Sitting in the common room of my PG, as I started having dinner after a long day at work, I had to immediately look up from my plate, to see a lady laughing like a witch, clad in a saree, and was giving weird expressions:
No, not in reality, but in a TV serial……
What’s more weird was, a bunch of other people in the room, watching that so intently. Maybe, they are fond of the high voltage drama, with ‘aaa…aaa…aaa…SSS’ music being played in the background, the camera rolling at each of the Ram, Seeta, Geeta’s face in that particular scene.
It was then, that I found an easy way out – I went to my room along with food, opened a random episode of ‘Friends’ and finished dinner peacefully.
I still remember that when I was a kid, I would only eat food if the TV was on. The level of comedy, that shows like- ‘Hum Paanch’, ’Shrimanji-Shrimatiji’, ’Flop show’, ’Tu Tu Main Main’ had, was no less than our modern day International comedy shows. In recent times, I can only remember ‘Sarabhai vs Sarabhai’ as being that one comedy show that we can never get bored of. Even, as I grew up, serials like- ‘Swabhiman’, ‘Amanat’, ‘Malgudi Days’, ‘Shanti’, etc. were a treat to watch for the whole family.
Dear TV Channels,
What has happened to you all now?
I loved you ‘ZEE TV’ for ‘Hum-Paanch’, ‘Sa-Re-Ga-Ma’, ‘Amanat’ and many more.
I enjoyed watching ‘Star Plus’ for ‘Tu Tu Main Main’, ‘KBC’, ‘Kasauti Zindagi Ki’(the first few episodes), ‘Sanjivani’, and others.
‘SONY’, your ‘Hum sab ek hain’, ‘Heena’, ‘Just Mohabbat’ were our favorites.
& ‘COLORS’, you made me your fan with ‘Balika Vadhu’… but why do you make serials like ‘Sasural Simar Ka’ and push me away? I can certainly vouch for the fact that there are many more like me.
See, I am not even able to list a number of daily soaps these days which are all alike in pissing people off. You can see that I listed old TV serials without any hesitation, but here I am struggling to gather names of current shows to compare. One such TV serial which my family used to watch is ‘Veera’ on Star Plus channel. It depicted the beautiful relation of a brother and his sister. This was one serial in recent times, which put smiles on our face. But, it too fell into the trap of grabbing TRPs and was dragged to 10 years forward. We all lost interest after that. This is only one such example. I am sure all of them go through a similar procedure. By searching on Google, I found these top 10 TV serials – Kumkum Bhagya , Saath Nibhana Saathiya, Ye Hain Mohabbatein, Sasural Simar Ka, Iss Pyar Ko Kya Naam Doon? And many more. I don’t know what goes on in these, but they clearly don’t interest me even if I watch a scene of them.
The clear message that I want to give to all of the channels, is that,
By making people watch idiotic stories (aka CRAP), you can get TRPs because that kind of audience will always be there- who are free, and have time and energy to glue their eyes to it. But, just think, isn’t it your social responsibility to create serials with much stronger message (devoid of over-acting), which can change the minds of today’s India?
(I know you start many serials with a good message, but only after a few episodes, it becomes a drag… over-acting and unnecessary slow songs in the background, repel us away from it.)
Come on channels, you have the power, exercise it responsibly. Change India by taking people’s mentality forward, instead of pulling it back.
Only then can I promise you that all the youngsters of our generation will also refrain from watching International daily soaps on our systems and will join our families in the living room to watch TV together. Hope that day comes soon.
