Truth and Friction

The ghost of last week’s post lurks. I read a few days back that the NBA had been called to discuss the issue of obscene questions being asked by Rajeev Khandelwal on Sach ka Samna. Ha! Gotcha. This NBA is the National Broadcasting Association. 🙂

According to the news report, Brinda Karat said that such shows outraged the modesty of women. The woman in question, of course, must’ve been tortured for several days before she agreed to be part of the show. Quite possible also that they threatened to send her to Rome, and specifically “Putin’s bed“, if she didn’t agree. She really musn’t have had any choice. I can understand how politicians and truth serum manufacturers would have a problem if speaking the truth became some some sort of an epidemic. What if people spoke the truth by default? Gah. I’d written a post sometime back, provoked by the original show – The Moment of Truth, in which I’d spoken about the evolution of a transparent culture, much like the subject of last week’s post.

But now I really am at a loss as to what is delivering me (U,B added because its subjective) the bigger WTF – the television shows or the politicians. There was the RSS (Rakhi Sawant’s Swayamvar) show, in which guys went lattoo over Rakhi while Ram Kapoor lustily looked on at the object of his affection – the box of laddoos. The nation climaxed as the NRI got the girl and the rest got rakhis. I think there is definitely a scope for another season, possibly with a tie-up with some matrimonial website to register participants. Or maybe a spin off with Ram Kap titled ‘Shaadi ke Laddoo ke side effects’? (Update: Rahul Mahajan is going to be swayamvared in the next season) Then there are celebrities being housed in a jungle – ‘celebrities’ like Fiza, whose claim to fame is her previous show with Chand – ‘Is Junglee se mujhe bachao’. There is a marriage happening inside a show to which real people – viewers, are invited, and who can ignore Balika Vadhu, which I had initially thought was a spin off from the Hanuman show, centering around Bali’s wedding, but which I now like for its layered acronym – BV. (yep, i’ve seen a couple of episodes of each) Speaking of BV, this is also a show that our politicians had a problem with – claiming that it promoted child marriage.

The politicians who seem to have addressed all the nation’s problems soon after getting elected, are now taking a break and sampling the pleasures of Indian television.  They are actually wondering what we are teaching our children and are talking about the Mahabharata, though i’m damn sure that if the series ran now, they would be claiming that Draupadi’s disrobing was promoting rape attempts, and Krishna’s number of wives, polygamy. I could give more examples, but you get the drift.

Where is all this going? Not the politicians, but I wonder about this oxymoron called a reality show. As each channel tries to trump the competition, would the boundaries between truth and fiction blur more? In effect, though scripted, a lot of shows operate in the private spaces of individuals and their families. How does all of this affect the reality fabric – of family, relationships, society, pop culture etc? How far will we go to escape from ourselves? How many steps away are we away from seeing death – real last moments, on TV?

Think about it, while I conceptualise this kids reality show, in which children will be left in a jungle, and every day, they take polygraph tests. If they are truthful, they get laddoos, else they have to spend a day in parliament. The winner of course, gets married off.

until next time, tube toppers…

PS. Sheer coincidence this time, that Rakhi had to make her presence felt in a post on Rakshabandhan Day, unlike the previous years. 1, 2.