The new TV: Misery

Today, as i sat watching my mother's serials, i call it her serials because she is the one who watches them and i am forced to watch them, she uses some reverse reasoning like; because i'm eating i will watch my own show and the very same condition does not apply to me i.e her son. But i argue in futility, she uses her finely honed and masterful supreme logic (read emotional blackmail), and i end up watching whatever she is watching, but i don't give up at the outset, i try to make her watching those, inherently maddening programs, a most distsateful experience i'm at hand with all the sarcasm i can muster, so much so that, dinner becomes a contest between two ideologies, one is the world wise aura of a middle aged teacher who can make any student quiver in his/her respective boots, the other is the noveu independent battle hardened professional who wants his tv time. The effect is usually volatile but, i assure you no food has been flung, so far. But this post is not about the mindgames me and my mother play with each other. It is about today, and what she was watching, it was some serial called "Mahi Way" and i was sitting in my chair waiting for the dinner to arrive and preparing for the "baat-tle" ahead i was not really concentrating on the tv but then something caught my attention, it was a joke, a pretty decent joke in a soap, hmmm this might be interesting, and i actually started watching this show and believe it or not actually enjoying it, which led me to the instant conclusion that, this show will not be popular.

Why? this I will say later, first the praise that this serial deserves, it is a light frothy comedy about an overweight girl, who writes a column in a fashion magazine (ugly betty fame), it is tautly written, with witty repartee going on in the main protagonists head, very funny, her filmi family, her airhead best friend and her gay real best friend are the real cliche's here, but don't let these be a deterrent to your viewing pleasure, it is pleasantly filmi and quite likeable if you can gloss over some of the parts.

Now as to why this program won't work... it is a yash raj production, hence too filmi to be a real serial, it is about a young professional girl in an upper class modern punjabi family hence there is no identification with the core of the tv viewing populace i.e. middle aged, middle class house wives for whom young professional women are another india, and history is the biggest obstacle to them, remember how much we used to crib about Kahaani ghar ghar ki and kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi, how much they were parodied and laughed at, but that had no effect whatsoever on the ratings of the show, they were consistently the most watched shows on cable tv. Why is that?

I have a theory, you may agree with it, you may not, It is not that we don't like reality, we like a glorified sense of our reality, people like to look at these obscenely rich, yet absolutely traditional families, they signify an India which is rich developed yet standing firm on its beliefs, nothing can be more far removed from the truth. These serials show the suffering daughter in law, the tyrannical mother in law, the impotent men in the life of these power crazed women. All meant to strike a chord with the average woman, who feels as such and wishes for these things. The misery these serials potray, is such a brilliant hook, that people just don't get off it. They continually feel sad, sorry and bad for the main character and in the end when the main character lashes out and burns all her tormentors, the hooked viewers, feel a savage sense of righteousness and vindication, that after all the bad things the good side wins. Again a concept far removed from the reality. Young men and women fall in love and then get married instantly in huge lavish weddings, the scale that would make L N Mittal green with envy(ok maybe that wasn't such a good comparision, but hey in showbiz anything goes), yet these young men and women donot have an iota of sexual tension that is running so rampant today, it feels like our sense of romance has not evolved since the days of ramanand sagar's ramayan, where a doe eyed and shy Sita, fell in love with a NOT so dashing Ram, point being that we don't like our reality, yet we enjoy a warped twisted glorified sense of our own reality, but when that reality is provided in a different context we kick it away like some mangy pariah dog.

This is just the beginning of my ire yet i stop, becuase i know that this show will not succeed because it does not conform to the majority's warped sense of reality, it tries to break the mould and we can recall how our nation treats different thinkers, with disregard and sneering attitudes, only in 3 idiots will a father agree that his son become a photographer instead of an engineer, the second half of that movie still irks me. So my sincere luck to a surely doomed enterprise, for my hope please succeed.

We are truly a nation of Hypocrites and misery addicts.