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!