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.

Colours of life

In one strip from Calvin & Hobbes, Calvin is seeking information from his erratic father. “Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have colour film back then?” Calvin’s dad, who likes his little jokes, tells him: “Sure they did. In fact, those photographs are colour. It’s just the world was black and white then.”

It’s easy to believe him. Look at old family albums, silent movies and the wonderful era of black-and-white cinema — we (those of us from this generation) have a hard time paint-bucketing colour into the world as we imagine it was then. Our visual conditioning assures us it must have been monochrome or sepia-tinted. But eventually, we will no longer be put to the trouble of conjuring up mind pictures, for the colourisation of our nostalgia is on.

The opulent Mughal-e-Azam was retouched, pigmented and released in 2004. Since then we have had other classics repackaged thus — Naya Daur and earlier this month, Hum Dono. In the south, we have embraced anew the cult mythological Mayabazaar. There are many more to come in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada.

It isn’t cinema alone. Discovery Channel has begun a 13-part series called World War II in Colour — a magnificent sweep of the events between 1939 and 1945 narrated by Robert Powell. The footage, acquired from across the world, has been painstakingly cleaned, re-coloured and restored. Even I, normally averse to retellings of WWII, am caught up in the epic drama of it all.

Colourisation of our collective black-and-white past may be the dernier cri in India, but it is a fad that has run its course in Hollywood. In the ’80s, media moghul Ted Turner embarked on a rather insensitive colourisation drive that had lovers of cinema up in arms. When he coloured and reintroduced Casablanca, film critic Roger Ebert was unequivocal in his loathing of what he termed “artistic sin”. He said in 2005: “Anyone who can accept the idea of colorisation of black-and-white films has bad taste.” In India too, although the coloured Mughal-e-Azam was accepted by uncritical masses, it had its detractors. Cinematographers and film historians were deeply uneasy. Mahesh Bhatt compared it to “painting the Red Fort in acrylic emulsion”.

It is a worthy debate. The critics make thoroughly valid points. There is no doubt a film shot for the contrasts of black and white is tainted, diminished by the introduction of colour. We would be equally aghast, I imagine, if someone mooted the idea of colouring Pyaasa or Kaagaz ke Phool or Charulata. But what of films where black and white was not an artistic choice but a necessity? K Asif longed to make Mughal-e-Azam in colour and was only impeded by his circumstances. He brought in craftspersons from all over India to bring authenticity to jewels, costumes and weaponry. Belgian glass was imported to adorn the famous Sheesh Mahal. The battle sequences were the grandest India had seen. It was a film that cried out to be seen in colour. Mayabazaar too is a grand spectacle of a film whose frames are deepened, not degraded, by colourisation.

The techniques of colourisation may perhaps influence opinion as well. Early attempts were crude, and not unlike the crayons Orson Welles once accused Ted Turner of wielding. But now, programmes are able to intelligently guess the colour used originally. Even the five or six years since Mughal-e-Azam have seen technological advances — studios now use 16.7 million shades against the 65,000 colours the previous generation did. The effects are subtle and, for the most part, aesthetic.

This sounds like an argument for colour, but had Guru Dutt consulted me before he re-shot the title song of Chaudvin ka Chand in colour, I’d have begged him not to. I suppose the test is to look at a film with love and ask of it how it would like to be rendered.

Those happy old New Years

The world stepped out to welcome the New Year last week while I sought refuge in my quilt, nursing a miserable cold over a glass of rasam. Even television — a friend on most occasions — let me down. Brittle hype was lined up on channel after channel, attempts at humour on one, spectacle on the other. It was so unsatisfactory I turned it off without waiting for the countdown to midnight and, perversely, went to sleep.

New Year's Eve, as TV channels conceive it, is the most manufactured of celebrations; similar ensembles are put together routinely for Holi, Diwali and other festivals but somehow work better than they do here. On the subject of New Year’s Eve, my mind runs no doubt out of sheer sentimentality, to the good old days. Those years in the 1980s and ’90s when Doordarshan, our one window to the world, kept us company in the hours leading to midnight.

I remember the comedian Jaspal Bhatti entertaining us; the short comedy skits that were, I’m now certain, only mildly funny. There was Gurdas Maan singing his trademark ‘Dil da mamla hai’, pausing playfully at ‘Dil…’ and all of us rushing in to prompt him. I remember Penaaz Masani, Falguni Pathak, Sharon Prabhakar, Javed Jaffrey and Usha Uthup. I cannot honestly say they sang or danced or performed better than anyone on the stage today — certainly, nostalgia plays a large part in giving that age its patina of being special.

