The changing colours of Azadi!

There was a time when 26th January meant watching the Red Fort parade and 15th August was about a patriotic movie on television. I remember Doordarshan kept showing Roza for years before finally changing to Sarfarosh. It used to mean singers from Bollywood and the classical world singing 'aye mere waton ke logo'and 'saare jahan se achha.' Things have changed. Perhaps people have grown tired of watching the same old movies and hearing the same old songs and they can't bear patriotic sentimentalism even for one day. So now for Independence Day, I suddenly find channels making television actors dance to bollywood melodies and reality show singers crooning away all the love songs they had sung before on normal workdays. Its not that there aren't other progammes on air, but...I don't know, may be I'm old-fashioned.

Of avenging spirits and divine reincarnations!

Once there was a show about three 'bahoo's and their experiences as they entered a rich Gujarati household and struggled to adjust to their new lives, not to mention their respective monsters...sorry, mothers-in-law. Another 'Saas-Bahoo' stuff, you might say, 'what else is new?' But the show was different. I t was fun-filled, it poked innocently at the various idiosyncrasies of joint-family life and there was something incredibly feel-good about the whole thing. But this is an Indian television show, right? How long can it not fall in line? And so, the faces of the male lead-character kept changing, but as long as they didn't say t was plastic surgery, we chose to remain quiet. Then the Punjabi bahoo, Manjit(Manva Kaur) suddenly did a Rajesh Khanna and died of cancer. Ok, we heard they were not paying the actress, or was it another show? I forget. So a new third bahoo is needed, and there is a vamp in place to prevent her marriage, and then the other girl who wanted to be in her shoes dies, and now the scriptwriter finally decides to go for it with all his force and he brings in the angle of a 'bhatakti hue atma' with poor Bindiya being possessed by spirit of dead girl. I leave the rest of the show for researchers in the occult, and now let's look at the other atma in news, i.e to say, the Paramatma, Lord Krishna himself.

We are talking of course, about the indomitable Ekta Kapoor. Now I am certainly not an atheist and have no intention to hurt any body's sentiments, but who told dear SoapQueen that Lord Vishnu descended to Devaki's womb in the form of a peacock feather and that it took Him an hour to do so? It was ludicrous, staring and staring at the TV screen and watching the piece of feather strolling across the universe, the solar system and then finally on earth. And then, we all know about the astrologers matching the kundali of dear Krish with Lord Krishna, but the boy is nearly one year old, and they are trying to pass him off as a nascent baby?!! Couldn't the boy born on Janmashtami wait for a few more days? I have to say it, the Sagars are doing a better job on Colors, remaking their own show Shri Krishna as Jai Shri Krishna. The actors look better, are dressed better, act better, and unlike Ekta's scriptwriter, the Sagars' have not forgotten about the existence of Balaram and Rohini. They were less lucky with their scriptwriter for Prithviraj Chauhan, though. This week, we heard the love of Sanyogita of Kanauj(who died in 1192A.D) for Prithviraj Chauhan being compared with the love of MiraBai for , oh, we are back to Him, Lord Krishna. But MiraBai? Didn't she come around four hundred years or more after Sanyogita?

