Reporters: First Impressions

We – a group of childhood friends I grew up with, my mother, my sister and I – have been huge fans of Pakistani serials ever since we came across them. They seized our imagination and we sighed over how subtle they were, how same-same and yet how different! Naturally, Dhoop Kinarey held pride of place in our hearts. We binge-watched the whole series – a thing, let me tell you, that is very difficult to do with a large group belonging to three different households. Ours was the drawing room that hosted this orgy, and we would break reluctantly for meals and other necessities, enduring some rather uncomplimentary comments from everyone who wasn’t involved.

This was to show our history, and the extent of our nostalgia with Pakistani serials, particularly this one. So a few years ago, when production house Director’s Kut announced that they were going to remake it (with permission and blessings of the original makers) as an Indian soap, we were both fascinated and aghast. As we feared, it didn’t work too well; it couldn’t have. Kritika Kamra was perfectly cast, but Shweta and I were particularly unhappy with the choice of hero. Mohnish Bahl as an Indian Dr Ahmer Ansari… no! We were casting about mentally for someone else who could have done something approaching justice. It should have been Rajeev Khandelwal, I said. Shweta (passionate and intense about almost all matters) all but doubled up in agony at the hallucinatory nature of the prospect. Oh, why didn’t they think about it, she groaned, and declared the pairing looked so right in her mind, she couldn’t watch the soap after all!

That dream comes somewhat true now. Sony TV’s new series Reporters is just about 20 episodes old, it packs a punch and ta da! it has as its lead pair the evergreen Rajeev Khandelwal and effervescent Kritika Kamra. And the chemistry is everything we hoped and knew it would be.

Of course, Reporters has nothing to do with Dhoop Kinarey, but there are parallels. Like Dr Ansari, Kabir Sharma is her superior, and considerably older. And Kritika Kamra, even more in Reporters than she did in Kuch toh log kahenge channels that free spirit, that foolhardy courage that epitomised Zoya Ali Khan.

Reporters is exciting for many reasons. It sets itself backstage of television news as it is today – amidst a horribly-gone-wrong recipe of hysterical melodrama, screechy sensationalism and narcissistic anchors. The series is able to borrow so many aspects from real life that it strikes a chord at once.

As the series begins, star journalist Kabir Sharma makes the transition from print to television. He is ambitious, thirsty actually, for fame and success. We get a hint that he has a point to prove to someone. Ananya Kashyap, cub reporter at KKN, has long hero-worshipped Kabir – she is young, a touch naïve, very idealistic and starry eyed.

It is my reading that she intersects Kabir’s career at precisely the right moment – he is hell bent upon doing anything he can to achieve professional glory. Without Ananya’s questions, without her innocence to check him… he would have gone over to the dark side, and yet retained enough humanity for self loathing. But she is here and here we are… to sit on the sidelines and see the battles between pragmatism and idealism, professionalism and conscience, between experience and naiveté. To see each temper the other. And to wonder if they can come together to become something better.

It may be too early to speak but so far, it has been fascinating. The star power of the leads is compelling, the support cast varied and charismatic, the writing is detailed and nuanced, and the plotlines are engrossing.

Every episode ends with a small, direct comment from Kabir Sharma – sometimes he argues for sensitivity, sometimes for toughness, sometimes he remarks on the integrity we’re losing in every sphere of our lives. In that very style then: jaane se pehle, Reporters seems to have its heart in the right place.

Gathering steam

I had said the Muslim social and simply the Muslim presence was on the up in our mass-y space and it turns out I was right.

Soon enough, the Zee TV umbrella began a new TV channel called Zindagi exclusively for content from Pakistan. So now, series Zindgai Gulzar Hai, Aunn Zara and Humsafar are finding new (very appreciative) audiences in India - which they thoroughly deserve.

Today, Sony TV begins a new story called Hamsafars with a Muslim heroine - it appears, on the face of it, to be a reprise of the cult hit Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon. And on Sony's new channel Sony Pal, there is yet another soap set in Lucknow. Tum Saath Ho Jab Apne doesn't wear its milieu on its sleeve with an overt Urdu name and its ambience has a delicious Ganga-Jamuni flavour: this is a fairly satisfactory exploration of the society it's looking at.