That nostalgia isn’t restricted to the New Year’s Eve specials, it envelops the entire Doordarshan era. Bring it up and you’re essentially calling for a whole lot of people to wistfully remember their own favourites. Chitrahaar, someone will invariably say. Hum Log and Buniyaad will get a few mentions. Then the Sunday morning line-up, the Saturday afternoon specials, the weekend movies we waited all week for. There is something vivid about these recollections — it isn’t just about what they saw, it is about what they felt. Curiously, people talk often of staring at the colour bars before Doordarshan’s slowly spiralling logo came on the screen.

There is a sea change from our worlds then and now. Our minds and sensitivities were clean three decades ago — tabula rasas waiting to be imprinted on. We weren’t assaulted by images, sounds, media, opinions. We were able to focus on whatever we looked at, an attitude that seems almost zen in comparison to how we are now.

What does our fondness for the Doordarshan years mean? Does the advent of TV only bookmark a time when our impressions were at their freshest? Is it also due in part to the fact that TV viewing used to be so communal? In the early days, the entire neighbourhood would pour into the one home that housed the TV set. Later, even when every home acquired its own, we would gather to discuss what we watched. This collective experience is quite incommunicable to the spoilt-for-choice cable-&-satellite TV generation. It is impossible to convey to someone who wasn’t there what it meant. It was, quite simply, an age of innocence. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that we — all of India with access to TV sets — were on the same page, looking at exactly the same thing. DD’s much used placard that said ‘Rukavat ke liye khed hai’ signified an entire nation in limbo — sighing in frustration at a frame that might leap into animation any minute now. Never again will we know that kind of unity.

New soaps, more lather

The world of Indian TV soaps is raising a duststorm. Not of controversy this time but the honest dust of frenetic activity.

Soap operas, as studies and common observation will attest, are addictive affairs. It is a large but rather particular audience — usually female though not exclusively so; these are people with the time and mindspace to spare for the concerns of other people, be they ever so fictional. A good soap extends beyond the half hour that is spent in front of the television — a good story fills the crevices between chores, engages the mind and heart when they are not needed elsewhere. Favourite soaps are habits; not to have the next fix when it is habitually due can be disturbing to the rhythm.

I say all this to place in context the consternation of soap-viewing audiences given the ongoing changes in viewing patterns. To begin with, the past few months have seen the closure of a number of old regulars. The biggest wrench of all surely must be Star Plus’s Bidaai. It ran for three years and, while it achieved high TRPs for most of its tenure, it garnered a heart-warming popularity that can’t be measured by numbers alone. On the youth-oriented Star One, two long-running programmes — Dill Mill Gaye and Miley Jab Hum Tum — have been pulled off. Naturally, there have been replacements. Star One has three new shows including Ekta Kapoor’s vampire love story Ye Pyaar Ki Ek Kahaani. Bidaai has given way to the rather interesting and faintly magical Gulaal, which, to my mind, is quite the only one capable of adequately filling the gap its predecessor left behind.

What this means for the soap watcher is that, apart from missing her old staples, suddenly she finds herself in a completely new landscape — milieux that she isn’t too familiar with, several characters she has not invested in, and fresh relationships that don’t yet have an emotional connect.

Then, the industry must needs make alterations as well. A few months ago, Star Plus elongated viewing hours with new shows at 11pm and 11.30pm — late night slots that allow them to be more ‘bold’. Then, to the astonishment of many, a series called Saathiya that airs at the early hour of 7pm stumbled into the top ten.
You could hear the wheels turning. If sufficient numbers were tuning in at seven, could they be persuaded to reach for the remote earlier still? Zee TV is now trying that: two new serials from this week to kick off the evening’s television viewing from 6pm. If the idea takes, it won’t be very long before other channels follow. So, all taken, viewers have a potential six hours of fresh content and that’s without counting afternoon soaps, promiscuous channel-hopping and repeats. What's more, Star One has decided to push the programming envelope in another dimension. Their five soaps will air not five but six days of the week, by co-opting Saturdays into the ‘soap week’.

For our soap watcher, these are hours and slots she wasn’t used to, these are new habits she needs develop if she wishes to scope out her options. These shows aim, not at bringing in fresh audiences, but at reining in the same existing ones. How long before fatigue kicks in? Besides, to what end, if the content isn’t good enough and will only end after short flailing bursts?

