Chasing the Elusive Realism

Indian telly programming guys are like kids in a candy shop. Excited. Running Amok. Not knowing where to go, what to pick first from among a plethora of adaptable reality formats and telenovellas and Mills & Boon romances that most K serials are inspired from. It seems they want to grab all and eat all the candies - colorful and grotesque without giving an iota of thought as to whether their stomachs can digest it. The result: a veritable regurgitation of formulaic stuff with no understanding of what makes the audience tick and what lifts a serial from an ordinary soap to a memorable series. It is all a game of hit and trial. And sadly there are no lessons being learnt from even the past successes.

What are the past successes? Ask anyone and they go into a euphoric trip down memory lane when they recount serials like Rajni, Udaan, Nukkad, Hum Log, Buniyaad, Yeh jo hai zindagi and of course Mahabharat and Ramayan. It may well be argued here that those were the times when India was an entertainment starved country with no channel proliferation. And the first time anything happens even if it is mediocre, is always the most euphoric. If that were true, then why is that people don't recall those first mega series which dotted the satellite entertainment scape in the early nineties like Tara, Banegi Apni Baat and lots of others whose names we have already forgotton. Why is it that an entertainment starved country that considered even ads as good programming, now remembers only Lalita ji and Dhoondte reh jaogey fondly from among scores of others. There was obviously something that went right with these serials and ads even if it may have seemed at the time that it was something someone stumbled on serendipitously rather than thought through strategically.

But there is a definite trend and a winning formula that underpins all the past successes. As a researcher who happens to meet all kinds of men and women across socio economic backgrounds on categories as diverse as pharma and fashion, TV programs get discussed often enough. And if I close my eyes and play back all these small but telling informal chats I begin to realize that Indian audience is not as capricious as it is made out to be. There seems to be a tenuous thread that is holding together all the serials they consider close to their hearts.

We all know TV, more than cinema, is art attempting to imitate life. And it is this depiction of reality - its various renditions, that form the rudimentary framework of success. But the key question is what kind of reality and who does it appeal to. If you consider serials like Mahabharat and Ramayan, there is a mythological connect that represents our culture and beliefs. Our cultural connect is also palpable in serials like Buniyaad and Tamas. Not surprisingly it appealed to the vulnerable refugee mindset as the ugly scars of partition, though healed, were still discomforting. These serials managed to sensitively portray our cultural realism. And again if you consider serials like Rajni, there was always a social issue being raised and tackled in each episode. Similarly with Udaan - a woman's resolve of fighting a corrupt system while being in the system - a reality most civil servants faced at the time. A kind of social realism which we experienced daily and hence liked the dramatization. And we felt we were not alone in this country who suffered these vagaries. And what of serials like Nukkad and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi? Well, you guessed it. They all had a kind of everyday life realism handled in a comic manner. This everyday realism is what Ekta's earlier saas bahu serials seemed to touch upon. Unlike the comic realism of others, she chose to make them emotionally high strung. But an everyday realism it was. After all, if all the saas and bahus of India saw that their everyday domestic problems and altercations - often dismissed by their husbands as too trivial - being dramatized on national television, they obviously felt they were not the only ones who went through these "small deaths" everyday. And there is someone who thinks they are problems big enough to dramatize serials on.

Now think of all the recent serials which have been successes. Astitva, Saans, Kora Kagaz and the more recent Saat Phere and Thodi Khushi Thode Gham are sensitive portrayals of social realism which the audience are finding relevant. So whether it was adultery, age compatibility, dark skin stigma or unconsummated marriage and woman asserting herself in a patriarchal setup - all find an echo with real everyday lives and social issues of people around us. Nowadays everybody seems to be on the bandwagon of everyday realism - comic or emotional - Office Office, Baa Bahu aur Baby, Jab Luv Hua seem to be somewhere between the comic or emotional everyday realism. Ekta's latest serials seem to flog the same old dead horse of emotional realism in different contextual and family set ups. It is interesting, however, that there is not one serial which seems to relevantly connect with our cultural realism. You may say Buniyaad is on a re-run and yet not successful. Not surprising. As the audience to whom it was relevant culturally have aged. There is a huge opportunity to appeal to today's generation by portraying their socio-cultural realism of Mandal 1 and 2, MMS scandals, internet marriages, sexual exploitation of women and the omnipresent media prone to sensationalizing everything. Maybe if more programs were made with stories that are seen through the lens of various realisms, TV viewing may become more enjoyable and diverse.