India Masala

Growing up with the ‘Moonwalker’

It was the late 80s and I was in school, contemptuous of rules and looking for a cause to rebel against parental interference. I was too young to run away and wise enough not to push it so as to end up without dinner.

I was itching for an icon, a just cause to let out my angst, when I saw him for the first time on our black and white television one night.

I could have sworn Michael Jackson was looking straight at me and I stared right back, unabashed, mesmerized. “He knows,” I remember thinking.

Back then we had no cable connection and only a single channel — the government-run Doordarshan — that like a venerable grandfather took our education in its hands, combining crop rotation with calculus and regional films with Indian classical music.

Some urbane, convent-educated, upper middleclass families did listen to “Western Music” comprising mostly Bach, Mozart and the occasional Belafonte.

But when MJ unashamedly burst into the screen during a programme on Doordarshan called the Hot Tracks, with his hip gyrations, metal-studded jacket, top hat and sheer energy — it was just too much.

“Why would any self-respecting adult declare he’s ‘Bad’ on national TV? What’s happening to lyrics?” my father seethed with righteous indignation. But I wasn’t paying attention.