Women rule prime time in India — on the screen and in the drawing rooms where they are received. But might this extensive programming threaten that? A family that is resigned to let soaps dominate during prime time will be less inclined to relinquish the remote for marathon sessions, five/six days a week. Will these adjustments serve to increase soap viewing or audiences? More importantly, does this slew of soaps bring anything fresh by way of attitudes or narratives? It is too soon to tell — but whether these strategies sink or swim, they’re working up a fine lather.

So many bugs

If you were a visiting Martian, belonging moreover to an obscure, insular tribe, who was somehow deposited in front of a television screen in India, what do you suppose you would make of this country's predominant preoccupations — going by its advertising images?

Within a couple of days you would be convinced that Earth was infested by these rabid, lethal creatures known as ‘keetanu’. You would note with trepidation that these lurk everywhere on the human person — in their teeth, on their skin, clothes and everything they touch. By and by you would realise that these are impossible to destroy, but you would understand also that this was one entity Earthlings must combat at all costs, or die. If you were a suggestible sort of Martian, you would soon find yourself avoiding contact with anything — doorknobs, newspapers, currency notes — for fear that you too could die from such deadly infection. You would have growing regard for a range of products: soap, toothpaste, deodorant, and a range of domestic cleaning liquid. You would see again and again the image of a magnifying glass that would show you precisely how well these products were working: a circle full of germs magically wiped clean leaving only one or two insignificant crawlies, one perhaps skulking so close to the edge as to appear practically invisible.

I, of course, am an Earthling. As children, we held these ‘keetanu’ in contempt. During a growing up phase when I fancied myself particularly hardy, I remember telling my sister that the best way to deal with a bleeding scraped knee was to rub a little mud on it to stem the flow. She did, and she lives, I assure you, to tell the tale to any sympathetic audience likely to cast dark looks at her heartless older sister. But the point is: Indians didn’t use to be this afraid of germs and bacteria. We knew that resistance was superior to non-contamination. That bacteria aren’t vile creatures that need to be warded off with vats of antiseptic. We learnt that the human body is an assemblage of microbiota in numbers that outstrip human cells ten times over. And this, we must now remind ourselves, is normal. Normal.

A few years ago, during the annual year-end NRI season, we had a few kids over. They went out to explore the garden and the adults sat down to conversation — only to have the kids rush in again in a flurry of alarm and disgust. Eeeks and ewwws were uttered and we heard complaints of “so many bugs”. An investigation revealed ants, grasshoppers and other innocuous fauna. First-world kids! We shook our heads then, but is the attitude so different from ours now? By and large, this fear of old-fashioned dirt has percolated to us. Children even two decades ago roamed more than they do now, played more robustly than they tend to do today. Parents are more protective — leashes are tighter and yes, there’s a keener eye kept on fingernails. Do children these days still collect ladybugs in matchboxes or examine frogs?

And all these arguments against the contaminants of the world would all be a little more sympathy inducing if the concern were motivated by pure love. A parent’s job is by necessity prone to anxiety and mothers are notoriously easy to guilt-trip. But you have to think — because soon after an advertisement has told you your child could fall ill if he didn’t wash his hands obsessively, it’ll usually let drop a more deadly fear: perhaps he will have to miss school. Oh the horror! Fall behind on lessons, slip down the ranks and be less of a success in standard four? Unthinkable. And so it comes about that your average mother is stepping out this minute to stock up on antiseptics, handwashes and bacteria-repelling toothpastes. While she’s at it, she should pick up a consignment of energy drinks that aid memory, keep up energy for school, athletics, violin lessons as well as keep the lad peppy through the extra tuition.

No more the small screen

About to embark on Kaun Banega Crorepati (4), Amitabh Bachchan recently reminisced on his blog about how it was back in 2000. When he first decided to do television, those in charge of guarding his brand were highly doubtful. For a man who ruled the silver screen to be cramped into small box screens, to lose mystique and be delivered straight into distracted drawing rooms was seen as a dilution of his persona.

But Bachchan persisted — it was an honourable way to begin to pay off the pile of debts he had incurred in the debacle that was ABCL. To the participants who came hoping to win a tidy sum of money, this was even more of a connect with the man who sat opposite them; he too was there to make money — a necessity and a preoccupation that binds all of poor and middle class India. So when Amitabh Bachchan asks someone on the hot seat: “Kya maayne rakhtein hai ye paise aapke liye? What does this money mean to you?”, the query is significant. It adds to that mental profile we Indians assemble for everyone we meet. It is a question that everyone is sympathetic to; and the answer, no matter how similar, is invariably of interest.

