What distinguished Mathira from the rest of the run-of-the-mill TV show hosts was her genuineness and her devil-may-care attitude to things that otherwise people tend to be cautious about. It was her late-night show Love Indicator on Vibe TV that shot her to fame on which she used to speak her mind with complete abandon. But not anymore! The Mathira that we see these days is not the patch on what she started off as.

So much so that she has even begun anchoring programmes like Hum Sub Umeed Se Hain, which is a totally script-based gig. There’s nothing wrong with that. The thing is that while saying those scripted lines she seems to be struggling with the structure of the sentences, covering up her shortcomings by making childish gestures (shrugging shoulders when it’s not needed, etc). Mathira is becoming a classic case of moving from ‘a big fish in a small pond’ to ‘a small fish in a big pond’.