Thursday, August 14, 2008

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.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

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?