Bachchan’s return to television ten years later sees a vastly different picture. Bollywood wouldn’t touch TV with a pole then, but they love it now. It is impossible to flip channels on primetime weekends without shuffling on star dust. Akshay Kumar is a sure shot these days, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan smiled graciously on Masterchef last week even as she fenced gingerly with Karan Johar. In recent years, Bachchan Jr, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Karan Johar, Farah Khan, Priyanka Chopra have all hosted television shows, and everyone in Bollywood worth anything at all has trooped through television studios. A fact that tells us, better than reams of statistics ever could, how powerful the small box has become.

Talk shows are one aspect, but there is the other tiresome matter of promotions. Singing contests, comedy, dance and sundry talent contests... nothing is spared from the relentless onslaught of new movie releases. Stars, directors and associated celebrities appear on these platforms. For the talent show, it presumably keeps the interest alive; for the movie, it is an easy audience, captive, gagged and bound. Win-win, as they say.

The biggest victims of this parade of self-serving guests, to my mind, are the judges of musical contests. Over the years, these have been notorious for attention-seeking gimmicks, manufactured conflicts... generally behaviour known in TV circles as ‘khaaoing’ footage. For example: a contestant performs well. Instead of a measured critique, he or she is more likely to encounter a judge who leaps out of his chair, bounds up on stage to bestow hugs, blessings and fulsome praise, all under the red eye of the camera. Camerapersons have learnt the hard way not to compose judges in tight frames, for they are apt to rear up without notice, leaving the vision mixer with disconcerting visuals of their midriffs if everyone isn’t sharp enough.

Now this scenario has become rather compromised by the Bollywood publicity machine. Hardly a week goes by without some promotion, and our judges must now suffer to play host to a series of celebs even more intent on consuming valuable air-time. For the viewer, of course, this is extremely fatiguing; quality music has long vanished and it is just one dose of insincere hype after the other.

But promotions aren’t limited to reality TV — they sometimes spill over into soaps as well. Salman Khan as Chulbul Pandey was woven (very, very badly!) into the script of Laagi Tujhse Lagan and Akshay Kumar dropped into the home of the Kashyaps of Sasural Genda Phool to sell Khatta Meetha. Much as we acknowledge the compulsions of the business, this is distressing. At least the soaps — television at its purest — may be spared the Bollywood infestation.

Rakhi-O!

Rakhi Sawant burst onto most people’s horizons with the kiss that the infamous Mika planted on her. It was the most shocking thing to take place that week and she got her due minutes of fame and airtime. It was all par for the course, which doesn’t explain what she is doing — four years later — hosting her own show called Rakhi ka Insaaf on Imagine TV. The television and film industry has legions of publicity seekers who seek small bursts of visibility and sink thereafter, which makes Rakhi Sawant’s longevity, her continued popularity and her success something of an astonishing oddity.

This latest show has been likened by quite a few reviewers to a fish market. It is a very understandable comparison. Two episodes old at the time of going to print, Rakhi ka Insaaf is a reality justice show with a very twisted shake. Disputes are brought for Rakhi to hear and judge and the disputants (so far) all represent the lowest common denominator. Rakhi, of course, conducts affairs with all the aplomb of a ring master. She is expansive, flinging out a hand to silence the audience, out-yelling her participants, reacting to every revelation with the requisite drama and finally issuing her take on the matter.

But to dwell on the rise of Rakhi Sawant: she has managed to straddle Bollywood as well as television — even if as a fringe item girl in the movies and as a Reality TV specialist on television. Since 2006, she has appeared in numerous shows; two of these bear her name in their titles and ride on her shoulders alone. The truth is that this woman — either by means of native shrewdness, luck or some mysterious factor — has managed to become a brand. What exactly is her appeal?

Her days incarcerated in Bigg Boss (1) gave us a few clues. She was clearly disadvantaged as far as her background went, but she was by turns heartbreakingly humble, ambitious in the most open, grasping way, curiously sincere and laughably manipulative. Her vulnerability came through and so did her love of the limelight. She demonstrated fine comic timing, she was naive. If she launched herself into the middle of an emotional drama with herself cast as queen, her eyes would flicker mid-scene to gauge its effect on her audience. Very few people fell for anything she said, but many were charmed. She had something that can’t be bought in tinsel town: personality.

