Bronze screen

The television scene in India is actually quite awesome. I know, I know, I can hear the elitists sharpening their claws right at this moment, I can smell their anger induced perspirations as these words come out of my mouth but I won't buckle down under their university-educated snobbery and they cannot stop me from saying what might not really be true but nevertheless is widely accepted here. Television in India kicks ass. My observation is that only the roles are jumbled up. Otherwise everything is quite hunky dory.

India TV which is supposed to be a news channel is Discovery channel incarnate for the average Joe-2-patialas and the Hokey-moms of India. Only recently it was showing the breaking news about a breathtaking discovery of a cave that leads straight to 5-deities hidden in nether-lands. As their camera crew braved the placid waters and unthreatening facade to gallantly go where no man had gone before in search of the darkest secrets, they came across vicious demons like vampire bats, poisonous spiders, and a total of 1 snake. While the blinking, garish, red arrows and red circles told my unenlightened eyes where to look for spiders, bats, and snakes on a screen filled with spiders, bats, and snakes, I munched off half my fingernails in nerve-racking anticipation. Adventure journalism at it's finest hour. Aaj Tak is not far behind with dramatic reenactments which are more dramatic than reenactments, running commentaries on the various serials on other channels, and a breaking news at the rate of 1 every 20 picoseconds. It's more soapy than the regular soaps and more thorough on it's subjects than it's subjects. And other news channels are trying their best to play catch-up.

I think soaps are basically marriage videos. I am just waiting for a dedicated channel which would consolidate it all and run all these serials one after another after editing out the irrelevant portions and dialogs so that we can all watch one marriage after another non-stop. Tulsi getting married to Mihir, Parvati to Mr. X, catwoman to Shri Krishna, Ekta Kapoor to an ass etc. I think that would be the logical next step. Then they can have another channel and compile a 24-hour broadcasts of all those facial close-ups with accompanying doomsday music. People getting shocked, euphoric, foxy, inconsolable, surprised, apathetic, maudlin, jumpy and maybe even orgasmic. The last one would push the TRPs even further.

And the talent competitions are the soaps. There is talent no doubt but there is just too much other stuff going on. You know the kind of thing that is so common a phenomenon to reality television. False emotions, pointless suspense, sensationalistic editing, provocative reactions, dishonest appraisals and much more. It seems to me that the best talent on display on these shows is acting, hence they should cut the crap and start calling them soaps now.

But the crowning achievement of all these super-mediocre efforts are the comic talent competitions. I cannot categorize them into any genre. I cannot view them from any positive angle. They are the common variety of arse-gravy we, as Indians, are all familiar with. They have a humor quotient worse than the worst jokes that used to come in the 'dekho hans na dena' section of Champak. 'Dekho hans na dena' never made anyone laugh and thus fulfilled its own prophecy but these shows go further. Their cheapness rivals the content of those greasy joke books that you used to see on railway station book stalls which either had a big buxomed lady or Kushwant Singh or both on their cover. They are loud, mindless, phony, and gut-wrentchingly humorless. I have felt happier and more invigorated watching snails move and watching glaciers melt. There is more humor in those eternally pessimistic Russian writers who could never stop talking about the Russian farmer whose wife had an affair. Manoj Kumar who spent the better part of his life brooding over country, wife, children, and 'mitti' which produced 'sona', eyeing the world with half his face was funnier. The great Greek tragedy is more comic and Ekta Kapoor is smarter than those scores of comedians who infest these shows with the revulsion of fungi on a piece of moldy bread...

I see that my tone has reversed. Oh well! time to stop