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.

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.

What India watched in 2010

Recently, YouTube came out with a year-end list of videos that India watched the most in 2010. There were no great surprises. The list affirmed what we knew: that Bollywood and cricket still rule the Indian heart and mind. If Live IPL, Tendulkar’s double century, Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ and ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ were the most searched phrases, among the most watched were Bollywood hits mostly from the previous year.

YouTube’s list by no means defines what our prime preoccupations were — I mean, no one searches for videos on inflation or moral corruption of the polity, after all. Nevertheless, within its confines, what makes the list and what doesn’t are both significant. The FIFA World Cup finds no high mention apart from Shakira, neither do any of the very special Indian victories and performances at the Commonwealth or the Asian Games. No scandalous sting operations either.

Still, it was a delicious opportunity to see what the masses — the people who make up those staggering numbers — were watching. To see what had drawn the most eyeballs and, perhaps, to understand why. At the very top, something unexpected: a video featuring Australian motivational speaker Nick Vujicic, a man born without limbs. The clip received more than 15 million hits on YouTube India. Clearly a viral, its popularity is not surprising given the inspirational, emotional content. However, what’s heartening is that there is no obvious ‘India’ link here. Insular as we are, if this many viewers watched this brave man speak, it brings hope that we can perhaps be global citizens after all.

But there ends our token interest in affairs outside the ‘des’. At number two, with over 4.5 million views, is the title song from Dil Bole Hadippa that has Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee keeping boisterous Bhangra beat. I enjoyed this number from 2009’s releases but wouldn’t have put it this high above other musical hits. The film was only a very average grosser, there were other songs that pleased audiences — from Delhi 6, for instance, or Kaminey or even ‘Emosanal Athyachar’ from Dev D… what made Hadippa zoom to the top? A look at the video explains it. It’s simply a wonderful combination of music, fluid choreography and star power: Rani Mukherjee shows off her shapely back and tops that with an amusing Sardar cameo. A look at the region-wise statistics for this video reveals an interesting bit of trivia — the video is most popular, not in India, but neighbouring Pakistan.

The presence of ‘Tere Liye’, a song from the Viveck Oberoi starrer Prince is a bit of a mystery. But note that it is sung by the soulful Atif Aslam, as is that other toplister ‘Tu Jaane Na’ from Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. Both movies were duds; there is nothing special about the way the songs were picturised. In fact, the top search yields for both songs aren’t even videos so much as montages to acco-mpany the song, so the inevitable conclusion must be drawn: India loves Atif Aslam.

‘Crazy Kiya Re’ is in this list, which is no surprise for Aishwarya Rai was in top form in Dhoom 2. There is also a steamy scene from Kurbaan with Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. This one left me cold but, as they say profoundly, whatever…

But the inclusion that startled me most was a song from the 1984 film Andar Baahar with 3.9 million hits. I remembered this movie vaguely. It had Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in it and involved, I think, cops and robbers. It was not a significant hit then and there is no reason why it should suddenly resurface other than that Shemaroo Entertainment uploaded it in February 2009. True, Shroff and Moon Moon Sen are fairly uninhibited in the rain-dance sequence but we have seen better and worse, depending on your point of view. Then, why? A viral spread by subterranean forums perhaps? We shall never know.

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.