-spanked. But don’t hang around for something on MTV called Bum Mein Dum – it’s just a silly, boring game show, which has neither Bum nor Dum.

Finally, two points. First, that in this deluge of remixed ugh-ness, one music video stands out as a shining beacon of hope that all is not lost yet. The Adnan Sami-Amitabh Bachchan song/video Kabhi Na. Charming, endearing, funny, technically slick and musically a pleasure to listen to. Second, a word about the cliché that is dragged up as a defense every time crudity becomes a best seller. Hey, so what if it’s raunchy/ paunchy/ besharam/garam/naram/ whatever, they tell us cockily, we’re only dishing up what the public wants. Can’t you see the damn things are hits?

Yes we can. But so are pornography and plastic bags…