It comes from the production house Sphere Origins, who have quite a reputation for bringing out quality content and the beginning was very impressive.

Mariam is a widow and her life now revolves around her young daughter and her endeavour is to give Najma the very best of opportunities. Easier said, because Younis miyan, her brother in law, resents providing for them. The rejection is many-layered. Mariam and Najma are discriminated against subtly. This is so far a lightly treated, interestingly-detailed soap with a well fleshed out support cast.

I was particularly delighted with their dedicated comedy track. Now this is an old fashioned device but is worth bringing back for many good reasons. Indian soaps always work under tough deadline conditions and the ‘fools’ serve to both pad content and leaven the grimness elsewhere. Besides, when one of them is a Lucknavi poet, what’s not to like!

But as this is the only soap that keeps me to a TV schedule these days, it deserves a more detailed review, which I will do soon, insha'allah.

Naya Zamana: Revival of the Muslim Social?

My sister and I were watching Highway when it released a few months ago, and as the opening credits flashed by, we noted the name of the film in English, Hindi and also Urdu. “After so long!” Shweta exclaimed. It’s true that Bollywood has by and large given up including credits in that language, when only a few decades ago, no film would have started without including readers of Urdu in its fold. Besides, as we clearly see, there has been a tapering off of the Muslim social. Barring a few efforts by Khalid Mohamed, a sprinkle of Muslim characters here and there, this section of society has been under-represented.

When Ekta Kapoor unleashed the ‘Saas-Bahu’ genre on India in 2000, it led to a massive revisiting of what were termed ‘Indian’ but in fact were Hindu values. Festivals, rituals, pujas, aartis all got a look-in and were integrated solidly into the story-telling. Regional celebrations were aired anew leading to some rather heavy cross cultural borrowing. Influences went as far as Afghanistan; Indian soaps are welcomed and avidly watched in Africa, the middle-east, eastern Europe, apart from neighbouring Pakistan, of course.

Still, for almost a decade, a Muslim-based soap didn’t seem viable. It was a gap that begged to be filled. No TV addict in the sub-continent can have kept away from the delicious array that streams out of Pakistan. Serials such as Dhoop Kinarey and Tanhaaiyaan are surrounded by a veritable halo of nostalgia among Indian viewers (who saw them on tapes and later VCDs). Did Indian soap makers think the Muslim context didn’t lend enough colour, given that they’re obliged to mark at least six festivals in a calendar year? Surely they must’ve been nervous about the rather touchy Muslim clerics who were apt to cry foul over creative liberties. Also, the traditional Islamic society tends to be more severe about modesty. (TV is ostensibly more conservative than films in India but costumers have found ways around that.)  

However producers 4 Lions took the first brave plunge in 2009 with Qubool Hai. And straight off, it became clear that the makers were not minded to be apologetic. Zoya Farooqui, coming down to Bhopal from New York, wore jeans (gasp!), which not any of her contemporaries did, across channels. Outspoken, humorous and fun-loving, she was set up to clash with Asad Ahmed Khan – dominating male, conservative, hidebound, prejudiced. “I am not what I wear, Mr Khan,” she once told him.

Now, there has been a second such effort. Beintehaa is set in Mumbai, and the Abdullahs are well-to-do hoteliers and move in fashionable circles. Aliya is your classic heroine – strong, devout, unshakeable in her ideals or in her reading of right and wrong. Happily, the soap heroine seems to thrive in Muslim soil as well.

Then there appears more such news. As a fond viewer of Muslim-based stories and as a Hyderabadi, there are two films to look forward to. Dia Mirza’s Bobby Jasoos, and Habib Faisal’s Daawat-e-Ishq – both set in my city and yes, with Muslim characters. I have no great cinematic hopes from either of these, but they will be super fun to watch.

The High Moral Ground

There is a regular column on religion in The Hindu that normally irritates me. It deals usually with a concept from Sanatana Dharma, quotes a scholar on the matter and then cites an example from a range of mythological sources to underscore the point. I have no problem with the subject, of course, but the juxtaposition doesn’t always work and I often find its tone a trifle pompous and dissatisfying.
But I happened to glance at it today – ‘Follow atma dharma’ was the title – and I was intrigued sufficiently to scan through. It spoke about ‘Saranagati’ – usually surrender but, in this case, more specifically sanctuary: “To accept surrender and to save the one who has surrendered are essential. This is not negotiable.”

