Getting down to business

MIDDLE class India needs circuses to keep its mind off the failures of an inept government to provide it with a better of quality of life. Or, for that matter to take its mind off failed summits, botched up ceasefires and a ruling alliance that is coming unstuck. But the industry whose job it is to keep the laughs coming or the tears flowing is itself in a bit of a crisis. It looks like we are running out of ideas over here. Dear dear, what are we going to do?

Currently, there is a three-word answer to that - spend more money. After a month of promos, Star Plus last week unveiled its next big thing after "Kaun Banega Crorepati", two Friday shows that hope to keep jaded audiences coming back for more. TV programmes can be a dreadful imposition if they are not your cup of tea. Would I want to spend one hour of my life every Friday watching a heavily painted Sonali Bendre do some inept emoting in the company of lots of over-jolly children? I would not. A good book certainly sounds more inviting in comparison. But "Kya Masti Kya Dhoom" is intriguing for what it tells you about the industry, and the lengths to which it is willing to go to devise new ways to engage shrinking attention spans.

Huge sets filled with razzmatazz, glitter, lights, special effects, mirrors - the kind of stuff you saw earlier only in stage shows put up by the movie industry or in the movies themselves. The Bollywood entertainer has come to television. Lots of performers, costumes, choreography. It is meant to be a talent show, but such talent as is on display is eclipsed by all the frenetic performing that goes on. Young children get to sing and dance for a bit. What do they sing? Film songs of course. What do they dance? A little girl did the sort of dancing you see in movies, not the sort they are learning from their classical dance teachers all over the country. She was judged the winner. By a film star of course. Akshay Khanna was the guest for the opening episode of this new programme from the Star Plus stable. He tried hard to look enchanted, as lighting effects in pink and green darted about in the background. Bendre smiled prettily and attempted a very lame interview with her fellow star.

TV sets have gotten expensive, huge, and elaborate. They tell you that the industry is willing to spend more money than it did in the past to earn money. When you want audience share you have to do that. It is another way of enticing audiences away from the competition. On another channel on the same day, Govinda is dancing and singing and giving away expensive gifts on expansive, dressed-up sets. "Kya Masti Kya Dhoom" is an effort to out- shimmer the competition. And right after it ends, you get another new show called "Khulja Sim Sim" which seems to have taken its cue from "Chappad Phad Ke" as well. With the kind of money being spent, you could mount musical stage shows for television or theatre. But the channel executives manufacturing entertainment for middle class masses are hardly betting on culture. They would tell you that is the province of public service television and the arty types who watch it.

"Khulja Sim Sim" is quite amazing. It makes "Kaun Banega Crorepati" seem positively high brow. The key word is aspiration, which is a polite word for greed. Ask a non-question (in which city is the Taj Mahal?) and then quickly get down to business. In cash or kind. It has got to be the only game show in the world where the host pulls out cash from his pocket and gives it to a giggling contestant. Then he says do you want to keep this or try for a better win? On that element of chance hinges the seductiveness of the show. There are three closed caves. One could contain a mere bicycle. Another a car. A third a dud gift. Which will the contestant pick? Here again, the sets are huge, and the studio audience large.

Last fortnight, a magazine writing on the economic slowdown profiled the frustration of a middle class family that has long been on brink of graduating to a car from their two-wheeler. The children would watch passing cars and speculate on which one their father would buy. But it was an aspiration that kept receding. It is not hard to imagine why a family like that would want to avidly watch "Khulja Sim Sim", or the vicarious excitement they would derive from it. There was a young man on the show who gambled on choosing to go for one of the hidden gifts in lieu of the cash he had in hand. He ended up missing a car by a whisker and winning a gift worth less than the cash amount he had been offered. So did another young woman. All because they picked cave one instead of cave two, or some such. Imagine the unseen, dismayed incredulity in millions of homes that accompanies their choice. A show like this is primarily interesting for what it tells you about the society it is devised for.

When that ended, the channel's big new Friday line up went on to present a new horror show called "Sh-sh-sh Koi Hai". Get this: a terrorist is captured with the help of a gang of enterprising young men and women. He is tortured in custody and dies of eletrocution.

So what happens? He gets sucked into the electrical system and pops up through the power supply in the house whether the young men and women are gathered to party. He becomes the power supply, a wiggly green current of light that comes curling out of switches, electrocuting each of them, turn by turn. Accompanied by loud, revengeful cackles. And in the middle of it all we have a large picture of Lord Jesus and three crosses that the camera keeps focussing meaningfully on. Hullo? Are the folks at Star Plus feeling alright?

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

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