A weekday in my life is more or less same usually. I came back yet another day in the evening and dropped myself mechanically before the TV. My mother was(also mechanically) screaming at me as usual asking me to eat. I ignore. My ears are used to that set of frequency landing in them. She swears. I still ignore. I am meditating upon the dialogues delivered by the main protagonist to the villain. Even the worst enemy in her life receives the most loving words and patience from the ever calm heroine of our serial. She refuses to be strict, rude or even straightforward to the ghastly bloody fools in her life. The villain tells her horrible things and she has no change in her facial expression (not even a hint of impatience). A plain face. She must be a saint. My mother gives up and then I get up during the commercial break and change and freshen up. I come back and eat something and again settle down (or lie down) in the sofa right in front of the screen.
Now another of those females… First of all in the mostly male dominated movies and serials, I don’t really realize how females started getting the most important roles. Anyway since they started realizing the importance (or required indulgence) of women, they hurt their image with her most idiotic responses in all situations. In serials, everyone has pre-marital and post-marital affairs, everyone seems to have 2 spouses somehow (accidentally or intentionally), and all children are too mature than their age to shatter their parents to pieces with their tongues, the grand parents are too old and some great great great grand parents still survive with the healthiest body. For past 3 weeks or so I’m watching them intently and you won’t believe me for what I say. There are these 3 consecutive serials in this channel. The channel has probably rented the city prison for the shooting and tried to get the maximum out of it. They are shooting jail scene in all the 3 prime time serials. All the 3 serials’ heroines are in the prison for something they haven’t done (obviously) and then all the three have been fighting a useless (with actually no solid point in any hearing) court case with useless lawyers (same set on all the 3 serials again), 3 rented rowdies have tried to poison each one of protagonist respectively, all the 3 have left their humanity and goodness and have now decided to fight against the villains now (together!) and the worst of the worst the so powerful and resourceful villains are suddenly being cheated and hit by these once spineless heroines, all of them have the same recording technique where the good (wo)man records the truth using their respectives cellphones from the bad man’s mouth. WHy do you need three serials for the same storyline??? I mean where is the creativity man? If I have the same scenes, same plots, same fights, same sequence of events resulting in same endings, then WHY the hell does someone have to see 3 different serials. It is like a re-telecast with a choice of different genre of heroines.. They all are old enough to be grand-moms and fat, fatter and fattest. They all cry with the same amount of glycerine and smile only in the serial’s startup song.
I have become this fanatically TV phobic but still sitting and staring at the screen till 10 at least. I swear that I am not a couch potato at all but when everyone around is watching that stupid, monotonous, gruesome, irritating colorful screen, you are left with lesser options. Actually no one is watching them... I prefer to bring my laptop to the living room and watch that screen for the same number of hours submitting my lamentations to my blog than seeing those stupid ‘human-like’ white/pink color tinted wax models doing crazy things just because they are paid some 5 digit money. I pity the actors sometimes and also feel angry towards them for being a part in ruining our peaceful lives. The actors in the serials don’t even probably know what their role is supposed to portray. They simply clad those childhood clothes and bathe with the filthy make up and come for the shots and throw up the lines they are asked to by heart. There is hardly any lip sync. They probably just chew some chewing gum instead of trying to speak those tough lines and the camera man covers up the scene and frame by shooting the roof, furniture, clothes, hairdo (even the hideous bindis) and the general art work done by the art team.
The rate at which the television is overtaking (taking over) our lives is mind blowing and soon there will be a stage when people will ask the TV wallahs for solutions to their problems in life (little knowing that they are the root cause of every problem). I mean those customized TV serials when supposedly you write a letter to them describing your issue to those guys and they will take that problem as a theme for the next episode. Something like that would be interesting. But here all of the most unusual and irrational issues crop up like conceiving on the eve of marriage (the father of the baby could be the bridegroom’s brother…yuck), loosing your most important family- property documents, marrying another girl ‘by mistake’, someone trying to kill you mistaking you for someone else, you being the only target for the leader in the industry (although you have just made a startup…. and as if he has no job to give a damn for an insect), a son of a family business tycoon loosing money and coming to streets because of the single lose in his first ever contract (as if the father bothered to even let him handle that much of an important contract), every other guy being a hi-fi rowdy and their children being bigger hi-fi ‘yo’ rowdies . I mean common, grow up. You don’t see those things in your everyday life! How much of fake things can you produce? Even the most family oriented good stories finally end up as those commercial stupid bragging extravagant set business serials.. A lower middle class family serial will also end up somehow(like the daughters getting married to rival business mans) ending up in those rich bungalows with artificial set ups and people sleeping with their diamond sets on.
I am in no anti-television bureau or anything but seeing the way the families are getting addicted to the television gives me a jolt or a fit sometimes. When I see the girl in the TV serial cheating her parents and meeting the same boy who has the most negative character in the serial, I move sides on my well settled couch feeling uneasy. What must be running in my parents’ mind when they see all this? How will my father be growling inside seeing the arrogant girl cheating her parents! I immediately get up and go in. My blood boils seeing such serials. What if they show some normal ‘human’ girl who actually goes to school, college and then to work and has those usual problems at work which every one of us has and show us how to deal with them intelligently without earning foes at the work place!!! Why cant the directors and script writers oblige us with such things! I bet those things will work. After all we all study, we all work, we all have problems like saving problems, human relationship problems, communication problems, how to start problems etc. I simply can’t understand why we need to see SUCH serials!! Not only that. When in the prime time serial, the mother coolly steals her own son’s money, sells her own daughter in law’s jewels to get new jewels for her daughter(of course without telling them), how would a daughter in law or a mother in law feel? I feel so impatient and irritated on such crazy unnecessary serials!
Gone are the days when we used to get up early on Sundays and get ready (take bath early!!! And eat breakfast unusually earlier than usual) just to see Ramayana(later Mahabharata) followed by Mickey mouse. Aha those days were heavenly. I can bask in the memories still. In the evening we had hours to spend with parents, family friends, friends (yes we had friends….which is more or less getting an alien word for kids), relatives and neighbors (another to-be alien word). We played all sorts of games like ‘Pathar phod’, ‘Lock and key’, ‘Airoplane’, ‘Barbie doll’s family’, ‘Langdi tang’, ‘Poshampa bhai poshampa’, the list goes on and you wont even realize hours passing by.
Why don’t they make live shows which actually inspire the younger generation? They have all the time for Nach Baliyes and Bigg Bosses, but imagine a similar show with similar celebrities doing a live work with some street children, animals, mentally challenged children, women who struggle with their mental capacity and cycles of their life, men who are alcoholic and trying to cope with life and millions of such issues….real issues. Why doesn’t a producer produce a reality show where in the celebrities simply dance/sing/act or entertain such people? Are they not part of the deserving audience? Are’nt they human beings? Come on people. Grow up. Come out of your prams and face the REAL world. The world is not a Page 3 column. The media should be ashamed of giving them more footage and encouraging them instead of giving them pieces of their minds. Working with an NGO has become just a fashion statement for the people in the media and the entertainment industry today. Anyone who dares to do something different for the people is tagged a ‘show off’! Different people like Revathy, Ranjini Kant, Sushmita sen and the like are treated as outcasts and looked as documentary items… I don’t know where my lamenting will end up. But this is a heart felt agony from a common TV fan.
I would also like to admit that there are some good creative shows which charge you up for the week ahead and challenge your creative capability. That being a separate blog for future, I end this up now with some wishes for them to improve or they'll get more of this crap from me.