The article went on to quote the example of Tvashta:

The celestial beings wanted to kill Tvashta who ran to their wives and sought refuge. Tvashta was given shelter. When the celestial beings came looking for Tvashta, their wives refused to hand him over. Thus if a person surrenders, we must take care of him or her even if it means incurring the displeasure of one’s own family.
The celestial beings saw this act of their wives as an act of disloyalty, and angrily questioned their wives about their conduct. How could they take the side of a person who was the enemy of their husbands? But the women replied that the connection between a husband and a wife is a connection not of the soul, but of the body. It is a tie that has nothing to do with the atma... The celestial women were adhering to atma dharma, which is more important than sareera dharma (dharma born of bodily ties).

My mind went instantly to Balika Vadhu, where this dilemma was explored only last week. Ganga is a young woman who has been saved from her villainous husband Ratan Singh – and she has been accepted warmly into the protection of the Badi Haveli of Jaitsar, our protagonist family. When Ratan Singh attacks the haveli, demanding that his wife and son be handed over to him, the matriarch Dadisa hides Ganga and Mannu as well as she can and refuses to hand them over or divulge their whereabouts. At risk are her sons, her daughters-in-law (one heavily pregnant), and two dearly loved grandsons. The men are beaten, the women tied up and the young scion of the family is threatened with fire and sword. The crisis throws up differing stances: Sumitra, the younger daughter-in-law, is all for handing Ganga over and becoming rid of this menace. Unable to see her protectors suffer, Ganga emerges from hiding, willing to sacrifice herself if it means their safety.

Luckily, the police arrive in time to take care of the matter, but the episodes left me thinking how consistently Indian soaps illustrate the higher moral ground. There is almost always a diverse set of reactions depicted and they are almost always backed by well-articulated arguments but the protagonists... they consistently occupy the loftier, nobler space. This particularly true of this beautifully nuanced soap. Bhairo Singh, Sumitra’s husband, is shocked and disappointed with her petty, self-preserving attitude. “Does only your family matter?” he asks her.

Although the serial doesn’t bring it up, the story is based in Rajasthan, a land where such values are taken very seriously indeed. Protecting the ‘sharanagat’ (with your life if need be) is your dharma. And that standard – out of step with this pragmatic world though it be – nevertheless exists in pockets, in people’s hearts, or we would not hear moving stories of courage and selflessness during war and strife.

Fin

It has been a while since I posted here but that doesn't indicate, by any means, a lull in my television watching. Soaps and series have been dropped and picked up... the television milieu is always a fluid business. I wrote something of that here, for context.

Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon?, a soap that I particularly loved is coming to an abrupt close this week. The reasons appear to be complex and convoluted - this wasn't your regular tapering off of viewer interest. Apart from the fact that the lead, Barun Sobti, has opted out of the show, the word is that the production house involved lost interest in the project. A new and, to my mind, refreshing stance in an industry that wants to milk every single success well past its dry date. When you have a love story, it is best to tell that story well, and end it with its natural flow - not drag it out till you have soap watchers hanging on for sheer habit, long after the juice has dried.

The counter argument is that the soap industry runs on the principle of longevity - if you begin at all you must mean to go the distance. If you're successful, the long distance. To stop, because you don't feel like anymore, is shocking to the prevailing mindset. Everyone - the channel, the cast and crew, the audience - everyone feels betrayed because the soap has been invested in.

My sympathies are with the production house in principle. I'd rather have a story told well, ENDED well. It is such a rare event, finishing properly. The best of movies don't manage it and with soaps that is an impossible business. Given the various compulsions they operate under, I can't think of more than a clutchful that ended in a pleasing manner, by which I mean neither lingering past their welcome date, nor being yanked off abruptly, having to hastily tie up its loose ends over a mere month or less. No, I can't think of very many that didn't cause me trauma before they ended. So much, that I look warily for signs of decay and detach myself before the rot sets in.

