Yours faithfully

Of all India’s traits, there cannot be one more fascinating than its tendency to harness everything to serve the interests of religion. Technology is pounced upon with alacrity, gadgets are pressed into the service of gods and faith — there are e-prayer packages, live darshans streaming into millions of households through rudimentary surveillance cameras, and temple trusts manage fairly complex transactions over the Internet.

All the technological advances of recent years have not, as we might have imagined two decades ago, pushed our faith into the background. If anything, there has been even more of an upsurge. Bhakti and faith channels abound; they may be relegated to the end of viewing lists but they have their own devoted following that won’t permit cable operators to skimp on the bouquet.
But must this spill over into mainstream television? “Aa rahe hain Shani Dev!” booms the anchor in varying pitches and tenor, and then goes on to interview a severe-looking astrologer, who tells us in exacting detail how this difficult god must be appeased. This, in case you didn’t know, was on a news channel.

Hand in hand with fresh blasts of religious messages, we are also witnessing the ascendency of superstition, or more accurately, the superstition market as carved out by teleshopping networks such as GTM Teleshopping. But these are hilarious, and my particular favourites are the advertisements for the ‘nazar suraksha kavach’. There are many ‘docu-dramas’ that you could stumble upon but the essence is this: our protagonists enjoy some success till someone in their circle of family or friends casts an ‘evil eye’ — the envious eye that Indians so dread — on their good fortune. This is usually depicted by two red rays emanating from their eyes and reaching our unsuspecting hero or heroine. Misfortunes pile up, alas, and the trend is traced to its insidious root. A ‘nazar suraksha kavach’ is duly ordered and natural order is restored. The next time, the red lines make a beeline for our man or woman, a blue shield circle rises to counter the infection, demolishing them on impact. This ghastly looking pendant with a beady eye can be yours, for the modest sum of Rs 2,325!

Star One has recently brought their non-fiction series Mano Ya Na Mano back for a second season. This comes after a gap of three to four years — the first season was tooled around by the persuasive Irrfan Khan and this one is anchored by Mishal Raheja. Mano Ya Na Mano deals with paranormal occurrences, bringing some inexplicable incident to the fore. In fact, I was rather intrigued by the choice of subjects the second series has picked to highlight — the necro-cannibalistic Aghoris of North India, Bhoota Aradhana in Tulu Nadu, the shrine of Bullet Devta in Rajasthan. These are all extreme forms of religion found in limited pockets, fascinating subjects of study that would have made, given the right treatment, highly absorbing episodes. William Dalrymple — that celebrated observer of Indian spirituality — has, in fact, examined the curious case of the motorcycle shrine in his recent book Nine Lives. But the series wastes the opportunity and falls short of accomplishing anything halfway decent. The tone is sensational, the re-enactments embarrassing in their melodrama and the production quality poor. The idea here is not to bring up interesting aspects but to confound and befuddle the audience, which they must think comprises entirely of open-mouthed yokels.

There is more paranormal/new age material to come — NDTV Imagine is coming back soon with its new season of Raaz Pichle Janam Ka. This delves into the past lives of participants with the help of regression therapy and has a juicy list of celebrities lined up. I was absorbed by the first season and can hardly wait for the second.

Ah, the female gaze

I caught a small report the other day on Saas, Bahu... something or the other, one of several behind-the-scenes programmes that keep television audiences acutely apprised of the absolute latest on the saas-bahu soaps and other popular television. The reporters were laughing, albeit with warm sympathy, at the plight of actor Karan Tacker, the lead star of Star One’s Rang Badalti Odhani. In the eternal search for higher TRPs, Tacker was being filmed singing and dancing in a towel — a straight rip-off from Ranbir Kapoor’s caper in Saawariya. The actor was bashful, not least because the producers had shrewdly, if inconsiderately, invited a phalanx of television and other reporters to the shoot. The well muscled Tacker, who has stripped before for television, although never quite so comprehensively, was apparently told that the channel’s ratings tended to shoot up whenever he dropped his clothes.

It has been coming on for a while now, the female equivalent of the ‘male gaze’. After centuries of believing that it was how rich or powerful they were that mattered, men are now being forced to pay attention to one area of their lives they had not considered significant: their appearance. We’ve seen evidence of this in films all this decade. The hirsute Anil Kapoors of the 1980s and 1990s, the portly Govindas have been nudged aside by the beefy John Abrahams. It used to be cabaret girls that pulled in crowds; now it’s the leading men. On the list of requirements are muscles that are well acquainted with gym equipment, chests that are duly defuzzed, eyebrows that are metrosexually tamed. Tick them off: John Abraham, Ranbir Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan... right down to the Trinity of Ageing Khans — they’re all preparing their bodies to be looked at. Lingering admiringly over her man’s bare torso, Aishwarya Rai as Jodha Bai spoke eloquently for a whole new generation of women.

But all this catering to the female gaze spills now into the ambit of home-grown television — programming that has always been governed by a careful modesty. Oh, the idea of TV heartthrobs isn’t new, not at all. In fact, it’s a fact well-documented that, in soaps, in a direct reversal of the way matters are in cinema, women are the heroes and the men are sex symbols. But that used to be a covert, or at least a covered affair. A few years ago, if Mr Bajaj or Jai Walia (both of whom amassed legions of female fans) allured women, it was with the protective layers of three-piece suits.

But not any more. Television’s heroes, too, are getting leaner, fitter and sexier. The medium can’t afford to embarrass its mixed family audiences but the hints have been there —unbuttoned shirts, an occasional singlet and progressively bolder embraces. We seem to have broken an invisible barrier, however, for there has been a lineup of beefcake of late: Mishal Raheja (who plays Dutta Bhau in Colors’ Laagi Tujhse Lagan), Karan Singh Grover and Arjun Bijlani (both leads in soaps on Star One) have all taken tantalising showers recently; and the delectable Gurmeet Choudhary (on Star One’s Geet Hui Sabse Parayee) regularly indulges in fancy Tai Chi and kick boxing to introspect on his growing feelings for Geet — bare-chested, of course.

What is telling is that most of these instances are from series that cater to younger audiences. The bulk of soaps in India are targeted at older audiences and they still define the TV industry. But teens and twenty-somethings are emerging as a distinct group — cut from perhaps the same cloth as their fangirl counterparts in the UK or USA who are likely to want (and to acquire) a strip of Robert Pattinson’s shirt as a keepsake. They’re not shy about demanding eye candy, and it looks like they’re going to get it.