I’ve found her tiresome on many occasions but one of the instances where she thoroughly delighted me was on the talk show with Karan Johar. Many thought it was a huge coup for Rakhi that she was asked on the show at all. For, throughout the previous season, Johar had taken low potshots at a few persons; they included Mallika Sherawat, Neha Dhupia and Rakhi Sawant. Now the film industry, such as it is, is bound to have a few young women who become embroiled, out of desperation or bad judgment, in something approaching sleaze. It is even more likely if the young woman comes to the industry without the aegis of a big name. For Karan Johar, with his background, success and position, to attack these particular women with such snide relish was ungenerous and ungentlemanly. Still the talk-show producers had bowed to the public’s dubious but thumping interest in Rakhi Sawant and she was invited to Koffee with Karan. She came. If Johar had hoped to expose her further, he succeeded. But he could not discomfit her — for Rakhi out-Rakhied herself.

She came in a cloud of effusive gratitude, took the wind out of his sail by admitting blithely to cosmetic surgery, cried so copiously Johar was left wiping his own nose in involuntary mimicry, she dived dramatically at his feet in a surprise move that had her host yelping in startlement and leaping nimbly out of reach. As a revenge, it was delicious. And she’s still having the last laugh.

Move over, sarson ke khet

I remember distinctly the time I had to ask someone what Daler Mehndi and Amitabh Bachchan meant when they sang, Sadde naal rahoge te.... There had been such a glut of Punjabi in the filmi and pop music market in the ’90s, I had needed translation for what is now mainstream lingo. As a context-less South Indian, I remember faintly resenting the easy dominance of the Punjab over our national tastes — permeation so complete and insolent, it didn’t need to come with subtitles.

It wasn’t only the music, it was also the images. The sarson ke khet, for instance, were so badly flogged, they should be sore still. Even before Aditya Chopra set Shah Rukh Khan in the middle of the obligatory mustard crop with a mandolin, the yellow fields were something of a symbol. Since then, the landscape — though distorted, candified, glossified — has formed the rural backdrop of choice in our collective cinematic consciousness.

Punjab, however, is conceding space to another milieu. And nothing confirms it like Dabangg: Uttar Pradesh is the new Punjab. Or, to be more precise, eastern UP — the badlands with ubiquitous country pistols, violent university politics; young men roaming the gallis and dusty trails, involved in a complex hierarchy of power — a matrix both dynamic and unchanging. The land of the bhaiyya and the bahubali, where societal structures of power are so strong, the law retreats in wary watchfulness.

Tigmanshu Dhulia tried it in 2003 with his low-key Haasil. A love story set in an atmosphere of seething university politics, it didn’t make box-office waves, but it is something of a cult among those who saw it. Then came the great Vishal Bharadwaj. His Omkara and Ishqiya dripped with the essence of the land, replete with its bawdy, charismatic expressions, its unique flavour. Then, cherry on top, there is Dabangg. Even the name is reflective of attitudes there — not merely power, not just dominance, the word includes a sense of psychological hold over a dominion.

But movies have only a couple of hours to impress our minds. For a detailed, leisurely taste of this culture, you must go to television. To Star Plus’ reigning soap, Pratigya. It is set in Allahabad, and deals most interestingly with power, chauvinism and ideas of respectability. Frequent invocations to Alopi maiyya (a goddess obscure to all but these parts), and sprinkled mentions of Illahabadi localities add considerable texture. With soaps relying so heavily on dialogue, the robust dialect used plays no small part in the success of this series. But even more steeped in the world of eastern UP is Imagine TV’s new soap Gunahon ka Devta. This is, for once, a hero-centric show, supposedly inspired by UP’s famous gangster Shri Prakash Shukla. Hero Avdesh Singh is the ‘ruler’ of Lallanpur, running and directing illegal commerce, influencing authorities, dispensing rough-and-ready justice. The locales are fresh, there is spontaneous outburst of song to the accompaniment of beat and harmonium; the tone is determinedly earthy, sometimes so coarse as to burn the ears of more sheltered citified folk.

This movement to UP could be because of the influx of immense talent from the heartland — Dhulia, Bharadwaj, Abhishek Chaubey, the brothers Anurag and Abhinav Kashyap are all from the cow belt. Not all their movies are set in their home state but the most evocative of them seem to be. It is no coincidence in television either; Pratigya and Gunahon ka Devta share the same writer, Shanti Bhushan, who comes from there as well.

Or, perhaps it’s simply Uttar Pradesh’s time in the sun, ka kehte ho?

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.