Which might lead you to think that Iss Pyaar Ko... is ending well. No, that is not the case. The time for ending gracefully came and went. In the meantime, the story has meandered. Inorganic plotlines were added on. Characters, for want of anything to do, have started to grate on the nerves. The telling became half-hearted - far more than it need have been. The main story was over but there were very worthy sub-plots, many possible 'tracks' growing out of characters that were so nicely etched already. But, for whatever reasons, those options weren't taken up. IPKKND was allowed to flounder.

Now it will go off air - perhaps the lead character will die, or maybe he won't. But everyone (barring viewers with a precious half-hour hole in their evenings) will be relieved it's over. It really is a great pity.

Soaps for Men

A shorter version of this appeared in Open, 28 March 2011. A link is here.

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Time was television viewing in India used to be a family affair. Programmes didn’t always divide viewers on lines of gender; fiction wasn’t always coloured pink or blue. It is true the Doordarshan era didn’t offer us any channels to squabble over but what we got catered very nicely to everybody. We had epic sagas, urban family dramas, adapted works of literature, historicals, mythology, fantasy, thrillers and whodunits. The men enjoyed Byomkesh Bakshi, Barrister Vinod and Karamchand but they also followed Hum Log, Buniyaad and Khandaan.

All that changed at the turn of the century. A young woman called Ekta Kapoor came up with a soap opera named Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. It was targeted at women and they embraced it with an enthusiasm that had media watchers reeling. It altered the face of television-viewing in India, it spawned a thriving industry and the daily soap became an institution. Through the decade, women came to rule television – both on it and in front of it.

There are some positive spin-offs from the emergence of the ‘Saas-Bahu’ phenomenon but there were casualties too – the first of these being diversity in our television choices. The soap is such a dominant entity that although General Entertainment Channels (GECs) struggle every now and then to throw off its yoke, they haven’t managed it. Over the past year, reality television managed to appeal to male as well as female audiences but fiction – the citadel – is still held by women.

It is against this background that we must examine Sony TV’s attempts to offer programming with a slight male skew. Their long-running CID is a popular staple; in 2007 they tried to revive Karamchand, the carrot-chomping detective we loved in the ‘80s, and they recently introduced Adalat, a Perry Mason-style courtroom drama that actor Ronit Roy carries off with aplomb. But the most distinctive programming comes as a result of Sony TV’s partnership with Yash Raj Films Television. Made for metro audiences while the rest of the industry addresses the Indian small town, oriented towards general rather than female audiences, and by actually having male-centric narratives, YRF’s offerings are determinedly different.

In the beginning of 2010, the partnership yielded four fiction shows, all different from anything on the screen at the time. If they worked, they would mark the return of variety to mainstream television. Regrettably, they were not a raging success. Romantic comedies Mahi Way and Rishta.com were good but they were half heartedly promoted and badly scheduled. As for the others, you’d imagine that it’s difficult to mess up an old fashioned good-versus-evil yarn involving various kinds of delicious supernatural powers, but fantasy thriller Seven managed to mangle it comprehensively.

This year, YRF has come up with two shows: Khote Sikkey and Kismat. The first has a Mumbai cop assembling an unusual team of crime-fighters: five high-society, small-time offenders who help him gain entry and insight into the moneyed classes. Kismat is a saga on the lines of Jeffery Archer’s Kane and Abel, tracing (over 60 years) the lives and intersections of two men, Aditya Merchant and Kabir Khan.

Khote Sikkey

As is typical with YRF products, these are slickly produced shows. Then again, there is the danger of letting the gloss take over. Khote Sikkey’s good ideas on paper, for instance, don’t translate very well. It should have been an edgy crime drama with interesting characters and glib lines, all the while taking a close look at the awful turpitude of high society. So they have moody lighting which usually works better in film than on television, the camera endlessly circles its actors with the result that crucial expressions are lost to us while the lens is working its way past an obtruding lamp, the characters are mere cardboards, and the screenplay and acting suffer from an odd self consciousness. It is wannabe stylish but, sadly, not much more.

