Thursday, December 25, 2008

Warming Up - Nuances of DD

What makes Doordarshan, Doordarshan..
Is it the excessive hamming that you encounter in every other show..
is it the anchor of the shows who could easily have been the guy who hosts the diwali mela for your mohalla...
is it the graphics that make you feel, that the broadcast you are watching has taken 20 years to reach your television...
is it the sets that make you think that the presenter is there to get his passport size photograph clicked...
is it the way actors react without being slapped or hit( as the scene was censored by DD in the movie to be aired)...
is it the fact that most of us have not watched it for more than 10 minutes at a go since the cable television reached our homes...
But as much as this was a jibe at the shabby production values of DD, it was also a way of venting out the disappointment at DD for not being able to progress with time(if it has done anything, it is to deteriorate in all departments).
With no hopes of seeing it get any better, I shall write about the little things that do remain part of our memories for some strange reasons.
Before anyone had ever heard of what set top box or even cable tv was, there was the big aluminum antenna that brought all the colourful pictures to our tv. But it was not always so colourful. The broadcast was not 24x7 and we often encountered the black and white grains, but even then we thought if we looked at it long enough we might still see some things..

This was followed by what I'd call the rainbow stripes. Never understood why they had those. May be too check if all the colours were ok :P .

Then the broadcast started when everybody would hold their breath , as a little red ball was engulfed by something that looked like two red hands. But the two red 'hands' then started revolving around the ball and it looked like that the tv was warming up, as it slowly gained speed and eventually became clearer and clearer. Yes, it was the logo of Doordarshan, with the words 'Satyam Shivam Sundaram' written beneath it. Now, it was up and ready to entertain.
Another part of DD that it introduced in our lives is the 'rukawat ke liye khed hai' message which was quite frequent those days.
There are also a whole lot of other shows and jingles that I'd like to include in this post itself but would have to keep that for the next post.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

New Shows

Before I proceed on to writing about the Doordarshan series as I had told, I would like to clarify that despite what I said in the last post, there are one or two shows which do have a story line that is a different than the usual shows like Balika Vadhu( a major hit, I am told), which is about the problems faced by a bride in a child marriage or Utaran, a story told from the perspective of daughter of a maid, but I am sure all such shows will go into a different direction in a few weeks time. They just can not resist incorporating scheming vamps into the shows no matter how hard they try. This post shows, how I 'have' to watch serials that I didn't think I would during the holidays and I had to mention the couple of serials that keep me entertained. So here is the list:
Reruns
Now the post is titled new shows but I find that I have more fun watching the shows that I have already watched twice or thrice, like Friends, 30 Rock, Scrubs and Seinfeld(also I don't have much else to do) so this had to be included.

Man vs. Wild - Discovery Channel
Whenever there is nothing worth watching on TV, I switch to Discovery and it is amazing how it has not backfired even a single time(except may be in the afternoon, when its 'woman hour') . While I was doing this, I saw a show which has given me at least something to cheer for. It is a show hosted by a man named Bear Grylls, an ex-military officer from UK, who airdrops himself in a remote location (where the chances of survival are very less ), and shows methods to survive it and reach the nearest settlements of humans. As much as the premise of the show is interesting, it is also quite educational. Though after seeing what happened to Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch's character in Into The Wild), I am not going to let anything in my mouth from an unknown object unless I have a guinea pig with me on whom I can test it. Along with the knowledge about various survival skills and what should be the best decision in a given condition, the presentation of the show is also interesting. This part comes from the search of food and water that he takes on.
Being isolated in a place like deserts of Sahara or glaciers of Iceland it is always fascinating where he would look for food and water. In the little I have seen(4 episodes), Grylls has eaten a monitor lizard(about 4 feet long, killing it by banging it against a tree and then eating it raw), a snake(just beheaded the rattle snake and ate the rest instantly), termites(loves those for their proteins !!),sheep's fat and eyeballs, crabs, sting ray and birds(only a fire needed for them)..and when I checked on wiki I found out that he has also:
"squeezed both elephant dung and partially digested food from the stomach of a dead camel into his mouth for water, ripped raw chunks of meat off a dead zebra with his teeth, eaten maggots off a dead deer, and drank his own urine which had been stored in the skin of a dead snake."
I know this is not the usual form of entertainment for many people out there but for me it just goes to show what humans are capable of when faced with death or losing out on something that is very special for them. All the ethics and all the principles go for a spin.
I know that some of the events are staged and not real, but I'd still recommend it. Who would have thought, a time would come when an Englishman has to go about eating insects and snakes for our entertainment..!
P.S.: I also saw a show about a man's spiritual journey in India, and to my utter disbelief, that man was Jeremy Piven..!!! Never did I imagine that the Ari Gold from Entourage would present a show titled 'Jeremy Piven's Journey of a lifetime' and all this with a straight face.

Jimmy Kimmel Live - Star World
I do not know how the ABCs and the NBCs decide that a person X is going to host the talk show that is going to air on their channel for years. It must be a grueling process, and I think it must involve a sample audience tolerating X's show for a long duration as the larger audience has to after it is given a green signal. But on the other hand, they just require a chubby, not very handsome looking guy that the people can relate to, as I don't think any comedic or acting skills are required in it. The jokes (which are written by a huge team) are not that funny (mostly involves fiddling with video of celebs) and the presentation is not that unique. Same is the case with Jay Leno's, David Letterman's and now Jimmel Kimmel's show. But as Kimmel's is the least experienced I find his show the weakest. But with no good talk shows available I can just get through that one hour as the chats with the guests are interesting. Molly Shannon herself bragging about the massage she recently got from a woman, which was exploitative in nature, or Courteney Cox explaining how while typing a letter in a hurry to the future principal of her daughter's school she typed 'cock' instead of 'coco' which is her daughter's name.

