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Magazine
A world of difference
SEVANTI NINAN
COPS on Indian television have come a long way since the days of Kalyani in "Udaan". Not only do they look like Aman Varma, (which is no big deal actually, Shekhar Kapur in "Udaan" looked more classy) but they also have a lifestyle that is straight out of "Dil Chahata Hai". Their kids are fresh-faced and stylish, their homes are airy spaces styled in cedar wood and tile, their tables are laid with studio pottery. Whoever did the sets of Star Plus's new Tuesday offering at 9 p.m., "Kehta Hai Dil", got a little carried away. This cop (he is meant to be a small town superintendent of police) shares his angst with his picture perfect wife in a designer kitchen large enough to house a platoon, and the children have an enormous bedroom so trendy that when they are in it they look like they are part of the props.
Actually, in the first two episodes, this is the Delhi BMW hit and run case meets hit movie "Dil Chahata Hai". The stories will change, the core cast of characters will not. The one-hour episodes will pick up ethical issues that pop up in middle class India. Our fancy cop for instance, discovers while tracking down the hit and run accident that his own kids are involved. And it will offer an ethically acceptable ending that is not dissimilar to what happened to the rich kids who killed several on a Delhi road. They are good kids from a good family, they meant no harm, m'lord, it was an accident not a pre-meditated crime, their futures do not deserve to be ruined. And the judge doles out his version of designer justice.
This serial made its debut in the same week as three new Sunday morning shows slotted as culture, mythology and pilgrimage. I find all of them fascinating for a reason, which has nothing to do with the professed themes, or stated purposes of these shows. If Star Plus has now held its own at the top for close to two years running in the crowded general entertainment channel market, it must be doing something right, as far as the mass of satellite channel viewers is concerned. It is. The success has its germ in the saas-bahu serials that have gone down so well.
Star's reach is widening as a result of conscious strategy, and the targeted viewer is now more likely to be living in small town India. This societal segment is changing fast if you read all those news magazine cover stories on the mushrooming of leisure spots, cyber cafes and watering holes in India's two lakhs plus population towns. There is new money, accompanied by new aspirations and a new morality.
Two things remain the same though, the devotion to religious practice, and the pivotal role of women as both drudge and decision maker, mother figure as well as general family slave. Both these elements are worked into whatever is served up on prime time on Star. The good-looking actresses who play key roles are carefully picked. They are not anorexic like the models and veejays who seem to click with big city youth. They are not, in Sharad Yadav's memorable phrase, par kati mahilayon, short haired women. They have beautiful tresses, reasonably endowed figures, and the ability to drape pallus over their heads at the drop of a hat.
And while they may be covering up for rapists, or having a little fling on the side, they wear traditional silks and carry around pooja thalis with practised ease. The physical world they occupy is modern and palatial at the same time. These gorgeous sari clad creatures zip up and down grand staircases, an architectural affectation that small town new money possibly aspires to. The "Kehta Hai Dil" cop family however is consistently trendy, the stairs are wood, not marble.
Package mindless, yet gripping, soaps in this sort of new Indian family setting and you've got both the aspiring and the left-behind hooked. There is clever underplaying of realism. While it is highly unlikely that public facilities are also changing in these small towns (or big cities), on television they have had a make over. The more infrastructure deteriorates for the average Indian, the better they become on the serials. The cop stations, courts and hospitals we visit are never going to be anything like the souped-up ones we see on television. But at least, it's a pleasure seeing them. Check out both the courtroom and the police station in "Kehta Hai Dil". And the hospital in "Sanjivini". And while you are at it, the ghats of Varanasi in "Yatra".
Not to speak of the efficiency and humanity of those who man the infrastructure. All those yummy doctors in "Sanjivini", oozing compassion for every messy case that comes their way. The upright cop in "Kehta Hai Dil", relentlessly following a case that he knows could be leading to implicating his own children. (In this country? Ha ha.) A justice system that would have been poor Arun Jaitley's dream: the case comes to court, gets heard and disposed of in a matter of weeks. Or so it seems. In the real world, the BMW case took several years. Witnesses don't get bought out here, they come rushing along to give evidence because newspaper reporters are told by Mr. Super Cop to run stories asking the public to cooperate.
From saas-bahu serials and nuclear family dramas, Star Plus has charted its winning course to a new phase, the religion and culture bit in a country that, post-Gujarat, is celebrating its assertive Hinduism. Last Sunday it introduced three programmes. Hema Malini plays Mata Bhubaneshwari and her various avatars in "Jai Mata Ki". Sakshi Tanwar, who plays the enormously popular bahu Parvati in "Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki" hosts a show called "Gurukul" that will dish up ancient wisdom from the Vedas and the Upanishads. And as Narendra Modi in Gujarat was planning his yatras, the channel has come up with a series called "Yatra" that promotes religious tourism. Mind you, this is not a channel presided over by Sushma Swaraj, but by James Murdoch, son of Rupert.
The first episode of "Yatra" personifies all the trends that have come to mark shows that get ratings. Hostess Deepti Bhatnagar who is bland, comely and touchingly devout, takes you on a tour of Kashi that has any vestige of dirt airbrushed out of it. She looks divine, running through four different saris in the course of the episode. The Ganga looks even better, sometimes like a sheet of liquid gold, sometimes a soft blue grey, and at night, magical, scattered with floating, lit lamps. Did anyone say it needs cleaning up?
Come and live in this world, brother. It beats the real India any day.
E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com
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