I was watching the ongoing FIFA world cup when Germany drubbed Australia 4-0. I was surfing through the channels when I realised that the Idiot Quadrangle (How can you tell a 32” LCD screen a box?) has really spiralled up in quantity and has exponentially declined in quality. I was thinking who really can watch channels like India TV,India News, Real TV and the still continuing saas bahu sagas on the prime channels Zee, Sony, Star Plus, and lately Colors and Imagine. It is nauseating to surf all the 225 channels and get nothing to watch. The best I could get was repeat shows of F.R.I.E.N.D.S on Zee Café. I realized that here are only 3 categories of entertainment in Hindi segment. But, still I would like to share this experience of mine with you and the broad classification I did.
The first segment is “You think only you can abuse, B!&@h!!!”. It’s the saga of the Innumerable reality shows in which people sing, dance, abuse, cry and faint and sometimes these all happen at the same time!!! The category which started with Indian Idol and Roadies as flagship shows has now only contestants bitching each other and backbiting. These reality shows have 75% of their content dedicated to “Censor Board”. It can rightly be renamed as the “P.P.P” category as half of the time, the dialogue statements are intercepted with censors. It’s like this: You pee (read B*&%h), You pee pee (read F^&*%&), Pee pee pee (More F words with auxiliaries attached!!!). Also, the age group doesn’t matter now. Toddlers who have just time started growing real teeth have started grabbing limelight. There used to be a time not so long ago, only some 5-6 years ago when being a kid of 8 years was just about family, school and friends. But, now it’s about giving 10 on 10 performances, judges drawing long faces when it’s a 9 on 10 performance… One word for the judges:- (Could you good-for-nothing fellas ever give such performances in your childhood??? I bet you were still wetting your bed at night…). It is now about facing eliminations every week, crying your heart out, parents then accusing and rebuking the show producers and judges of foul play. Every failed personality from Chunky Pandeys to Shilpa Shettys to Baichung Bhutias has become a judge on reality show and has an opinion about things which they don’t even have a freaking idea. Everyone wants his 2 minute stardom as if someone is making 2 minute Maggi noodles(Btw, someone should sue Maggi because even the noodles don’t get cooked in 2 minutes). There is now a reality show in which ultra modern hot chick battle it out(abuse, bitch and catfight) to survive in the villages among buffaloes and their shit. The roadies in its earlier editions used to be good, but it suddenly became cool for girls to hurl “Bitch!!! You suck..” at each other and it became cool for guys to gay themselves up. Only one word for this category-“Get real, dumbasses”.
The next category is the “Kachhda” category. It’s the category which has given employement to every arts graduate who didn’t have a job. If you are a guy and can speak in a tone which sounds like shrieking of monkeys, then you are in… If you are a girl and you do your make up right, you are in. It’s the category which has grown by leaps by bounds. I am talking about Media, specifically electronic media and specifically Television News channels. Every news is a breaking news, whether it is a dog found dead on the footpath or a movie star talking about his favourite cologne(or co****), no one cares what’s there in news. You present it with a good looking 22 year old who is smooth speaking but doesn’t have a clue about what she is speaking and BANG,,, who have NEWS!!! No news of country’s importance is reported. Now, news channels distort each statement made by celebrities and they do 30 minutes special episodes on that. Just the earlier day, some statement of Abhishek Bachchan was completely distorted and presented in a manner which showed that he was upset with Vivek Oberoi. And, this was screened repeatedly in a show named “Meri Biwi Se door raho”!!! Everything gets a larger than life image, whether it’s a struggling model who can’t speak Hindi,a comedian who is not comic by any standards and tries to crack each joke in a gay manner, a politician who can’t stand Muslims or even a monkey which can give birth to 9 babies at one time (The last sounds the most interesting, trust me). The channels just want bytes, they don’t give a damn about what. One word for them-“BYTE ME”.
And, now comes the last but the strongest, the oldest and still the most thriving category. It’s the “Glycerine category”. I Cry, You Cry, We all Cry!!! The plot remains almost the same in all of these. There are many similarities among all these saas bahu sagas. Anyway, now its not only saas bahu. Now, its saas-bahu-devrani-jethani-mausi-mami-bhabhi and the list goes on.
1. All the Glycerine category serials have woman centric plots. Everything goes around women, whether its seducing, backbiting, bitching, hatching, plotting, murdering , kidnapping, cheating. The men in the serial are like puppet dolls. They are just there to fill screen space, they just have dialogues like, “Kya?”, “haan”, “na”, “Tum!!!”. That’s all they have to do.
2. Next is all these stories are shot and based in villages or smaller towns. It is suddenly cooler to be from Agra, Mathura, Ajmer and Jodhpur. The big metros can take a backseat, since either the dialect is Marwari, Bhojpuri or Awadhi.
3. The third similarity is there’s always a “Ghar ka bhedi Lanka dhahe”. There is always a person in the family who has plans to kill or injure the main protagonist.
4. There is no doubt some kind of will or treasure or property or company involved in the family feud: “Money hai to Honey hai!”.
5. Pregnancy in the plot always brings doom to the family. It is never happy to see a baby arriving. There has to be some kidnapping, some melodrama of next heir, illegal child issues, some miscarriage. No one cares about the baby, not even the screen mother. Each character is involved in the hotch-potch around the baby.
6. All of the serials have exotic sets,it is like every family has some palace to live in. All women even sleep in designer saris, have heavy jewellery in each scene, have to look like plastic dolls in each scene.
7. There has to be some sort of extra marital affairs to create new twists. Whenever the story becomes far stretched like elastic which generally happens after the first month, they throw an extra marital affair to spice things up. It always generates a new villian with a devilish background score to him/her.
8. There’s always a “Aha! I got You” moment, when the female protagonist catches the villain red handed and reveals in front of everyone who were duped by the villian.
9. Some sort of electronic proof is always there to stand testimony to this “Aha! I got You” moment. Some MMS, SMS, video, phone recording.
10. Lastly, every crucial scene has extensive camerawork. The close ups are shown in every direction possible. The faces come like, from right, then from left, from top and from bottom. The faces freeze and turn black and white. And it is always accompanied by a typical background score “Ta!Duh!” . It is similar to what happens when a newbie starts making powerpoint presentations and adds custom animation to each slide with custom sounds like “applause” , “camera shutter” and “breaking glass” coming in background.
One word for this segment:- “Ye bacchha mera nahi hai!!!”
I guess I have made my point crystal clear. There is another small category too under the tiltle ‘Miscellaneous’ and that’s what I prefer nowadays on TV. But, I will stick to writing about the big 3 and not elaborate on the ‘Misc’ since it has already become a long post.
I am still clueless guys!!! Help me out….
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