The pleasure of simplicity

Last week I was away from home, and my television-watching was rather sporadic. As a result, I watched stuff that I normally don't when at home - like Nachle Ve with Saroj Khan, for instance- I can't help marveling at the moves that lady makes at her age and with the not so perfect figure! I wonder what she moved like when she was younger, must have been fire on the dance floor! Then there was Tom and Jerry- I always seem to watch this show from hotel rooms- not that my house TV is particularly averse towards that show- but my cable operator apparently does not like Cartoon Network, the channel keeps changing its place. It's fun, isn't it? The way they fight, then they have that handshake in the moment of joint escape from a scrape, and the next moment they are playing cat-and-mouse again. There was this episode where Jerry was teaching a lost baby duck to swim, and obviously Tom wanted to cook her in a soup, and then in the end when Tom is about to drown the dear duckling jumps in to save the cat with Jerry chipping in. It's so gentle and it sort of tells you that no rivalry is greater than friendship and the simple values of life. Of course, it is also hilarious when in the more violent stories every trick by Tom to capture Jerry backfires on him, but I guess the underlying feeling is always there that whatever they do to each other, they simply can not do with out each other as well. I wish the so-called prime shows had plots as simple and feel-good as these- well, some of them do - Baa Bahoo Aur Baby, Ek Chabi Hai Padoss Mein, Radha Ki Betiyaan Kuch Kar Dekhaye, Ek Packet Unmeed- but they are not the face of Indian Television Soaps. It is amazing, people glued to the television supposedly to unwind and relax find entertainment in shows where women cook in designer sarees and where the person sitting next to you can be a murderer. Jassi started well, but fell in the box soon afterwards.Not that I am not myself prone to such vices once in a while, but yet I wish there were more shows like the ones I mentioned. There are simpler joys and sorrows in life and it's time our soap queens and kings realize it!

Weird Attractions

My earliest experience in Indian serials go back to the days of the old Mahabharata, then there was Sagar's Sri Krishna - the two shows that are being remade right now(no, I never watched the old Ramayana). Then there was something called Junoon- my parents didn't like it after 2 episodes, and that was that. There was another period show with Pallavi Joshi playing a character called Ninni who secretly loved a king, and that is all I remember of it now. There was something against the backdrop of Kashmir- shikaras floating on the Dal Lake- and that was when I first started dreaming of Paradise-Land. And there was Circus, of course, cute young Shahrukh - SRK knew even back then that the world was nothing more than a circus(Remember the title track- "Yeh duniya ek circus hai"?); so no surprises at IPL. I don't know why, but I have always had this attraction for period shows and movies- I remember I used to fight with my parents to let me watch Krishna at 8pm on Sundays while they wanted to finish watching the Sunday movie on DD-Bangla. And for the same reason, 2 back, I started watching the weekend 9pm show on Star Plus with the long-winded name: "Dharti Ke Veer Yoddha: Prithviraj Chauhan". It used to be good at first, a well-paced script, good dialogues, good costumes and sets, but if a show remains and ends the way it began, it is not an Indian serial any more. And so now we have pathetic acting and even worse scripts that never move, recycled costumes that look like clothes discarded from the k-serials' wardrobes and music from anywhere and everywhere to fill in the gaps between ad breaks. Funny thing is, I still watch it, even though I don't like the show one bit any more. Yet few things annoy me more than a powercut at 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. Then there's "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahoo Thi" - the show is hilarious, and I don't regularly watch it, but once in 2/3 months, I try to catch up what's happening, and with sincere interest. "Banoo Main Teri Dulhaan" - admittedly, a very cute lead pair, but that hardly excuses the done-to-death plot. Why are all the tv-shows so obsessed with murder and betrayal? All right, this is the Kal Yug, the world is full of bad people, but does the ordinary brother/sister/next-door neighbour/friend/spouse really turn murderer at the drop of a hat? And the poor Hindu Marriage Act, oh my God! Ganga, bahoo of Tulsi, told ex-hubby Sahil the other day that they were no longer marriageable age and it was time to marry off their children. That was funny, seeing that Karan and Nandini belonging to the same generation of the family got married the other day, and anyway, whoever heard of an upper limit to the marriagable age of Ekta's characters? Ekta's Mahabharat - Draupadi has one saree throughout the show. Ah well, the princess of Panchal and queen of Indraprastha- one saree? And not much jewellary either. Bhishm and Shantanoo all dress like Romans or Greeks- the ancient ones, I mean, Sakshi acts well as Ganga but what should have been the main attraction is a flop. Anita Hansdani as Draupadi only screams and shows her teeth. And Rupa Ganguly is content playing Kasturi's mother all the while.