India is in its Primetime

I remember the pre-cable era – we all had lot of time for the family. As a school going kid, I always wanted to engage in discussions with my mother and brother when my mother wanted me to study. She had nothing else to do but to ensure that her two sons were well fed while she waited for my father to return from office and be bored with the wait.

On my part, I used to wait for the clock to strike 9.00. At 9.00 PM, I got a break from my hours of pretension and could focus on watching the serials that were shown at the prime-time. I remember watching the longest ever serial of those days – Buniyad. I used to think when that serial would get over and something like a Nukkad replace it. Buniyad was out of my comprehension. Mostly serials lasted 3 months (13 weeks/episodes). A week would have 5 serials and hence I had my favorite days in the week (Sunday was never challenged for obvious and multiple reasons). The hope was that, however bad a serial could be, it got over in 3 months and you bear it only for a day in a week.

The open India saw the arrival for the ‘new normal’ – an India transformed by cable signals. Towards the end of the last century, the cable led India was dominated by TV ‘Soaps’. I used to think that only Kerala had the culture of long never ending soaps. The illusion was corrected when I got transferred to Pune where I saw my landlord watching series of soaps – all of them were Hindi. I was shocked to note that all languages in India have the same theme – long unimaginable hours of melodrama and that from 6.00 PM to 11.00 at night. House wives reaffirmed their understanding of these otherwise un-understandable soaps watching the repeat telecast the next day.

All these soaps had the same theme – highly disconnected from reality, played 5 days a week, for not less than 3 years. In effect, I wouldn’t have met my degree mates as many times during the course of graduation as many Indians meet the characters of the soaps. Statistics revel that heroines of these soaps wept for almost 73 % of the duration and were accompanied by their audience – mostly heroines in their own right. The characters needed less makeup as they in reality grow old along with the character. Most of the soaps had a female antagonist pulling the strings against the heroine. There have been cases where the director got so confused that in his story a wife ended up having an affair with her husband without his knowledge (hope you understood…I didn’t!!!).

The upside of these strings of endless soaps was startling. Research showed that the number of divorces in India reduced drastically – couple rarely got a chance to fight and when they did, they felt that their story was better than that of their ‘best friend’. The life expectancy went up enormously – old bedridden senior citizens would live an extra day to know what happened to a ‘Vidya’ or a ‘Jessi’.

Soon, the next generation interested in the fast paced life had obvious reservations to the domination of serials in their life. Food, prepared in the morning between the repeat telecasts and the original show, would be served only after 11. Their parents would realize their presence in the house only if they don’t break the 6.00 PM barrier. Parents insisted their children studied – which meant less of disturbance for them. Mood of the parents would be directly proportional to the mood of the episode – mostly sad.

The next generation persisted to win. Soaps gave way to something more interactive – the reality TV. Anything to everything in India had a reality show. To select the best dancer, to select the best singer, to select the most intelligent etc. The stake of reality TV shows rose with the arrival of the roadies and Big bosses. It reached its peak when Rakhi decided to find her partner for life through a reality show. Sources close to the Prime Minister confirmed that he was learning the art of innovatively wearing turban – an art he could master to win the next term in the post, provided he gets enough sms’.

The next wave of TRP record beater is Arnab Goswami and his News Hour – the talk show in Times Now at 9.00 PM. He has all of it to be the leader of the pack. His shows have the melodrama that soap would carry, it had an antagonist almost every day and the government fitted the bill. It had a victim everyday. Like serials, his show comes 5 times a day for - don’t know how many years. Like the reality shows, his shows are real, he asks for more and more sms’s to flow in. Though the topics discussed were very relevant unlike soaps – it ended in nothing other than the agenda he had in mind. Whatever the discussion turns out to be, the end would be what Mr Goswami had decided in the beginning.

My parents always cribbed about the stories in the soaps and promised not to watch it the next day. Yet, they would be the first to be in front of the TV the next day. Today, I watch this program, amidst resistance just like how my parents did, to get frustrated by the content, its conducted. Only saving grace - it reveals the hypocrisy of an average Indian politician every day. 5 characters are a part of my life now - Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Manoj Tiwary, Ravi Shankar Prasad and the irreplaceable – Aranab Goswami.

Yes, Prime Time Rules India!!!