Reality Weekend

Thanks to a TV addicted family, and multiple sms from my mother telling me when to watch TV, I ended up spending three hours this weekend watching reality shows on TV. This post is an attempt at catharsis.

My reaction to ‘Nach Baliye 3’ can be summed up thus – ‘cut the cr**, get them on stage and start the dancing’. I am just not interested in what Kashmira said (intentionally or unintentionally) about Rakhi Sawant’s silicon (or lack of it), neither in whether the ten couples think it fair to include Juhi and her yet-undiscovered-Baliye in the competition. ‘Yeh Na Socho Sirf Nach Hoga’, they warned us in the posters, but they did not disclose that what we in for was more ‘Big Boss’ and less ‘Nach Baliye’.

I want foot-tapping music, entertaining dancing and good, wholesome drama – all of which ‘Nach Baliye 1’ delivered. For instance, there was Varun Badola dancing to ‘Khaike Paan Banaraswala’, a version far superior to the Shahrukh Khan one that was in ‘Don’. Remember Varun and Rajeshwari dancing to ‘Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai’ – the salsa / tango they did was amazing ! And there were the comic numbers – Archana Puransingh and Parmeet Sethi dancing to ‘Dariya kinaare ek bangle hoga’ where Archana did a hilarious take-off on a woman applying make-up, and Parmeet dancing to ‘Koi Kahe, Kehta Rahe’ in shorts and a bright yellow shirt. There was tons of drama and emotion too – Archana and Parmeet brought their kids along for almost every episode and always addressed them on-stage after their performance or blew kisses at them, Poonam and Manish cried after every decision – irrespective of whether they were praised or criticised, Saroj Khan added to the drama content by making a 100 rupee note a symbol of success, Delnaz Paul showed us what sycophancy was every time she spoke of Saroj Khan etc etc. There was no dearth of drama ‘in Nach Baliye 1’ but none of it was crass (at least, not that I can remember). ‘Nach Baliye 3’ would do well to incorporate more elements of ‘Nach Baliye 1’, though avoiding crassness might be a wee bit difficult for some amongst the current set of contestants.

Immediately after ‘Nach Baliye 3’, I switched channels to watch an hour of ‘Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa’, and I must admit, it seemed to promise much more energy, fun and D A N C E than ‘Nach Baliye 3’. From a loyal ‘Nach Baliye’ fan, I may switch to ‘Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa’. (Makers of ‘Nach Baliye’, please note, I grant you a grace period of one more episode to get your act together.)

Sunday night I devoted to watching the ‘Indian Idols 3’ final. One hardly got to hear Amit and Prashant sing – most of the time the other contestants, judges, guest stars etc were on stage. It seemed more like a dance programme than a singing programme – are all the ‘Indian Idol’ final episodes like this ? All the dance numbers chosen were recent tapori hits – less melody, more noise - so I didn’t enjoy those much. Alisha chose to appear in medieval-queen-whose-split-personality-is-a-whore outfit – it was just awful. The last straw was Mika appearing on the stage for a number – I switched off the TV then and decided to read about the results in the newspaper. I will leave comments about the merits of the winner to Aqua, for a loyal Prashant supporter like her will definitely blog about it (link to Aqua’s previous post about Prashant - http://aquadreamer.blogspot.com/2007/07/prashant-rocks.html).

By,
Zenobia D. Driver