The reign of ruin

Colors, from the Viacom 18 stable, is all set to overtake Star Plus as the number one channel in India after already displacing sony and zee. What's sad is that the driving force is a serial called "Baalika Vadhu".

If the soap that has had the last 6-7 episodes of every character weeping and wailing because of a tragic death is what is captivating the imaginations of the Indian viewer, then there is something seriously wrong with us. This is the serial that skyrocketed to fame by showing a 10-11 year kid being locked up in a filthy basement and howling throughout the night at the torture (which I am told took a neat 3 episodes). How can it represent the "Entertainment" and "Variety" positioning that the channel did when it launched itself? Colors had shows like "Khatron ke Khiladi" and "Big Boss". It then moved on to the 'universally Indian' likes of "Jai Shri Krishna". But where does "Baalika Vadhu" fit in this image?

Viacom has always been associated with MTV; youthful, vibrant, crazy, uncontemporary. I am afraid even they have taken the Balaji route to the depressing fantasies of the Indian housewife. How can something so depressing with so much negative focus be called entertainment? To make things worse, the serial is making people stay inside their homes till 8:30 pm, so the business of malls, restaurants etc is also effected (just like the KBC effect we saw around 8 years back).

It is high time that Indian women move on from wasting their time with this non sense called "soap" churned out in dozens by dozen channels every day. If the fantasy of an average Indian 'domestic engineer' includes multiple affairs, illegitimate children, squabbling family members all living and plotting against each other in the same house, handling a 500 rs crore "business" without any prior experience whatsover, then it is nothing short of an epidemic. If they get "entertainment" by listening to the preaching lectures full of Indian mythology delivered by sari clad "pavitra" women (who are later known to have done everything "apavitra") with full make up on even when they are cooking food or waking up, then I am afraid it is a mental sickness of the scale of an endemic epidemic.

Jaago India Jaago!

Resonance

....and as the three wheeler; that I was riding alone; sped at the maximum permissible speed allowed by traffic; my mind was in a world other than this one. Surrounded in an epic rhythm and an acoustic melody; enchanted by a mesmerising soul captivating voice. As her last words rang my ears; I realised that there was but one thread connecting me to this world. Those words were, "Follow me yeah let's go"

The epic was ending and the male metallic voice was booming the familiar countdown. As he began "5.....4....." I saw that the traffic signal was also counting down in the exact order....5.....4.....3.....

Which is when I got the message. Loud and Clear. The world inside my bloodrushed head is not different from the "outside" world. There is resonance.