Bring Back ... CONTENT !

Were you brought-up in a remote village of India?

Did your parents undergo lot of pains while you were growing up?

Do you have a special bond with your mother? She believed you, when no one did??

You had a strained relation with your father?

You have seen lack of money to the extent of walking down long distances?

You are average looking? No, infact people have told you you look like shit?

You cannot go back to your hometown so you shall do any kind of odd jobs for money?

In short, you are a Loser! Loser!! Loser!!! With a capital L

Wow! 

Than brace yourself the world is looking out for you!

You are the next big thing in bolywood!

Media is on a look out for you!

Biggest banners are going to offer you the most misfit kind of roles and you definitely cannot say no! Realty shows have send coordinators to spot you, to make you one of their contestants who represent the mango people ?

Common, you have heard it before. “Never underestimate the power of a common man”

AND YOU are one! 

…so it is time you celebrate! Celebrate your below average looks. Celebrate, being a loser.

Grab every pie offered to you, not just a part of it. Make hay while the flash bulbs shine and till, the media replaces you with another ‘child of a lesser god’ like you.

Your success story is an interesting piece of read so leading newspapers will want to interview you for the first page, most surely sponsored by your big banner, in which you are starring with a 100 crore plus super star.

Be ready for your bare it all interview. Do not hold back, reveal it all! . . . .

People who aren’t as lucky or as hardworking as you, love to read stories of people like you. They resonate with you coz deep down in their hearts they so much want to be in your place.

Momentarily though, they live it up, their dreams through your sob story.

So, no one wants to hear about a rich brat who always had all the riches delivered with his nappies. No one is interested in knowing how many cars or bungalows your father gifted you on every birthday. No one is bothered which brands of underwear or cosmetics you were born with.

You are obsolete dear! Because you don’t sell any longer.

What sells is, not plastic smirks of egoistic highhandedness but real tears. . .tears of pain, tears of grief you suffered to reach where you are today… on a pedestal created by media. Tears that roll down faster than sensex.

So brand yourself well… dearies. Riches no longer attracts… what does is rags.

I remember those days when we used to wait all week long to watch bloody one English movie every Sunday on Our own sweet old Doordarshan. We hopped into our neighbous home to watch chayageet on their black and white television set. We so much empathized with Badhki didi Lajo ji and Basesaram in our favourite tele series.

They were like our extended family. We lived their lives, we wept with them shared their happiness. One channel, no choice absolutely.

And at times we were so deprived of entertainment we actually even saw movies in regional languages which we never understood. That too gave us happiness. It was like, we gave unconditional love to our television sets.

The inaugural sound track of Doordarshan logo forming onto our dull looking screens made us alive and the news before the closing sound track made us sad… wanting for more. 

Ek chidi anek chidiya...was the only thing we thought animation was all about.

Now over 800 channels, facebook, youtube and the fast far reaching web of web have us spoiled for choice.

So though there is influx of so much talent there is more manipulation of content rather than creation of content. Be it television or any other source of entertainment.

In 1950's Guru Dutt with his Rembrandt lighting, zoom in and zoom out shots created magic with silver bromide in form of Jane who Kaise Log the… and

Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam 

And today with best of technique, best of technicians and best of actors all we create is a money spinner not a master piece.

How many films are we going to remember from this generation? Very few, maybe countable on fingers.

How many we remember from the generations gone? Countless!

Remember the term Jubilee Kumar was coined for Rajendra Kumar… For the information of this generation … he was named so because his movies ran for 25 weeks which meant a Silver jubilee and 50 weeks Golden jubilee.

Now the movie releases on a  Friday and its declared a super duper hit on Sunday morning. One song, one star… drives entertainment craving people in throngs, not movie lovers. And by the time you realize the movie is the biggest mistake of your life the makers have made big, really big bucks and Jubilee means nothing… hundred crores or two or maybe now five hundred crores is what drives creativity out of the window and economics in.

On many occasions it has so happened, that the trailers of certain movies have garnered a better response than the movie itself.

Newspapers at times carry longer interviews of actors rather than some burning issue the country is facing today. Bigger pictures of stars than probably heroes who fight battles in day to day lives.

Television and web, looks like is simply being used as a medium to promote these weekend cash grossers. Historical shows with distorted historical facts, comedy shows which insult women and the institution of marriage in name of humour, reality television which plays with our bare emotions, never ending soap operas which have forced dictionaries to change the meaning of soap operas, talent hunt shows which hunt down talent! What is it that we really want to watch? Or maybe simply switch the DAMN Television and go for a walk.

As viewers we are not only being slapped with mediocre content literally onto our face but are also time and again blamed for being the cause.

A tele-series i watched on one of the million channels revived these memories and made me think of this … can television, films or entertainment in any form, not be simple, pure, true to life; like this 26 episode series. 
Does entertainment have to be loud and ugly? 
Does it have to be at the cost of making fun of somebody or something, read radio!

Bring back those days of no choice … one channel … our sweet little Doorarshan … chayageet … Buniyaad … Humlog… Yeh jo hai zindagi… 
Bring back … the pleasant, humble Amin Sayani 

… Bring back content…

This is a blog post intended to start a debate, please do share your views.

© nozzer pardiwala