Punk'd - VH1
I have never liked Ashton Kutcher, but even then I find that the pranks are cool and make up a good half an hour. When the same pranksters are used in every prank, I think someone must be intelligent enough to recognize their faces, but I am wrong, most celebs are that stupid.

Yo Momma- VH1

I am including this here just for the originality of the idea. This is a show hosted and produced by Wilmer Valderrama which includes a trash talking competition between regular people to decide who is best trash-talker in the 'hood' and 2 people represent their hoods in one final round. Though, the show could have been interesting but the low quality of trash talking(!!) and the screwed up format makes it something that you can easily give a miss.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Good Old DD days..

The daily life of any student presents a number of 'challenges' to the person in terms of assignments, exams, shaping your future etc. or in short, balancing huge number of things and still come out on top. I am also of the opinion that the huge breaks that are provided to us after each semester also test us to our limits. The drastic changes in the surroundings, your daily time table and diet, plus the amount of free time that you have at your disposal, after every four months take the form of a new problem that you have to understand, while starting from scratch in order to solve it. You have to know whats boring you, what is the schedule you should follow, what is the reason behind a particular new problem and so on. An example of it would be my weird dreams which have stopped bugging me after I returned to my habit of sleeping late as in the hostel. This brings me to the activity that was supposed to get me through these 4 weeks, but on the contrary its turning out to be quite unsettling, which is watching tv.
This habit has always been one of my favorite pastimes and the fact that I do not have that many movies left to watch on the pc at home made it even more important. Also, I have not been able to watch tv for long hours, as I usually do, since more than a year. But I was in for a big disappointment. The tv scenario has changed completely in the year long hiatus. With the saas-bahu serials booted out, all the prime time slots and TRPs are now grabbed by reality shows. There is not a time during the 24hrs when I can surf the channels without encountering someone trying to make people laugh, or singing or dancing, all this followed by drama from judges or some heart wrenching story of one of the participants. This shows us just what the entertainment industry and to some extent what people in India are, opportunists. Jumping on the bandwagon is not a trait of Indians alone, it is a natural tendency of all individuals, in fact every popular tv series from other countries has been adapted by US in hopes of repeating the feat ( The Office and American Idol are the most successful instances), but they have one South Park or Prison Break to show for every 10 shows that they spun-off. Considering this, it would not be too generous to overlook their recent failures in the sitcom department or many other disappointments in reality shows.
Thus, what is disturbing is not the copycat formats of the shows but the sheer lack of originality or creativity. This presents a very shocking picture(at least for me) of a future where I would not be able to enjoy Indian tv for the rest of my life. This is because as much the situation has deteriorated from the earlier days, even the relatively recent past, where shows like Office Office, Khichdi or Sarabhai vs Sarabhai were introduced, has now transformed into an era where saas bahu serials moulded in the form of love stories are shown and the only thing the other new shows can call their own are the numbers that have to be dialed in order to vote for a participant.
This grim situation also brought feelings of nostalgia, to have grown up in a period where shows of the highest quality were produced. The list includes Buniyaad(the most under rated show), Mahabharat, Malgudi Days, Bharat Ek Khoj, Byomkesh Bakshi, Ye Jo Hai Zindagi, Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne, Karamchand, Nukkad, Amul Surabhi, Mirza Ghalib and Hum Log (plus many others), also daily soaps like Shanti and Swabhimaan. Hows that for quality stuff..? It was a time when people like Gulzar made shows for tv with Naseeruddin Shah in it, and every show had one Raghubir Yadav or Pankaj Kapur or another gem of an actor in it. The script was always tidy and gripping with each writer knowing well in advance what was the length of shows as the number of episodes were pre-decided. On the down side, the production values were always low, as not much money has ever been involved when it comes to Doordarshan, in addition to the work culture being sarkaari. So, when you consider the hurdles that the guys had to cross and what they delivered, its truly remarkable.
This discussion should not end in only a single post which brings me to the idea of writing a series of posts on the shows that were part of our life when we grew up, from the mid 80's to around the mid 90's. I m sure that is going to take some time but what the hell, its not like I have to watch anything on tv.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Time to kill..

A pretty decent semester (the best one for me, with the least amount of studying :D ) being well and truly over and half way into the holidays...this post was just round the corner. The time I have on my hands on a single day is what I'd get in a whole week during the semester. And since at home I dont have my movies etc. with me..it seems a whole lot more !
Its December and it is the job season for most of my friends. And if someone is saying that the financial meltdown is not hurting India he knows as much about economics as Steven Spielberg knows about making saas-bahu serials. The number of people who are placed as compared to last year's figures are about one-third. And the guys in IITs didn't even see it coming. With their CG already being fixed they couldn't do much to improve their chances and also the last minute back-out , done by many major companies took everybody by surprise. So when you dont have a Shell, RBS, ML, Lehmann, JP Morgan and even Reliance recruiting at the campus, in addition to companies like Mckinsey and Schlumberger recruiting only one or two persons, you know that you are in for some tough times ahead. Try sitting in a room with those who got this rough deal and you'll see that the depression is highly contagious. But I guess all of this has to be taken in stride and just move on. On a lighter note, a good joke doing the rounds is, when you have the US, Europe, almost all the companies of world in debt or losses, where did all the money go !! (Quite difficult to explain to a common man, I think)