The (Sur)real world of Indian television.

Have any of you recently tried to watch the soap operas telecast on Indian television channels ? If so, you will probably have complete empathy and sympathy with me and understand why I’m still tortured by the memories of what happened.

Here’s what happened: We’d driven off to London for the weekend (on one of our-‘let’s just drive off somewhere’whims). I have to say the weekend went by very well – we managed to catch ‘We will rock you- the musical’ and had some fabtastic Indian food which is always the attraction on a trip to London (God bless the Gujjus).

Then on the way back, we decided to stop by at one of Rohit’s old friends, Neha. Now it so happens that Neha is not just a devout fan of Indian TV soaps but in fact eats, talks and breathes television.

So she told us of this exciting new reality(?) show which has a bunch of guys staying together (No, don’t let your imagination run wild- that just does not happen on Indian television, yet!), a bunch of girls staying next doors with their mothers (the guys’ mothers, silly) and they are supposed to assess each others’ compatibility- the guys and girls with each other and the girls with their prospective mothers in law.

Needless to say there was a lot of bitching, sobbing, outrageous statements a la Big Brother (or is it Big Boss?) and generally everyone seemed to be terribly stressed about coming out of the TV show, having made a lifelong commitment or found their soul mates. Watching it, we went through a complete whirlwind of emotions in rapid succession - disbelief, amusement, puzzlement, frustration, and then downright rage… Rage at the way producers of these shows take the Indian audience to be made up of part cretins and part masochists. There is this complete dumbing down of TV shows and the audiences don’t know to expect any better.

What’s particularly frustrating is the portrayal of female characters: if she’s not running a corporate powerhouse in a sexy mini, she must be a stay at home bahu, indulging in politics of the most complex nature (Move over Mayavati and Rabri, the Indian Bahu is soon going to overtake you), all the time bedecked in tons of jewellery with, of course, a pallu over her head. She wakes up in the morning with more jewellery than most of us manage to wear in a lifetime.

We thought we’d had enough when she insisted there was this other reality show (!!!!) featuring the newly engaged Rakhi Sawant and her partner showing their parenting skills….with other people’s children! Seems the idea is to have celebrity couples staying in a swanky Goa resort with successively older children every week, starting with toddlers. To judge what? How these smooth actors and actresses cope with the stress of being around other peoples’ kids for a few weeks?

I would not even like to venture into what the repercussions could be of one of these ‘celebrity’ parents abusing their proximity with other peoples’ children (Yes, despite 24 hr camera surveillance). What kind of parent leaves his/her child with some fake TV parent to have a showdown on national television?

Tell you what, one good thing to come out of the ordeal was that it reaffirmed our views that we do not need television for entertainment. Looks like the news is all I can watch anyway…as long as its not Star News reporters screaming down my throat, that is!

(P.S.- Interestingly my spell check suggested changing Mayavati to Amravati (didn’t know that was part of MS word repertoire) and Rabri to Rabbi (If only!)