If loose writing is a problem with Khote Sikkey, Kismat battles an issue with pacing. This is a period story and gets many things very right: the acting, the ambience and the dialogues are excellent. Viraf Phiroz Patel and Rahul Bagga are superb as the warring protagonists and there’s an attractive classiness about the series. But each episode tends to tell us more than it shows us and, smart though it is, the show needs to makes an emotional connect.

Nothing succeeds like success, it is tritely said. Certainly true of television. So, are these the shows that will galvanise the television industry out of its female orientation? No. But when the breakthrough occurs, perhaps Sony TV will get a little credit for chip-chipping away.

Makes You C-C-C-Cringe

Indian television’s fascination with international franchises continues. After Kaun Banega Crorepati, Indian Idol, Fear Factor, Masterchef and a host of others, here comes a version of the international game show format Wipeout. Bollywood stars tend to eye these new reality shows with almost lascivious relish, and this one hopes to ride on the shoulders of the ever-keen Shah Rukh Khan.

Zor ka Jhatka: Total Wipeout started to air on Imagine TV on 1 February. Shot on a massive obstacle course in Argentina, the game comprises various rounds of competition before winners make it to the final ‘Wipeout Zone’ and then ultimately to the finale. The 16-episode run offers participants a whack at Rs 1.5 crore.

Now a game show of this sort has its place in the scheme of things. It’s only when the game show in question starts to assume other elements of grandeur that it begins to grate. And that is the problem with Zor ka Jhatka. It doesn’t want to be the mildly amusing, moderately popular game show that it is all over the world; it wants be a ‘duniya ka sabse bada, sabse anokha’ (the world’s biggest, most unique)  game show. 

But first, the contestants. They numbered 30 when the show began, but what with dropouts, eliminations, wild cards, special SRK recommendations, the exact count has been lost. These are an assortment of TV actors, sportspersons, army commandoes… but a bulk of them are what you might call ‘reality TV specialists’— a fearsome, hardy breed of wannabes who will assiduously apply to (and be taken on) any reality show that needs discretion, dignity and decorum left far behind.

Typically, as the participants go through the obstacles, Wipeout is attended by two sets of anchors—one on the spot for interviews and reactions (a job held by Saumya Tandon in this version) and another presenter (or two) to provide humorous running commentary on the proceedings—that is, Shah Rukh Khan.

Unfortunately, Khan is ill at ease, he tries too hard and he’s more than a little crass. His mockery of the unsuspecting participants—echoing them in high-pitched falsetto—offends us, the pelvic thrust that he finds necessary to perform every time ‘zor ka jhatka’ is uttered makes us cringe, and his jokes do not make us laugh. He inflicts his preoccupations and insecurities on us. “Kisike paas Kareena hai, kisike paas Katrina hai, mere paas Khabreena hai,” he tells us, reducing his co-host to an informant. He becomes inordinately excited by ‘Big Balls’—a course that involves giant rubber balls that contestants must navigate. We are naturally clued in to the fact that ‘big balls’ sounds like Bigg Boss, a show only recently anchored by another Khan.

Part of the problem is the logistics and the producers’ slippery hold on how to make it work. Standing in Mumbai, SRK is expected to comment daily on a video recording of activities in Buenos Aires. This means a significant loss of spontaneity. Not only does SRK not interact with participants in person, but worse, the banter between the two stations is manufactured at the editor’s table. Having invested in so many celebrities, the producers are unable to balance their airtime between the happenings in Argentina (which could have been interesting if we’d been privy to the backstage excitement or engaged more with the personalities) and the set where SRK presides. They err on the side of SRK. The contestants, chosen presumably for their respective star-pull, are severely underused. Even the production quality falls short of Wipeout, US, standards.

The studio is rendered odious by a few factors. One, a series of Bollywood celebs (Abhishek Bachchan, Kangana Ranaut, Priyanka Chopra), who come on to hard-sell their forthcoming movies. Two, sponsors who find it in their power to actually infiltrate the content rather than merely book-end it. So Khan says the words ‘Chocolaty Laila’ on cue as they appear on the screen.

Still, Zor ka Jhatka achieves what it craved—to be talked about. I mean, we like Javed Jaffrey’s Takeshi’s Castle better but then, we are reviewing Shah Rukh Khan here.


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This appeared in Open magazine, issue dated 28th February 2011.