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.

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.

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?