Are you really liking what’s being served to you on TV or you’re watching that ‘whatever’ because you don’t have an option? Hasn’t the transformation of Indian TV been too fast paced for us to keep up with it? It’s tough to trace television’s transformation from interesting to absurd. It was still bearable till the time we had people SMSing crazily for their favourite participant on a music or dance reality show. Strict (or scripted) judges, make-believe link-ups, and wildcard entries made the show swing! Then came laughter shows, which were also fun to watch…great pastime!
Remember the time when we could do just anything to catch every single episode of ‘Disney Hour’ in the evening. From ‘I Dream…’, to ‘Bewitched’ to ‘Different Strokes’…to ‘Small Wonder’, what a series to watch! I can’t help remembering the days when ‘Bournvita Quiz Contest’ tested our IQ, ‘Ramayana’ induced devotion, and ‘Mahabharata’ held its own with a spellbinding tale, and not to forget, Annu Kapoor’s ‘Antakshari’ got the entire family together for dinner!
But on Indian Television of today, some things have surely gone over the top to make the idiot box behave like a real idiot! Here are a 5.2 things I’d like to share:
1. Rakhi Sawant – Goes without saying! Indian TV channels ought to know how badly they owe their easy TRPs to Ms Sawant (not to be confused with Mrs Sawant – that’s her mum). Gosh!! As she still continues to rule the small screen… we have reached a point where couples are getting married on TV, are adopting and parenting babies on camera…guess, we are soon going to see them honeymooning too. Hope we are not asked to vote for the best love-making couple then!
2. Certainly not a respite, but what a transformation from once Tele Queen Ekta’s melodramatic soaps. And how she made 200 people smooch in the name of auditions for some upcoming crappy ‘k’erial, seems to be her desperate attempt to find a way back to TV, which has apparently gone beyond her reach.
3. In the name of reality TV, we can find a ‘perfect bride’ on an amateurish ‘reel’ity show! A group of young guys and girls, put in a place together, are asked to date each other and then play the ditch game. That should make a cracker of a show, right! That’s ‘MTV’s Splitsvilla’, a show so disgusting and pointless.
4. As we always take pride in plagiarizing international TV, it gets me to talk about another chartbuster reality show ‘Sach Ka Saamna’. Of course, Indians are not comfortable in talking about their virginity on camera…and didn’t we know that already?
Well, we chose to realize that but only at the cost of a few lives.
5. I wonder why we just love to hate them so much! What gets the supposedly ‘crappy’ shows their much sought-after TRPs, if that’s not the case. Get a life guys! If you really don’t feel like watching ‘Bigg Boss’, then ‘don’t watch it’.
Not that we have many options with us but then we do have the ‘power of the remote’ and that’s surely bigger than a Amitabh Bachchan and a Rakhi Sawant, for in its eyes both are the same. He (the remote) is all-powerful when it comes to idiot box, not the ‘K’ factor or any ‘jantar mantar’. If we like something, he increases the volume; if we hate something, he switches off and relieves us from mindless viewing. Remember the same happened to Ekta, we with the help of ‘he’, quite literally plundered her empire and what could the K Queen do, nothing (feeling powerful?). So, what are you waiting for, where’s your remote?
PS – (.2) The personified remote can get you to do what you would otherwise never indulge in, like it got me to do. For once I helplessly prayed for Pakistan’s win, and they lost! And why not, even they were aware of the pros and cons, right? Sitting glued to our TV sets, how could we so intelligently look forward to Pak’s win…for whatever please! So be careful…you got to use the gadget intelligently to fight what’s enough on TV.
(The views expressed by the author in the blog are his/her own)