|
|
Raw
Deal: Remember Vidya Sinha, the actress who lit up so
many of Basu Chatterjee’s romantic comedies like Rajnigandha,
Chotisi Baat and Jeena Yahan? She has re-designed
herself as a teevee actress. But the material offered to
her on television makes you wonder if she deserves such
a raw deal.
Sinha plays Alok Nath’s wife in the ‘Muslim Social’
Hawayen on Doordarshan’s national channel. The
last decent muslim social we had on television was Sony’s
Henna. (Interestingly, the slot has been taken up
Hindu mythological Devi on Friday nights... but that’s
another story). If Henna overstayed its welcome,
Hawayen doesn’t even begin to warrant a welcome.
Tackily produced and clumsily packaged it has some gifted
Hindu actors like Alok Nath, Vineeta Malik (who’s Alok’s
real-life sister) and Vidya Sinha playing Muslim characters.
|
That,
believe me, is the most interesting part of the soap. The plot
about a monstrously chaotic marital alliance between two families
is cluttured with anomalies. Last week Sinha marched into her
dead daughter’s inlaws’ place with a box of sweets claiming
in front of her daughter’s killers, "I want you to share
my joy because we’ve discovered who my daughters’ killers
are."
Who
killed Doordarshan?: Yeah. But who killed Doordarshan? Not
a single soap or sitcom seems to stimulate viewers enough to abandon
their daily dose of satellite fix. The calibre of content and
the quality of transmission are so abysmal as to make us wonder
what could prompt a man of Gulzar’s calibre to film the short
of stories of Premchand (to be telecast shortly) for the national
channel.
Who
watches Doordarshan? That's the question Doordarshan should be
asking in the wake of the the IIFA awards which were telecast
simultaneously with Sony Entertainment on Sunday night. No one
had the patience to sit through the glamorous event on national
television.
The
IIFA Affair: Sony it was for IIFA’s grand affair where
we saw the entire Bollywood fraternity hobnob in hefty motions
of glamour quotients. My only problem was with the sheer redundancy
factor. By the time the IIFA awards came along I had seen Karan
Johar pick up all the awards for Kal Ho Na Ho. I had seen
Rakesh Roshan trying to be jokey at earlier functions. On this
occasion when he was called to give away an award he said, "This
means I won’t get an award (grin grin chuckle chuckle)."
It
meant nothing of the sort. Everyone did a homage. Preity Zinta’s
Madhubala act was fairly seductive. Dressed in a black sari she
swayed sensuously on stage. Zinta surprised me by revealing that
she had never worn a sari before. When I pointed out that her
movements did not replicate Madhubala’s she explained, "That’s
because Madhubala’s movements were all about closeups - eyes,
lips, etc. You can’t do closeups on stage where you’re
being watched by thousands."
Fair
enough. Zinta is among the few Bollywood denizens, who takes pains
over her stage performances. Maybe this time she had more reason
to be happy than the others. Forgetting her demure sari-look,
Preity let out a whoop of joy when she went on stage to get her
best-actress award. Attagirl!
So
did Abhishek Bachchan when he announced his mother's name for
the best supporting-actress award. The whoop of joy rang across
the auditorium. What I noticed that evening was the profusion
of filial bonds... Abhishek and Jaya Bachchan, Karan and his father
Yash Johar, Feroz Khan and son Fardeen… all reaching out
to one another across that wonderful international platform.
But
where was the chutzpah? The anchors Rahul Khanna and Celina Jaitley/Mahima
Chowdhary were predictably bland. Every announcement was laced
with one or the other exclamation, making us wonder what happened
to the era of understatement.
****
Queen
Bee smiling pretty?: Ekta Kapoor — again! We just can’t
get away from her — is sizzling with Star’s Kahiin
To Hoga. I think the serial’s clout–factor is remarkable.
The actors who play Kashish, Sujal and Rishi are outstanding.
Who says TV doesn’t nurture and project exceptional acting
talent?
Also,
I’d like to point out that some of the plotting patterns
in Kahiin To Hoga are quite astounding. For instance, the
widowed Kashish and her sister are both pregnant… one fatherless
by fate, the other by default. Original and absorbing Kahiin
To Hoga is worth waiting up for at 11 pm.
****
Mixed
bag of emotions: Saw two star-interviews on NDTV’s English
and Hindi channels on Thursday night. Rani Mukherjee on NDTV India
was warm and accessible, telling us why she needed to become an
actress so that her ailing dad won’t have to work. (Er, what
about the brother?)
Konkona
Sen-Sharma (she insisted on the Sharma) and her director Madhur
Bhandarkar were on NDTV to promote their film Page 3. During
the conversation Konkona revealed her Hindi was very bad. So
what’s she doing in a Hindi-language film? Or on a desi channel
promoting a Hindi film?
(The
views expressed here are those of the author and indiantelevision.com
need not necessarily subscribe to the same)
