The foreign hand

LONDON, New York, Singapore - Indian serials are discovering fresh pastures to base their cloying family dramas in. So you have the red-haired actor who played Ajit Sir in "Saans" striding along a sylvan English mead on his daily constitutional, and then making up for it a little later at a mithai shop in Southall. Back at home his clan is gathering for a wedding, and awaiting the arrival of a young uncle who announces airily over a transatlantic call, I am in the US of A, my love. The rooms are readied, planes land, and sundry taojis, baojis, and chachus descend on the unsuspecting English landscape.

The arriving brood of relatives unveils a surprise: a blushing young thing in pink. No idea who she is , but matchmaking is in the air in "Sansaar". Sunday evenings at 9.00 p.m. on the new Zee .

In "Deewane to Deewane hai", there is tension because the young man in an unspecified foreign land with pater and mater, has suddenly decided that his heart is in music, as is made in India. His mother, wearing a collar of pearls with her muted chiffon Punjabi suit, is horrified. "Kaise karega India mein," (How will he manage in India), she shrieks, adding in English, "It is a jungle out there." But junior is adamant. He will go back to India. "Sarhadein" is set in Singapore, and "Dollar Bahu", as the name suggests, in both India and the U.S..

Non-resident Indian themes are the latest hot thing on television, saas-bahu dramas are passe. The protagonists are global Indians, mostly young, adept at both touching their elders feet and chasing dollars. (Literally. "Dollar Bahu" opens with the central character chasing a fluttering dollar bill on a New York street.) And if any Anglo-Saxons, Blacks or Caucasians also live in these lands which our telegenic NRIs inhabit, the camera does not register them.

Zee's new chief executive evidently believes in excess as a market strategy. His 26 new programmes are awash with pretty young things of both sexes, many of them prancing around in foreign climes.

His explanation is that viewers now expect the same kind of entertainment from TV that they get from films: music, foreign locales and fresh faced heroines. The new Zee is determinedly youthful: it is personified by the young Khushi, who smiles winsomely through the Zee promo. And a lot of its serials have young protagonists, notably "Koi Apna Sa" from Balaji Telefilms, a somewhat overdone tale of three girls who are fast friends and end up marrying into the same family.

The dollar bahu has not made her entry as yet in the serial of that name. The home-grown one though is a lovely fresh-faced find. Sudha Narayanmurthy's Kannada tale is among the more promising offerings from the new crop. It opens with a minor tragedy: the male protagonist returns triumphantly with green card in hand, only to discover that the girl he has been waiting to marry is now his younger brother's bride. The girl is equally stunned. (Evidently, nobody has heard of photographs over here: a son gets married and no pictures are sent to the older brother abroad? A girl enters the family and encounters no photographs at all of the elder son in the family?) But the serial has good casting, and the Manhattan skyline to boot. Thursdays and Fridays at 10.30 p.m. on Zee.

* * *

Last Sunday, Doordarshan unveiled a new initiative in showcasing public service broadcasting with a 10.30 p.m. weekly slot on DD-1 which will present every week specially commissioned documentaries. These have been funded by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust which is a joint initiative between Doordarshan and the Ford Foundation, run by film maker Rajiv Mehrotra who is its only commissioning editor. Doordarshan will put Rs. 1.25 crores into the venture each year, and expect 52 films in return to be shown on its network. The Ford Foundation puts in twice that sum to help finance the same films.

The first film shown last week was praiseworthy because, frankly, it is one of the few in the new crop of films which will appeal to a wider segment of Doordarshan's audience, and which actually briskly presents a subject of enormous interest to ordinary people in this country. Called "Accounts and Accountability", it is an account of Aruna Roy's right to information movement in Rajasthan, well made. The trouble is that it is in English, and DD being DD started the film well after the slotted time. If they are cavalier about the time, only those who actually make these documentaries will hang around waiting for them to start each Sunday. Others will move on to other fare on other channels.

To coincide with the telecast of this new series called the "Open Frame", a festival of these films was held in Delhi. Having seen 10 of them, I have to say that they seem to be conforming to the original charter - that of making documentaries for an informed audience. That is, however, a charter that needs to be questioned. Documentaries alone do not make up public service broadcasting in this country, particularly when they are in English. And how presumptuous to say that they should be for an informed audience. Why not for everybody?

There are two separate problems in this country. There is a dearth of what is known as public service broadcasting and there is a dearth of avenues for the number of talented documentary film makers India has. However, better not to attempt to kill both those birds with the same stone, because then only the latter's purpose will be served. The documentaries that have been produced in the first phase of PSBTs productions vary greatly in style, subject and approach. There was a very interesting one called "Tirupati: a Karmic debt", on what happens to the hair people offer at Tirupati. This too should have been in Hindi, with English subtitles. Other interesting ones looked at women film directors and editors, single parenting, sexual harassment of women at the workplace and indigenous religions in Arunachal Pradesh. Some of them adopted a cinema verite style which becomes tiresome after a while.

Apparently, the first lot of documentaries had to be in one of the following areas: public culture, hidden knowledge and transforming events. Who sets such esoteric agendas? If DD is giving a substantial amount of money and a Sunday time slot, it should prod the powers that be at PSBT to look at formats other than documentaries, such as public service spots and telefilms, talents other than the arty documentary makers known to the Delhi circuit, and languages other than English.

PSBT has an impressive board with Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, Sharmila Tagore, and Kiran Karnik on it. I think their board has a crying need for one popular film or TV director from Mumbai with his or her finger on the popular pulse. Because at the moment, it is a terribly clubby exercise.

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Favouring the English writer
Next     : Rabri Devi revisited